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

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

Book Review: A Rare Book on Strategies and Great Common Sense
Summary: 5 Stars

Ms. Lawson goes much deeper into uncharted territory. In comparing culinary wisdom to medical expertise, I would describe people such as Mario Batali and Nobu Matsuhisa as great specialists and Martha Stewart and Ina Garten as talented general practicioners who can give excellent diagnoses for the best pie crust or the perfect roasted turkey, but they simply don't touch the question of why do I want to make a pie crust, when, and how often. In this simile, Nigella is the holistic practicioner who treats the whole body.

One of her first principles is the position that one should be much more concerned with repeating the basics and thereby doing them very well, to the point where your confidence with the techniques makes them second nature. The closest I have ever come to seeing this advice elsewhere is when Daniel Boulud says that the difference between a professional chef and the home chef (or the culinary journalist for that matter) is that the professional has prepared dishes thousands of times over and in that way has acquired a knowledge of their techniques and materials which a nonprofessional cannot match. I can add this to the number of lessons one can learn from professional chefs.

I am in almost total agreement with practically every general strategy Ms. Lawson discusses. I sympathize totally with her devaluing the very tiring mantra of always cooking what is best and what is in season. This is fine if you live in Apulia or Napa Valley, but it is a bit rough on the old green veggie regimen if you live in London or Philadelphia. The failure to fully develop this theme in Ms. Lawson's later volume `Forever Summer' and other problems with that volume lead me directly to this book, as I was surprised at the other book's deficiencies, given Ms. Lawson's reputation and attention in the popular media.

Ms. Lawson also writes as part of the community of culinary writers and not as if she is coming up with all sorts of good stuff out of her own ingenuity. Other writers state that they are building on other work, but are shy about citing specific references. Nigella is proud of her mentors, as well she should be, since they include people like Elizabeth David, Claudia Roden, and Marcella Hazan. Oddly, this is not to say Ms. Lawson's works are directed to the same end as the books of these notables. In a sense, she is taking the basic research of the regional specialists and translating it into advice for the rest of us.

The book is divided into eight (8) rather unconventional chapter subjects, each one discoursing on a particular food strategy or principle. The chapters are:

BASICS, ETC. develops the principle cited above that it is a good thing to prepare the same recipes often. Nigella here offers her candidates for some of the most important recipes for everyday use.
COOKING IN ADVANCE is her solution to the anxieties of cooking for entertaining. While others have mined this principle broadly, Lawson goes deeper into the issues of cooking without stress so you can make and recover from mistakes to gain your own style.
ONE AND TWO addresses the issues of cooking for others and revisits the `tyranny of the recipe' and the `absence of slowly acquired experience on the other'.
WEEKEND LUNCH offers this venue as a less stressful occasion for entertaining than the dinner party.
DINNER addresses the dreaded full court dinner party and weans us away from a type of restaurant dish which requires deft saute action in the kitchen while your guests are at the dining table.
LOW FAT is Ms. Lawson's take on weight maintenance and reduction. I am pleased to see that she focuses on the simplest fact that weight change equals food in minus calories consumed by activity.
FEEDING BABIES AND SMALL CHILDREN is a refreshing topic. It is a great pleasure to see this subject addressed by a main stream author and not just in a speciality title. I have always puzzled over the tyrrany of kids culinary proclivities and why adults so willingly caved into them. Ms. Lawson offers some advice on the matter.

This is a very good book and I now know how Ms. Lawson has earned her good name in the culinary writing business. This doesn't mean I will stop referring to my Eric Rippert or even my Jamie Oliver, as these people are the really creative culinary figures from which Ms. Lawson and the rest of us will borrow, but I will look on their offerings in a new light.

I highly recommend this book and that you read it from cover to cover, even the rug rat material. You never can tell.

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

"Lawson?s book ranks with the great cookbooks of the last fifty or so years?books that define the way we eat and prepare and think about food at a certain point in time and go on to become indispensable guides for a whole generation of home cooks. Her style is confident and relaxed and her advice is studded with good sense and wit." ?Jonathan Burnham, Editor-in-Chief and President, Talk Miramax Books

"This book shouldn?t be called How to Eat, but How to Live!" ?Candice Bergen

• "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

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