In moments of sadness, as well as in moments of sleepy contentedness, I often turn, not to poetry or to music, but to TV cook Nigella Lawson. I’ve watched all the episodes of her various TV shows that are available on Youtube over and over again; what could perhaps be described as a concerning number of times. I’ve seriously considered writing some great seminal essay on her, on the difficulties faced (and, may I sycophantically declare, heroically overcome) in her personal life, her ambition, her resulting empire and her enduring appeal, which I believe results from the heady combination of her physical attractiveness (c’mon, let’s not pretend), her no-nonsense attitude to bourgeois frippery (while being unapologetically, incredibly bourgeois), her instinctive cooking style, her sensual appreciation of food, along with her unpretentious yet always subtly apparent intelligence. She’s a canny woman, that Nigella, and I unashamedly adore her.
I could have chosen a number of her books to write about, but her first seemed the natural choice: it is, for Nigellans (as I’m dubbing obsessive fans like myself), the bible of her oeuvre. Modern cookery’s Ulysses, perhaps, or a less distressing Moby-Dick.
In fact, the whole thrust of this book, what makes it so exceptionally readable, is Lawson’s pointed focus on dispelling any potential distress from the kitchen. She is writing a guide, not only to the methods involved in cooking, but to food itself; she is attempting to redress how her readers approach food in the first place – insisting that it ought, first and foremost, to be a source of pleasure, fun and even joy. And this, while unashamedly dismissing the “drearily narcissistic learn-to-love-yourself” attitude to food and nutrition. Swoon. At the time of writing, How to Eat (first published in 1998) was revolutionary.
This book is essential for anyone who claims to truly love food. Lawson puts it best (of course); “In writing this book, I wanted to make food and my slavering passion for it that starting point . . . I have nothing to declare but my greed.”
