A Good Book For A Midnight Snack

I just devour books, so when I got to the end of the pile on my bedside table, it seemed natural to pick up a cookbook.

Reading a cookbook in bed feels decadently obscene. I feel the need to assure you that I have never done it before, although this does feel like the appropriate place to peruse this one.

This is not your typical book of recipes, however. The first section is things you ought to know how to cook, such as a roast chicken, and the last half is a series of Sunday lunches and fancy dinners.

Like Nigella Lawson herself, her writing style is warm, high-class and overflowing with excess. Each menu and recipe is explained the way your older sister would — the one who has her life together. It’s practical advice lovingly given by someone who knows better than you do.

Because she presents whole menus, she is able to describe how the flavours compliment each other, and how to schedule the whole meal. She offers tips and substitutions and explains why things work they way they do.

She said in the introduction that she called the book How to Eat because she wanted to teach people about food, not just give them a collection of recipes:

• As much as possible, I have wanted to make you feel that I’m there with you, in the kitchen, as you cook. The book that follows is the conversation we might be having.

This, she accomplishes. Her instructions are clear, with ample use of metaphor so that that culinary challenged can grasp what she is saying. I have not yet cooked any of the recipes, but she makes me feel as if I too could cook an autumnal venison filet with poached quinces for dessert.

The recipes she presents are not new — they are classic dishes that most people proficient in the kitchen could whip up without referencing anything. However, they are all decidedly English, and as such, carnivorous.

But as someone with no culinary education, someone who has taken stabs at random dishes like shots in the dark, this book is extraordinary helpful. Nigella teaches us that it is possible to cook, and to cook well. The only requirement is that we know how to eat.

Contact the author here: mick@morningquickie.com