[.ca] How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (ISBN 0471257508)

From Amazon.com:
"Cooking is not about just joining the dots, following one recipe slavishly and then moving on to the next," says British food writer Nigella Lawson. "It's about developing an understanding of food, a sense of assurance in the kitchen, about the simple desire to make yourself something to eat." Lawson is not a chef, but "an eater." She writes as if she's conversing with you while beating eggs or mincing garlic in your kitchen. She explains how to make the basics, such as roast chicken, soup stock, various sauces, cake, and ice cream. She teaches you to cook more esoteric dishes, such as grouse, white truffles (mushrooms, not chocolate), and "ham in Coca-Cola." She gives advice for entertaining over the holidays, quick cooking ("the real way to make life easier for yourself: cooking in advance"), cooking for yourself ("you don't have to belong to the drearily narcissistic learn-to-love-yourself school of thought to grasp that it might be a good thing to consider yourself worth cooking for"), and weekend lunches for six to eight people. Don't expect any concessions to health recommendations in the recipes here--Lawson makes liberal and unapologetic use of egg yolks, cream, and butter. There are plenty of recipes, but the best parts of How to Eat are the well-crafted tidbits of wisdom, such as the following: "Cook in advance and, if the worse comes to the worst, you can ditch it. No one but you will know that it tasted disgusting, or failed to set, or curdled or whatever." On the proper English trifle: "When I say proper I mean proper: lots of sponge, lots of jam, lots of custard and lots of cream. This is not a timid construction ... you don't want to end up with a trifle so upmarket it's inappropriately, posturingly elegant. A degree of vulgarity is requisite." "Too many people cook only when they're giving a dinner party. And it's very hard to go from zero to a hundred miles an hour. How can you learn to feel at ease around food, relaxed about cooking, if every time you go into the kitchen it's to cook at competition level?" --Joan Price

Pure Pleasure:
Before i cooked anything from this cookbook, i was fascinated that it reads more like a lifestyle manual than a typical cookbook. Reading it i could almost hear Nigella saying the words in my head. The recipies are fun and well thought of, her Macaronie and Cheese is fabulous, and soo easy! I enjoy laying around the house, sipping tea and reading between the recipies, because that girl has a talent for words. I love this book, she did a great job, as usual.

Intelligent advice, great food. Nigella is cool!:
Please let me say first off that I adore Nigella. She is like the cool sister you never had. She offers up recipes for just about anything you would ever want to cook, as well as her opinions in a certain way that makes me look to her a bit like one would a mentor. It's because she knows a lot about food, and has a great deal of life experience, from travelling and working as a restaurant reviewer, to share. For example, she's firm in her belief that a salad should be green or red. Choose. Either make it with lettuces or make a beautiful tomato salad -- better yet, set the ripe tomatoes in the center of the table with a knife, and let your guest have at it. It's something I'd never thought about before, and now that I have, I agree. I consult this book for inspiration, comfort, advice, and sometimes just to fantasize about a proper British Sunday meal or some other menu. The book is interesting and fun to read, and does inspire confidence. My latest success related to this book came after consulting it for my four-year-old's birthday party. The crowning jewel was a brilliant-green Jurassic cake laden with miniature plastic toy dinosaurs and a palm tree -- it was a huge hit. (Cheese biscuit "W"s too.) I appreciate how Nigella stresses that her recipes and suggestions are meant to serve as guidelines, not rules written in stone. In fact, some of the recipes I would change and have, tweaking and improving upon them for my tastes. It's more about the approach to food and eating. Nigella is smart, smart, smart, and truly a breath of fresh air.

I love this book.:
This author makes cooking comfortable. Her book explains things in a very simplistic and pleasant manner. Her approach gives the reader a sense of calm. All in all, it makes the reader feel at ease.

Both fun to read and cook from:
An excellent cookbook - but to use the word "cookbook" to describe it is almost an injustice because it is so much more. This is an exploration of food and the pleasures of both preparing food and eating it. This is more a novel with intricate plot twists than a boring cookbook with stodgy lists of recipes and ingredients. Indeed, the best thing about this book is the way you can pick it up and just read it - just like your favorite novel. The author is cheeky and delightful and my favorite part is her treatise on low fat cooking - how it is (at least for many people, me included) a reflection of vanity. The recipes are simple to follow and the writing that accompanies the recipes inspires confidence and joy as well as the compelling urge to prepare what she is writing about right then and there, no matter what time it is. The desserts are killer - the sticky chocolate pudding cake is easy to prepare and the results are fantastic - both gooey and rich and I am ashamed to say that I ate enough of it for at least three people. But in all honesty, I think that the author would approve of my gluttony. I tried the golden vegetable root stew and although apprehensive when first preparing it, I served it to my friends and it was a hit, it tasted exotic and complex. However, I was perplexed as to why she added zucchini to the recipe since the zucchini had turned to an urecognizable sickly yellow mush by the time the other vegetables were tender. But it did give the stew a nice (although unintended) thickness. The chocolate raspberry cake was also quite good although not nearly sweet enough for my tastes (but then again, I love cavity-inducing sweetness). An excellent book and I recommend it for anyone who loves to eat and also for people who don't because you will learn to love to eat once you are done reading it.

A Culinary Coup:
How to Eat is what a cookbook should be, just like Nigella Lawson's cooking show redefines all cooking shows. The recipes are divine and organized cleverly into useful chapters like "Quick and Easy Dinners After Work." The "Cooking for Children" section is also really useful. I've made several dozen meals from her cookbook and so far, all are winners. Her Basic Roast Chicken is divine--the best I've ever eaten, much less made. She is passionate about food, but in a down-to-earth, healthy way. She's also not afraid of fat!