Lawson - How to be a domestic goddess: baking and the art of comfort cooking

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

NIGELLA SUMMER

FEAST

FOOD THAT CELEBRATES LIFE

NIGELLA EXPRESS

GOOD FOOD FAST

NIGELLA CHRISTMAS

NIGELLA KITCHEN

RECIPES FROM THE HEART OF THE HOME

NIGELLISSIMA

INSTANT ITALIAN INSPIRATION

FOR JOHN, GODDESS-MAKER

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN: 9781448137596

Version 1.0

Published by Chatto & Windus 2014

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright Nigella Lawson 2000

Photographs copyright Petrina Tinslay 2000

Nigella Lawson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Chatto & Windus
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
www.randomhouse.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7011 8914 3

Design and Art Direction: Caz Hildebrand
Cookery Assistant: Hettie Potter

WHAT SETS HER APART FROM EVERY OTHER FOOD WRITER IS HER EMPATHY WITH WORKING WOMEN AND HER REALISM ... EVERY PAGE IS IMBUED WITH FAMILIAL WARMTH

THE TIMES

HOW TO BE A
DOMESTIC GODDESS

This is for those days or evenings when you want to usher a little something out of the kitchen that makes you thrill at the sheer pleasure youve conjured up.

The classic baking bible by Nigella Lawson (Queen of the Kitchen Observer Food Monthly). This is the book that helped the world rediscover the joys of baking and kick-started the cupcake revolution, from cake shops around the country to The Great British Bake Off.

How To Be A Domestic Goddess is not about being a goddess, but about feeling like one. Here is the book that feeds our fantasies, understands our anxieties and puts cakes, pies, pastries, preserves, puddings, bread and biscuits back into our own kitchens.

With luscious photography, easy recipes, witty food writing and a beautiful hardback design, this is a book you will treasure for many years as well as a delicious gift for friends and family.

Cakes from a simple Victoria Sponge to beautiful cupcakes
Biscuits macaroons, muffins and other indulgent treats
Pies perfect shortcrust and puff pastry and sweet and savoury recipes
Puddings crumbles, sponges, trifles and cheesecakes
Chocolate luscious chocolate recipes for sharing (or not)
Children simple recipes for baking with kids
Christmas pudding, Christmas cakes, mince pies ... and mulled wine
Bread finally, the proof that baking bread can be fun, with easy bread recipes
The Domestic Goddesss Larder essential preserves, jams, chutneys, curds and pickles that every cook should have

I love Nigella Lawsons writing and I love her recipes Delia Smith

Theres an intelligence to the way she writes and she expects a certain intelligence of her readers as well Nigel Slater

I am unapologetic about being a home cook rather than a chef.

Real cooking, the sort that goes on in homes, does not have to be tricksy or difficult. A dish of chicken poached with leeks and carrots definitely isnt fancy. But it tastes good, and feels essentially nourishing, to both body and soul, to cook and eat.

I want you to feel that Im there with you, in the kitchen, as you cook. My books are the conversations we might be having.

Nigella Lawson has written nine bestselling cookery books, including the classics How To Eat and How To Be A Domestic Goddess the book that launched a thousand cupcakes. These books, her TV series and her Quick Collection apps, have made her a household name around the world. In 2013 she was one of the Observer Food Monthlys ten Chefs of the Decade. She is a judge and mentor on The Taste in the US and UK.

www.nigella.com
@Nigella_Lawson

Her prose is as nourishing as her recipes Salman Rushdie, Observer

Miss Lawson is the Thinking Persons Cook. She tells stories, she explains why things must be the way she says they must be ... enlightenment and sensual pleasure Jeanette Winterson, The Times

This is a book about baking, but not a baking book not in the sense of being a manual or a comprehensive guide or a map of a land you do not inhabit. I neither want to confine you to kitchen quarters nor even suggest that it might be desirable. But I do think that many of us have become alienated from the domestic sphere, and that it can actually make us feel better to claim back some of that space, make it comforting rather than frightening. In a way, baking stands both as a useful metaphor for the familial warmth of the kitchen we fondly imagine used to exist, and as a way of reclaiming our lost Eden. This is hardly a culinary matter, of course: but cooking, we know, has a way of cutting through things, and to things, which have nothing to do with the kitchen. This is why it matters.

The trouble with much modern cooking is not that the food it produces isnt good, but that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes thats the best we can manage, but at other times we dont want to feel like a post-modern, post-feminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake.

So what Im talking about is not being a domestic goddess exactly, but feeling like one. One of the reasons making cakes is satisfying is that the effort required is so much less than the gratitude conferred. Everyone seems to think its hard to make a cake (and no need to disillusion them), but it doesnt take more than 25 minutes to make and bake a tray of muffins or a sponge layer cake, and the returns are high: you feel disproportionately good about yourself afterwards. This is what baking, what all of this book, is about: feeling good, wafting along in the warm, sweet-smelling air, unwinding, no longer being entirely an office creature; and thats exactly what I mean by comfort cooking.