Lawson - Kitchen: recipes from the heart of the home

Acknowledgements

The clutter of my kitchen is not only the backdrop as I write and cook, but fittingly enough the backdrop of this book. Of course, many readers will recognize pots, pans, glasses, bowls and other bits and pieces from previous books, and this is just how it should be. Familiarity is the cosy province of the home cook, and proudly so. But the needs of a kitchen and the needs of a photography shoot are not exactly the same, and many of the pictures that precede this page have been enormously aided by Ceramica Blue, The Conran Shop, David Mellor, Divertimenti, TheFrenchHouse.net, Few and Far, Heals, John Lewis Partnership, littala, Lytton & Lily, NOM Living, Rice, Seeds of Italy and Vintage Heaven. I am very grateful.

I am grateful, too, enduringly to those who have worked so hard to make this the book I wanted it to be, even when I left them hardly any time to do so. Caroline Stearns, Jan Bowmer, Parisa Ebrahimi, Poppy Hampson and Alison Samuel deserve more than thanks: they deserve some sort of medal of honour. Alison, in particular, I wish to thank for her patience, forbearance and an attention to detail that verges on a state of grace (or medical condition). At Random House, too, I am, as ever, profoundly grateful for the huge good fortune that has provided me with a publisher as brilliant as Gail Rebuck.

I am similarly blessed beyond: I rely utterly on the guidance so generously given to me by Mark Hutchinson; and Ed Victor, I think, knows how eternally indebted I am to him. I can never truly get over my luck in having worked, over the years, with Caz Hildebrand. All my books, and especially this one, owe their existence greatly to her. As they benefit, too, from the dedicated attentions of my photographer, Lis Parsons.

But I have a special gratitude not just for those who have worked with me on this book, but who have spent so much time in the kitchen with me as it bubbled its way into being. Hettie Potter and Zoe Wales have devoted themselves particularly to the task in hand, as well as to me over the years, and Rose Murray, once again, helped bring a beautiful book into the world with them; but I give heartfelt thanks to all of them, my kitchen confidantes: Lisa and Francesca Grillo, Rose Murray, Hettie Potter, Zoe Wales and Anzelle Wasserman.

About the Book

Compendious, informative and engaging, Kitchen offers feel-good food for cooks and eaters that is comforting but always seductive, nostalgic but with a modern twist whether express-way easy-exotic recipes for the weekday rush, leisurely slow-cook dishes for weekends and special occasions, or irresistible cakes and cookies in true "domestic goddess" style. It answers everyday cooking quandaries what to give the kids for tea, how to rustle up a meal for friends or an impromptu kitchen party in moments, or what to do about those black bananas, wrinkled apples and bullet-hard plums and since real cooking is so often about leftovers, here one recipe can morph into another...from ham hocks to pea soup and pasties, from braised chicken to Chinatown salad. This isn't just about being thrifty but about being creative and seeing how recipes evolve.

As well as offering the reader a mouthwatering array of inspired new recipes from clams with chorizo to Guinness gingerbread, from Asian braised beef to flourless chocolate lime cake, from Pasta alla Genovese to Venetian carrot cake Nigella rounds up her kitchen kit must-haves (and, crucially, what isn't needed) in the way of equipment and magical standby ingredients. But above all, she reminds the reader how much pleasure there is to be had in real food and in reclaiming the traditional rhythms of the kitchen, as she cooks to the beat of the heart of the home, creating simple, delicious recipes to make life less complicated.

The expansive, lively narrative, with its rich feast of food, makes this new work a natural 21st-century successor to Nigella's classic How To Eat, this time with a wealth of photographs from the instructive to the glorious, and accompanied by a BBC TV series.

190 recipes, including over 60 express-style at 30 minutes or under.

About the Author

Nigella Lawson is the author of bestselling books How to Eat ('may just be the best cookery book ever' Daily Telegraph), How to be a Domestic Goddess (British Book Awards 2001), Nigella Bites (WHSmith Award 2002) Forever Summer ('images of warmth and Mediterranean climes' Time Out), Feast, ('a voluptuous and delicious piece of food writing' Guardian), Nigella Express (no. 1 bestseller with over 1 million sales) and Nigella Christmas ('everything to make your Christmas sparkle' Independent) which, together with her successful TV series and her recent iPhone App, Nigella Quick Collection, have made hers a household name around the world. She lives in London with her family.

When I was young, and even longer ago, cookery books used to contain counsel called, according to the French classical tradition,"batterie de cuisine", in other words, a slightly panic-inducing list of all those pieces of kit and equipment that any cook worthy of the title should own. Dont worry, I shant be visiting that kind of finger-wagging bossiness on you. I mean, really: how much or how little you buy for your kitchen is up to you. And even then, no one has a free rein. There are likely to be constraints before you even start: budget being one, space another.

Anyway, most kitchen items are a luxury, and a very pleasurable indulgence; all that is actually needed for the cooking itself is fire, a receptacle and something to stir with. Still, I am hesitant about sounding too austere on the matter. As Imelda Marcos was to shoes, I am to the whole covetable arena of kitchen items and equipment (foodstuffs included). How then, could I advise too spartan an approach in you? For me, buying stuff for the kitchen is one of the great joys of life. While Im not entirely innocent of extravagance, the truth is many gadgets cost a lot less than clothes, and whats more you dont have to try them on.

Still, it is all too easy to clutter up a kitchen with stuff you want, or feel you might need, but cannot find room for, even without spending a lot of money. My advice is not to buy anything even if youve found it on eBay for a pound if storing it is going to outweigh the advantage of using it; there is nothing more annoying than having to heave bowls and pans out of densely packed drawers and cupboards every time you need to prepare or cook something. If you cant house a piece of kit in relative comfort, its better to make do without it.

Similarly (maybe this is just because I am a lazy wimp though, in my defence, a lazy wimp with a history of back problems), I dont think its worth having any piece of equipment, however brilliant, if you can never quite summon the effort and strength to lift it. Enormous unwieldiness can be my undoing. In the same way, equipment that needs too much care and attention defeats me in the end. I love cast iron, the high-maintenance male of the kitchen equipment world, but I have given away all my cast-iron skillets bar one, since their stagger-inducing weight, too much for my limp wrists, combined with the seasoning they require, make me end up resenting as opposed to cherishing them.