How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food

How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food
by Nigella Lawson

How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food
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Book Summary Information

Author: Nigella Lawson
Edition: Paperback
Published: 2007-06-05
ISBN: 0470173548
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: Wiley

Book Reviews of How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food

Book Review: Inspirational Cooking
Summary: 4 Stars

Like many others I bought this book because I'm a fan of Nigella's tv shows. I loved her personality and they way you can tell she really enjoys the food she's making. "How to Eat" seemed like a good place to start, and from the get go I was inspired. I wanted to bake a pie, I wanted to roast a chicken, things I'd never done or really thought about doing. She's very encouraging and honest about what can happen in the kitchen. Sometimes the recipe is going to turn out wrong or less than stellar, but I got the sense that she encourages repetition as a way to get comfortable. Can I really learn "How to Eat" if I pack it all in just because my first chicken isn't perfectly moist or my second pie crust falls apart? This book helped me tame my fears and made me want to create a personal kitchen history.

Summary of How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food

"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


"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

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