Customer Reviews

Nigella Bites: From Family Meals to Elegant Dinners -- Easy, Delectable Recipes For Any Occasion

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I approached this cookbook skeptically. It can be difficult to separate the cooking from the cult of personality, so to critique the recipes is to critique the woman. The cookbook has lots of chatter and lots of white space, but Nigella Lawson is a charming woman, so the chatter is friendly and companionable, and the book has lots of white space but it is slender and elegant and filled with beautiful photographs of every dish. Sections are organized as Breakfast, Comfort Food, TV Dinners, Rainy Day, Trashy, etc. These are more colorful than helpful, but one can find recipes by name or ingredient in the well-constructed index. No nutritional information is given for the recipes, but that's just as well.

I've tried eight recipes so far (and have many more marked to try). Of those eight, I would say three were resounding successes: the icing for the chocolate fudge cake will be at the top of my list whenever I need an airy but flavorful frosting; the sweet corn pudding was very good; and the double potato and halloumi bake was delicious though I couldn't find the sheep's milk cheese required for two of the book's recipes, even at a gourmet cheese shop. Two recipes were servable if not very exciting. And three of the eight recipes did not work for me at all. My Mozzarella in Carrozza, for example, never resulted in a stretchy warm concoction that I could pull lustily from my teeth, my neck outstretched in voluptuous splendor, though I tried several times.

Three additional comments: Several of the recipes I tried benefited from the addition of spice. Secondly, recipes have been lazily retooled from the metric units originally used, so instructions often call for multiple multi-measurement ingredients -- 1 cup + 2 T flour, 1/4 cup + 1 t sugar, etc etc. Finally, quite a few recipes call for self-rising flour; you can make the equivalent of 1 cup of self-rising flour by mixing 1 cup of all-purpose flour + 1-1/2 teaspoons of baking powder + 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Ultimately this is not a flawless effort, but Nigella has the charm and talent to pull off a successful personality cookbook, and though results might be mixed, the good recipes are archetypal. That ain't bad.

I recently purchased this book (I own Nigella's other three, including the recent British release "Forever Summer" - also very good) and I have been really pleased with it. I was originally dissuaded from buying this book from a reviewer on the UK site who said that this book was a combination of "Domestic Goddess" and "HOw to Eat"; it is not. Nigella's style is very chatty and it is like having a friend in the kitchen with you. She also encourages substituting ingredients (offering her own options) when you are unable to find something, such as Seville Oranges. She also encourages that the reader/cook use these recipes as a guideline, changing them to suit their own taste/ingredients on hand, and she includes a section at the end of each chapter where you can jot down your own notes. I have already tried two of the recipes, the Lemon Risotto and the Chicken Breast with Cannellini Beans and Kale (I substituted Beetroot Greens - I am sure Nigella would approve.) These met with great success from my culinarily spoiled husband, who said they tasted great, and from me, since both recipes were fantastically easy, yet looked like I tried so much harder than I did. Nigella's recipes range from slow-cooked meals for lazy weekends to very fast dinners, what ever suits the cook and the eater(s). Finally, thumbs up to the organizational sections of the book, and I positively cannot give less than five stars to anyone who readily admits to being an Amazon addict (like myself!) Check this book out - you will not be disappointed! :)

As a professional working chef. I've been impressed by Nigella Lawson approach to food, for several reason, like her I am Italian ( she is part italian but both our mothers are) Also for those people who think professional chef's cook at home like we do at work, HAHAHAHA fat chance, how often we come home and are satisfied by the cool simplicty of a bowl of cereal or a ham and cheese sandwhich. But since I have discovered Nigella my hame and cheese sandwhich has be morphed into her Mozzarella in Carroza ( Carroza means carriage dont ask I dont get it either)I just added some ... ham I got from the deli section of my local market. and it is good!, her recipies are all about the comfort and joy of what cooking should be, its not about food art which so many literary chef's seems to feel their dishes need to be, Not Nigella, her dinner parties are great no fancy dishes just a table set with warm candles alot of happy people great food and love ( thats an italian for you) Ive made almost all of the recipies in her book. The Chocolate Cake is incredible and easy to make.The Sticky toffee pudding is easy and incredible and I took her Ginger Jam bread pudding to work and it became a dessert for the days special and we sold out of it like you cannot imagine, its just really easy yummy simple food. The Salmon over the fresh greens is great the entire section called "Temple Food" is full of wonderful simple and mainly asian in flavor and low calorie dishes that comfort and soothe. The book has some clever names, I gotta admit trashy still cracks me up Ive made the fried peanut butter and banana sandwhich several time afte work with a tall ice cold glass of non fat moo( milk to y'a'll) its total yum! The Warm thai duck salad is easy and simple to make and excellent with thinly sliced london broil if you cant find duck. The Pasta and Meatballs is great, if you dont want to make your own pasta De Cecco Fettucini or Tagliatelli is a perfect subsitute. The Ham and Coca Cola and Sweet Corn pudding are tasty and perfect for the upcoming easter weekend. her recepies are simple and easy to follow, when I bought this book I bought it before it came out here, I got the UK version all in metric, I had to rely on my cooking school conversions but since its now available here, no conversions needed. Im amazed how much I go back to this book when I want to have some people over and throw something together that easy relaxed comforting and fun. Oh yeah the spiced nuts , make em for a party they will be gone in a flash they are so good. I just ordered her new book forever summer I look forward to that. I also hope style channel starts showing that series. Ive checked it out on her website over in England and it has the recepies available there according to color? I dont know what the deal is with the colors yet but Im sure I will find out when the book gets here

Most books about food are written by cooks who can write. Negella Lawson is writer who can cook. Her book, Nigella Bites, has the appearance and structure of a cookbook, but it is really about how she uses food to cope with suffering.

And suffered she has. Despite a storybook life (her mother, was a beautiful heiress, her father, one of Conservative Party's most powerful ministers), Mrs. Lawson has lost first her mother, then her sister to cancer. Recently the disease took her husband after a four year struggle.

Cookbooks generally don't tell you about who wrote them any more than do chemistry lab texts. Who was to know from reading the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book that a paralytic stroke prevented Fannie Farmer from attending college? Where in The Way to Cook does it indicate that Julia Childs worked for the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA)?

Nigella Bites on the other hand is flavored through out by the writer's personality. We find out Mrs. Lawson has trouble sleeping some nights, she misses her sister, she suffers from the occasional hang over and doesn't like to waste food. Most of all we learn how what she feels about what she cooks. She is usually explicit about the emotional weight various recipes carry. Food is life. Eating is what separates the living from the dead. One can almost picture Mrs. Lawson in the middle of a sleepless night using the thin layers of a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich or a slice of chocolate fudge cake to buffer the darkness surrounding her. When she writes "you need to know there's something to stave off that moment of desolation that threatens to settle when the eating's done for the day" makes me wonder if the book could not have been titled The Sorrow of Cooking.

Because she is better looking, a better writer, and a better cook than Martha Stewart she is currently be marketed here in the United States as sort of a British-Yiddish successor to the controversial homemaker/business executive/cultural icon. I think this is misplaced, since the two women represent two different aspects of the human experience and appeal to readers for different reasons.

Even though the book is bit thin in terms of number of recipes (about 70 compared with 1,849 Farmer's first book) they are easy to make and highly original (deep-fried candy bars with pineapple anyone?) and the writing more than makes up for it. Can it be any surprise Mrs. Lawson won Author of the Year in the 2000 British Book Awards? This is that most rare of the genre, a cookbook worth reading even if you have no interest in cooking.

Having only seen Nigella's show once, when someone told me that this cookbook was a good way to get her recipes and narration, I looked into it.

I found a cookbook that is down to earth with a breezy, narrative style. I loved the titles of her sections (All Day Breakfast, Comfort Food, TV Dinners, Party Girl, Rainy Days, Trashy, etc.)

The photos were gorgeous and I appreciated the chatty introduction to most recipes. I also liked the pages at the ends of the chapters for my notes and comments.

I am sure this book will be well-used. All the recipes I have tried thus far have been great.

I really, really love Nigella's books, her shows and her approach to food... So believe me when I say it pains me to say that this book is an enormous disappointment. It is safe to say that this was just meant to be a quick cash-in for Nigella and her publisher.
For $35 you should expect far more than what was offered up in this feeble effort. I rushed out to buy the book, didn't think twice about it, then got home and couldn't help feeling a little bit taken advantage of once I had time to take it in.

Does she really believe that recipes for Bloody Mary's, pancakes, mashed potatoes, pigs in a blanket, sugar cookies and a peanut butter and banana sandwich are worth $35? I know what you're thinking. "Maybe these are magic mashed potatoes!" No. The "recipe" (if you can call it that) consists of potatoes, milk, butter, salt, pepper and nutmeg. It doesn't even offer a fresh approach to mashed potatoes (for a book that does, see Marcus Samuelsson's Aquavit!)
I had about damn near had it when I saw her passing off asparagus with soft boiled egg as a recipe. That one basically goes like this: boil the egg, boil the asparagus, dip the asparagus in the egg. Give me a break.
Shoddy recipes on top of two blank pages at the end of each section for your "notes" and two pages per section for very large, bold print that doesn't even take up a half a page, had me losing my faith in the Domestic Goddess.
That said, there are a few recipes here that I liked. Granny Lawson's lunch dish, the lemon risotto and chocolate cloud cake were good. So I figure each one of those recipes was worth about $11.66.
This book is not worth the cost. My money would have been put to better use getting bikini wax. Save yourself the annoyance and opt for one of her other books (all of which are worth the price.)

I confess: I am a Nigella groupie. I love her show, her books, her writing, and her overall take on life. She is an inspiration for forty-something women everywhere.
Nigella Bites is an excellent book both for those individuals who already have her previous tomes and for those new to the Nigella world. She includes new recipes and she updates previous ones (her famous ham with coca cola, for instance). I particularly appreciated the revising of her recipes-you felt as if you were evolving with her. It forced me to rethink my own dishes and it made me realize that recipes are not set in stone.
I have made a number of the recipes in this book including a lemon risotto for a casual cuisine club. All received good reviews. I would recommend that the cook watch the proportions of fat and calories in these recipes-Nigella lite can still be very good.
Nigella is not for everyone. She is not a cooking purist-doesn't claim to be-and she is not into spa cuisine (to say the least). Her overall British goddess act could get on some people's nerves. But if you do like her, she is a wonderful, witty companion in your kitchen. Each new book launches another great series of conversations with her.

I bought "Nigella Bites" since I'd enjoyed "How To Eat" and "How To Be A Domestic Goddess" and absolutely loved them. I thought that this book would be just as good.

Sadly, I found "Nigella Bites" too similar in content, same jokes, same opinions, same old - same old. I guessed that maybe Nigella had said it all already and was just trying to push out another book.

Truthfully, I love Nigella Lawson's style of writing, I relate to her attitude in the kitchen, her thoughts and her descriptions of the things she loves...I can't bare to watch her on TV. The book "Nigella Bites" is directly related to her TV series, I couldn't bring myself to sit through hours of watching her trailing through her home and entertaining her guests, to me its irrelevant.

I wouldn't recommend this book, though would strongly recommend the two others above (I didn't read "Forever Summer" since the reviews were not good either). I am looking forward to the new release in November 2004 of "Feast" and am keeping my fingers crossed that it will be as exciting as her other books.

Like all cookbooks, success or failure depends entirely on the recipes contained therein. How to Be a Domestic Goddess was absolutely packed with foodstuffs I couldn't wait to tie on my apron and try but Nigella Bites is more miss than hit. It was nice to have full access to all the TV recipes without having to scramble for a pen and scrap paper whenever it came on E! but convenience isn't enought to justify the price tag. As always, the numerous photos are appreciated and let you know whether or not you've gone horribly awry in the cooking process but the many blank pages for 'notes' are a waste of space. No one who's just shelled out twenty-five dollars for a cookbook is going to deface it (Just take notes on bits of paper and tuck them into the appropriate pages like everyone else for heaven's sake, Nigella).

But these are niggling details in the grand scheme of things; whether or not you should buy this book hinges solely on what your eating urges are. Each section is a essentially a 'themed' meal- White Trash, Dinner for Two, Rainy Day Supper, etc- so altogether you only get about 8 different recipes for any given course. Looking for lots of appetizers? Tough. Want a wide variety of main courses? Too bad. Need to satisy your sweet tooth? Invest in 'Domestic Goddess' instead. This book is more your style if you want to try a little bit of everything: A Nigella sampler.

All told, despite being a rabid Nigella food fanatic, I only found about 6 recipes I really wanted to try and I've only gotten around to cooking two of them: Chocolate Pots and Mozzarella Carraviggio. They are both delicious but very rich; any more than one helping and you'll find yourself feeling sick. Mozzarella is the worst offender, being essentially a fried grilled cheese sandwich that sits very heavily in your stomach.

It's more than a little ironic that the book most directly tied into the show that made Nigella famous to American audiences is quite possibly her weakest effort.

If you are looking for a book that has recipes for cooking everything, then this is not what you are looking for. But what you do get with "Nigella Bites" is a lively conversation with the lovely Nigella Lawson and a handful of great recipes to work into your own repertoire. She has given us recipes that are perfect for the work week, requiring little time and easily obtainable ingredients. And she also has a section for the weekend dishes when you do have the time to linger in the kitchen. The chicken with chorizo and kale, lemon risotto, salmon fishcakes, corn pudding and linguine with pancetta and garlic oil are all integrated in my meal rotation.