Lessons | From Nigella

We can hardly begin to count the excellent lessons we have learned over the years from Nigella Lawson. Here we’ve compiled just a few of our favourites. 

Nigella on life’s simple things

“Good food doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes the simplest dishes are the most satisfying.”

Nigella on chicken

“You could probably get through life without knowing how to roast a chicken, but the question is, would you want to?”

Nigella on peeling beetroot

“Wear gloves when peeling a roasted beet unless you want more than a touch of the Lady Macbeths”

Nigella on custard

“Custard should be firm but not immobile; when you press it with your fingers, it should have a little wobble still within. Soft, warm and voluptuous - like an 18th century courtesan's inner thigh.”

Nigella on being a domestic goddess

"Sometimes...we don't want to feel like a postmodern, postfeminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake."

Nigella on her ham in Coca Cola recipe

“Only those who have never tried this raise an eyebrow at the idea. Don't hesitate, don't be anxious: this really works. No one who cooks it, cooks it just once: it always earns a place in every repertoire.” Ham in Coca  Cola

Nigella on keeping dinner parties fun

“Tension translates to your guests. They'll have a much better time having chilli and baked potatoes than they would if you did roast duck with a wild cherry sauce and then had to lie down and cry for a while.”

Nigella on her Naan Pizza

“I beg you to keep the wherewithal for this fantastic instant snack-cum-supper in your storecupboard. It's a lifesaver! All I feel strongly is that while shop-bought pizzas are vile, packet naans, when heated, are not.” Naan Pizza

Nigella on cooking

“I don't believe you can ever really cook unless you love eating.”

Nigella on Fondue

“I don't suppose this is ever going to win plaudits from the World Health Organisation, but a cheese fondue is surely the stuff of dreams. On the plus side, health-wise, I love it best with radishes, chicory, spears of radicchio and carrots dipped in, but I don't know why I am trying to engage with that particular argument.Make a vat of this, and supply nothing other than fruit afterwards or, at most, a little palate-tickling sorbet.” 

In our October issue, we remember domestic goddesses from across the years in our feature ‘Household Names’ which starts on page 88. 

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Cook | hazelnut pesto and gnocchi with fennel

Deeply nutty toasted hazelnuts make a brilliant alternative to pine nuts in pesto. Delicious dolloped over your own homemade gnocchi

In our May issue (in shops and available to order online now), we have a feature by Lisa Leendertz from our series Today, Tomorrow, To Keep, with recipes for a tart for today, a bhaji for tomorrow and a kimchi to keep. So we thought we’d dig another out of our archives. This recipe is from our ‘Hazelnuts’ Today, Tomorrow, To Keep from issue 76. We hope you enjoy it again.

Serves 4

For the pesto
1 large bunch of parsley, leaves only
60g blanched and toasted hazelnuts
60g hard goats’ cheese, finely grated
150ml cold-pressed extra virgin rapeseed oil
Juice of ¼ lemon

For the gnocchi
500g potatoes, peeled and boiled
1 egg, beaten
125g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
Olive oil and butter, for frying and drizzling

For the fennel
50g butter
2 large fennel bulbs, each cut into eight wedges to serve
A few toasted hazelnuts
Hard goats’ cheese, for grating

1 If you have a food processor, put all the pesto ingredients into it and blitz together. If you’re using a pestle and mortar, crush the nuts first, then finely chop the herbs, add these and the rest of the ingredients, and pound to a paste. Whichever method you use, taste and add salt and pepper as necessary. Add a little more oil if you prefer a looser consistency.
2 To make the gnocchi, push the potatoes through a ricer, or mash them (riced potatoes make lighter, fluffier gnocchi). Roughly mix in the egg with a fork, then sieve over the flour, season with salt and work into a dough, kneading a few times. Dust a work surface with flour and roll out the mixture to 2-3cm thick. Cut into short lengths and mark with a fork.
3 Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and drop in the gnocchi in batches. Lift out with a slotted spoon when they bob to the surface after a minute or so. Drain on kitchen paper.
4 For the fennel, melt the butter in a frying pan and gently fry the fennel until caramelised (at least 10 mins). Turn and caramelise the other side.
5 If you like, you can brown the gnocchi. In another frying pan, melt a knob of butter with a little olive oil and fry the gnocchi until golden. Divide the gnocchi and fennel between four plates and top each with a spoonful or two of pesto, some toasted nuts and a little extra grated goats’ cheese.

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June's book club

something something, with something too, we'll have you something for something with something when something.

Zero Waste Home - Bea Johnson

BEA JOHNSON LIVED the consumerist dream: huge house, lavish holidays, Botox – yet she wasn’t happy. She and her family downsized, disposed of everything they didn’t “use, need or love” and rethought their lives. Deeply concerned about the environment, they became committed to reducing waste: buying in bulk, rejecting packaging, and making their own bread, mustard and cheese. They worked out a “Zero Waste” philosophy to aim for, applying the mantra “Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot”.

In this inspiring, thorough book, Johnson explains how you too can do just that too. Sensible rather than preachy, this is an honest, entertaining and campaigning guide to living a more environmentally friendly life.

Stylish Dress Book - Yoshiki Tsukiori

THE COOL LINES of Japanese fashion are explained in this first English translation of celebrated designer Yoshiko Tsukiori’s new book of sewing projects. The photographs of her designs are as tempting as a still cool pool on a hot day, with drawstring tops, loose smocks, peasant dresses and sharp shirts, styled in a palette of soft blues and greys. Basic design patterns are also included, and while the small diagrams may alarm some novices, Tsukiori’s designs are so gorgeous, any fan of DIY fashion will want to get their head down and have a go.

Our Songbirds - Matt Sewell

ARDENT ORNITHOLOGIST Matt Sewell captured bird lovers’ hearts last year with Our Garden Birds and charms again with a collection of warblers for every week of the year. Illustrated with Sewell’s signature watercolours (he has painted murals for the RSPB and a bird hide for Port Eliot festival), this lovely giftbook also includes his idiosyncratic descriptions of the birds, where a Turtle Dove is a “glamorous granny resplendent in lace, doilies and pastel knickerbockers”. The Charlatans’ lead singer Tim Burgess provides a foreword.

Manly Food - Simon Cave

“NO-HOLDS-BARRED, all-action cooking” is promised in Manly Food, an unashamedly blokey cookbook with the motto “Flavour First”. And tasty-looking it is too, with recipes such as Crab with Chilli and Black Bean Sauce and Pea and Ham Hock Soup. Manly Food is ambitiously meaty, with recipes for suckling pig, hare and boar, yet despite the macho tone (salted caramel fudge is perfect for “an extended hiking trip in the wilderness”) Cave is clearly serious about his ingredients, methods and tools. Makes cooking exciting.

All the Birds, Singing - Evie Wyld

APPREHENSION TREADS THROUGH the pages of Evie Wyld’s second novel, which is the follow-up to her much-lauded debut offering, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice. Jake (no, she’s a woman) Whyte lives in a farmhouse deep in an unspecified part of the wind-lashed British countryside. Solitary apart from a semi-feral dog, Whyte tries to concentrate on raising her flock of sheep – but someone, or something, is leaving them “mangled”. Jake’s hardscrabble past in Australia is revealed in alternate chapters as we slowly learn what it is that she’s so afraid of. Tough, capable, vulnerable, Whyte is a compelling character, and Wyld’s writing – particularly her descriptions of the Australian bush, oven-hot and roving with spiders – is exquisite. An unusual novel that should win its author even more prizes.

Tomorrow there will be Apricots - Jessica Soffer

SELF-HARMING TEENAGER Lorca wants to win her neglectful mother’s attention with a perfect dish of Middle-Eastern speciality masgouf – and chooses as her teacher Victoria, an Iraqi widow who still mourns the daughter she gave away. The healing power of making and eating food is almost a literary cliché, but 25-year-old New Yorker Jessica Soffer’s debut novel combines a fresh twist with a warmly told narrative.

Mouse the Cossacks - Paul Wilson

AFTER A FAMILY TRAGEDY, eight-year-old Mouse lost the ability to speak, communicating only via emails and notes, and sending forlorn texts to made-up numbers in the hope of a reply. Mouse and her mother move into a farmhouse in the Pennines once occupied by a lonely old man, William Caxton, whose mysterious unsent letters still clutter the rooms. As Mouse investigates Caxton’s past, she begins to find a way through her own sadness.

Sketcher - Roland Watson-Grant

SKID BEAUMONT IS GROWING UP on the outskirts of New Orleans in an alligator-patrolled swamp where “nothin’ moved except for maybe a dragonfly testin’ the water with its toes”. His father has had a drunken premonition that the swamps will make them rich, and Skid believes that his brother Frico, the “sketcher” of the title, can influence events by drawing. A beautiful and funny coming-of-age story.