Lawson - At My Table: a Celebration of Home Cooking

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nigella Lawson has written ten bestselling cookery books including the classics How to Eat and How To Be A Domestic Goddess the book that inspired a whole new generation of bakers. These books, and her TV series, have made her a household name around the world.

www.nigella.com
@Nigella_Lawson

ABOUT THE BOOK

Over a hundred relaxed, achievable and delicious recipes; enjoy the food that Nigella shares day-to-day at her table.

Nigella Lawson is a champion of the home cook and her new book celebrates the food she loves to cook for friends and family. The recipes are warming, comforting, and inspirational, from new riffs on classic dishes including Chicken Fricasse and Sticky Toffee Pudding to adventures in a host of new dishes and ingredients, from Aubergine Fatteh to White Miso Hummus.

At My Table includes dishes to inspire all cooks and eaters, from Hake with Bacon, Peas and Cider to Indian-Spiced Chicken and Potato Traybake and Chilli Mint Lamb Cutlets; plus a host of colourful vegetable dishes, like Eastern Mediterranean Chopped Salad and Carrots and Fennel with Harissa.

No Nigella cookbook would be complete without sweet treats, and At My Table is no exception, with Emergency Brownies, White Chocolate Cheesecake and a Victoria Sponge with Cardamom, Marmalade and Crme Frache set to become family favourites.

As Nigella writes, happiness is best shared and the food in this book will be served and savoured at your own kitchen table just as it is at hers.

Contents

ALSO BY NIGELLA LAWSON

HOW TO EAT

The pleasures and principles of good food

HOW TO BE A DOMESTIC GODDESS

Baking and the art of comfort cooking

NIGELLA BITES

Uncomplicated, fresh, perfect for everyday

NIGELLA SUMMER

Easy cooking, easy eating

FEAST

Food that celebrates life

NIGELLA EXPRESS

Good food fast

NIGELLA CHRISTMAS

Food, family, friends, festivities

NIGELLA KITCHEN

Recipes from the heart of the home

NIGELLISSIMA

Instant Italian inspiration

SIMPLY NIGELLA

Feel good food

in memory of Ed Victor

INTRODUCTION

When I moved into my first home, before I did anything else, I bought a table, a table not just to eat at, but to live around.

I read recently that when NASA originally designed their spaceships, they didnt put in a table: it wasnt thought necessary, and it was hard to see how it would work; without gravity, the food would just float off it. But, as Mary Roach wrote in Packing for Mars, the astronauts did mind, and asked for one to be put in, even if it meant strapping on a tray, with food velcroed to it. In the alienating isolation of space, they wanted, they said, to sit around a table at the end of the day and eat like humans.

A table is more than a piece of furniture, just as food is more than fuel. It seems to me, wrote M.F.K. Fisher, that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. Around a table is where these three things meet. Our lives are formed by memories, and the focus of mine is the food Ive cooked and the people Ive cooked for, the people who have sat at my table, as well as the other tables Ive eaten at, from the blue formica table of my childhood, to the mottled zinc one that is the nexus of my life now.

This book, like all the books Ive written and all the cookery books Ive read, is not just a manual, but a collection of stories and a container of memories. But then, any recipe ever written, any meal ever eaten, is a story, the story of home cooking which, in turn, is about who we are, where weve come from and the lives that weve lived, and what we say to each other all those assertions of love, friendship, hospitality, hope when we invite people to sit at our table and eat the food weve made for them.

Personal history, the weaving of memories that sum up a life, social history, the story of how a culture most intimately expresses itself, a cookery book can be about all these things and more, but at its core, it answers that important, everyday question: What are we going to eat?

The food in this book, that comes from my kitchen, is eaten at my table, and will be eaten at yours, is the food I have always loved cooking. It doesnt require technique, dexterity or expertise, none of which I lay claim to. Life is complicated; cooking doesnt have to be. It doesnt matter how many cookery books I write or how many times I am erroneously called a chef, I will never be a professional. But then, no one needs qualifications to cook, or human beings would have fallen out of the evolutionary loop a long time ago. I cook, as you do, to feed myself, my family, my friends. A home cook is not a lesser being than a chef, though a markedly different one. I hate hearing people describe themselves as just a home cook. We may not have the technical proficiency of a chef, but why should this matter? We cook to bring pleasure, comfort and flavour to life, to the table. This is not to say we operate in bumbling chaos, although I have learnt over the years that I need a certain amount of this. In a sense, a recipe is a way of finding order in the mess of life. Its a guide, something to hold on to. And because of this, it must always be reliable, and as exact as possible, even if cooking itself can never be a precise art. There is a lot of snobbery about giving exact measurements as if they impede the creativity of the real cook but I do need the recipes I write (and the recipes I read) to provide as reliable and straightforward a guide as possible, without denying the spontaneity of cooking. So, please do not become hamstrung by weights and measures; I freely admit that cooking itself demands a certain cavalier attitude towards both. If you want to use 300g of carrots in a stew, when I have stipulated 250g, thats fine, but there needs to be a framework in the first instance, and often there can be a significant discrepancy in the weights of particular ingredients, so an entirely laissez-faire attitude would not be helpful. In baking, of course, absolute precision is a prerequisite; in cooking there can be more freedom of movement.

But no matter how specific the amounts given both in general and, in particular, of spices, herbs, salt, citrus and so on nothing can do the job of your palate. You cannot cook without tasting, and you need to taste, taste, taste and taste again. A recipe can be an idea, a starting point, but when I write one, I need to know Im giving you the tools to share the food I make. And for me, too, a recipe is the way I share my enthusiasms. I repeat certain ingredients unashamedly. The home cook has to, and happily. If I buy a jar of preserved lemons, say, for a particular recipe, or require you to, it wouldnt occur to me to leave that opened jar in the fridge with nothing else to do with it. And, indeed, it is finding ways to use up such a jar that is in itself inspiring. A home cook may work with a much more limited storecupboard than a chef, but still, we do discover new ingredients, and they inject new flavours into the food we cook. Home cooking isnt about treating food as a museum piece or an empty exercise in nostalgia. So many of the recipes here are drawn from meals I remember, the food Ive eaten at various stages in my life, but in evoking memories, Im also making them part of how I live and eat now.