How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The Great Culinary Renaissance we have heard so much about has done many things-given us extra virgin olive oil, better restaurants, and gastroporn-but it hasn't..." (more)
Key Phrases: cup light muscovado sugar, frozen young peas, plain pastry dough, Middle Eastern, Jane Grigson, Anna del Conte (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Cooking is not about just joining the dots, following one recipe slavishly and then moving on to the next," says British food writer Nigella Lawson. "It's about developing an understanding of food, a sense of assurance in the kitchen, about the simple desire to make yourself something to eat." Lawson is not a chef, but "an eater." She writes as if she's conversing with you while beating eggs or mincing garlic in your kitchen. She explains how to make the basics, such as roast chicken, soup stock, various sauces, cake, and ice cream. She teaches you to cook more esoteric dishes, such as grouse, white truffles (mushrooms, not chocolate), and "ham in Coca-Cola." She gives advice for entertaining over the holidays, quick cooking ("the real way to make life easier for yourself: cooking in advance"), cooking for yourself ("you don't have to belong to the drearily narcissistic learn-to-love-yourself school of thought to grasp that it might be a good thing to consider yourself worth cooking for"), and weekend lunches for six to eight people. Don't expect any concessions to health recommendations in the recipes here--Lawson makes liberal and unapologetic use of egg yolks, cream, and butter. There are plenty of recipes, but the best parts of How to Eat are the well-crafted tidbits of wisdom, such as the following:

• "Cook in advance and, if the worse comes to the worst, you can ditch it. No one but you will know that it tasted disgusting, or failed to set, or curdled or whatever."
  

• On the proper English trifle: "When I say proper I mean proper: lots of sponge, lots of jam, lots of custard and lots of cream. This is not a timid construction ... you don't want to end up with a trifle so upmarket it's inappropriately, posturingly elegant. A degree of vulgarity is requisite."
  

• "Too many people cook only when they're giving a dinner party. And it's very hard to go from zero to a hundred miles an hour. How can you learn to feel at ease around food, relaxed about cooking, if every time you go into the kitchen it's to cook at competition level?"
  

--Joan Price --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

"A chatty, sometimes cheeky,celebration of home-cooked meals."
—USA Today

Through her wildly popular television shows, her five bestselling cookbooks, her line of kitchenware, and her frequent media appearances, Nigella Lawson has emerged as one of the food world's most seductive personalities. How to Eat is the book that started it all—Nigella's signature, all-purpose cookbook, brimming with easygoing mealtime strategies and 350 mouthwatering recipes, from a truly sublime Tarragon French Roast Chicken to a totally decadent Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake. Here is Nigella's total (and totally irresistible) approach to food—the book that lays bare her secrets for finding pleasure in the simple things that we cook and eat every day.

"[Nigella] brings you into her life and tells you how she thinks about food, how meals come together in her head . . . and how she cooks for family and friends . . . A breakthrough . . . with hundreds of appealing and accessible recipes."
—Amanda Hesser, The New York Times

"Nigella Lawson serves up irony and sensuality with her comforting recipes . . . the Queen of Come-On Cooking."
—Los Angeles Times

"Nigella Lawson is, whisks down, Britain's funniest and sexiest food writer, a raconteur who is delicious whether detailing every step on the way towards a heavenly roast chicken and root vegetable couscous or explaining why 'cooking is not just about joining the dots.'"
—Richard Story, Vogue magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (June 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470173548
• ISBN-13: 978-0470173541
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,797 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #51 in

  Books > Cooking, Food & Wine > Gastronomy

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

223 of 231 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A cookbook that doesn't belong just in the kitchen, June 9, 2001

By	Maria from London (London UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (Paperback)

I have a special shelf for cookbooks in my living room...right next to the kitchen, as should be. For some reason, "How to eat" by Nigella Lawson, has been lying around the floor in my bedroom, or on the sofa in the living room, or wherever else apart from the kitchen, for the last couple of years since I bought it. What I'm trying to say is that this book is not just a simple cookbook, but more a description of the pleasure of good eating, & of preparing good food for yourself & for people you love.

On the other hand, the actual recipes (at least the ones I've tried so far, which are quite a few) seem to work, even from the first time you try them. I mention this because I've heard & read all sorts of comments about whether N.Lawson's recipes work or not. Maybe this is because Nigella Lawson has become a celebrity in England--imagine: she writes well, cooks well, & to top all that, she's beautiful too! How can you beat that? This is why 2 camps seem to have emerged--a "pro-Nigella" camp & an "anti-Nigella" camp!! This is all ridiculous, of course. The point is that Nigella Lawson has written, at least in my opinion, one of the best cookbooks of recent years. Down to earth, with good & long-winded explanations, written in a direct, friendly style, with such love for good food that even reading the book makes you want to rush to the kitchen & start creating a feast. "How to eat" is about comfort-eating at its best, & for me at least, it serves as comfort-reading too...

48 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this book is my bible, November 11, 2004

By	B. Christie "cookbook freak" (California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (Hardcover)

I bought this book in the spring of 2000 and I have literally never put it down. Its spine is broken, its pages are dirty, and it is falling apart. It can take a lot love, strain, abuse and argument.

That said, when was the last time you had a really great teacher? This is probably the best and the most important cookbook that has been published in the last decade (the last big one, for me, was Sheila Lukins and Julie Rosso's New Basics). Nigella inspired me. Obviously, she knows how to make and serve superb food. But she can also write, in a voice that is straightforward, simple, and direct; and she makes you want to cook.

Her credo is directed toward those of us who eat well and also struggle in the kitchen at home: we are a generation of cooks who have been cowed in the kitched by "too much cheffiness," the endemic fussiness of restaurant food; and the subsequent intimidation we experience from professional chefs and food celebrities (clearly she wrote this before she became a superstar). Instead of trying to replicate restaurant food, she argues, we should consider the distinction between how we eat at home and how we eat when we go out. This book directs itself toward how we eat at home. And her answer is simple: make what you want to make, in the time that you're allowed to do it. Therefore, this book is organized by time and convenience, rather than by region or category. You get whole (albeit limited) menus, rather than exhaustive descriptions of one regional category or another.

I have probably cooked every recipe in this book and (like one of the previous reviewers) I have some of Nigella's recipes permanently under my belt--alas, in more ways than one. The parsley salad with red onion, capers, and lemon juice is a permanent fixture in my life now; so is her red wine onion gravy (for sausages and mash, even though I disobiently use chicken or turkey instead of pork). I make that @!%$ recipe for chickpea and pasta soup more than I can bear to admit, even to myself, because it's inexpensive and it works. Nigella even instigated enough courage in my soul to actually purchase and cook oxtails, and she was right: they are less trouble than you would expect, delicious (and cheap). I also completely understand her obsession with rhubarb . . . and linguine with clams . . . and ham cooked in cider . . . and creme caramel made with coconut creme instead of milk . . . and the pleasure of laying out nice things you bought at the store when you can't deal with imprisoning yourself in the kitchen.

In the meantime, you have her stories to keep you company--her family's celebrations and tragedies, the tribulations of raising small children, and the most beautiful drag queen in all of Florence.

What more could you ask? This book acts as a guide to the hidden culinary adventures possible in your own home. Familiar energizing ideas suddenly offer up new ones, and old neglected ones naggingly call your name until you get off your ass, go out and try something new

Four years later, I am not by any means finished with this book. It waits, open, spattered and torn, by the other cookbooks that I love to flip through but rarely use. It now forms part of the fabric of my life. Forget the hot shots and the style network . . . she an oracle of our modern age, where everything is available but we have no idea what to do with it.

67 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars buy it now!!!!, June 5, 2002

By	Kasey M. Moctezuma "parisgirl" (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (Paperback)

Okay. So I had heard of Nigella Lawson and had been meaning to buy a cookbook or two of hers, especially Domestic Goddess. I finally got around to it, and decided to get this one as well, because I thought, frankly , that the price was right (it's cheaper on UK site, if you don't mind making the conversions from grams to ounces - not brain surgery)and it might have a couple of good recipes.
Well, I was surprised at how much I really love this cookbook. It is like a cooking bible. I have over 100 cookbooks, so I do not say this in jest. I love the way that the book is organized and sectioned off, from dishes for solo or duo diners, to dishes that are lowfat and food that can be cooked with children. It is really cleverly designed. The recipes range from elaborate dishes, to the roast asparagus that I prepared the day that I got the book. She writes in a very chatty style which is like having a mom or sister or friend in the kitchen with you, sharing her secrets. This cookbook is awesome. You have to get it!!!