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Kiss the cook
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Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson says relaxed cooking is her recipe for good food
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STIRRING IT UP Nigella Lawson
Celebrity chef and food writer Nigella Lawson says working with food was “completely by accident. Although I didn’t like eating as a child, I got interested in cooking as I grew older.” Nigella’s culinary odyssey began with a
“restaurant column for the Spectator. When I was writing the column, I used to find that cooking was a good way of letting my thoughts take shape. I then did a television show and it took off, but it was never a planned career move.”
Culture and food
Nigella, whose shows “Nigella Bites” and “Forever Summer with Nigella” have been popular, finds the bond between culture and food fascinating. “What is interesting about human culture was that we all used food to signify an important occasion.”
The super chef’s “Nigella Express”, being aired on Discovery Travel and Living, shares the secret of eating healthy. She says: “I spent quite a bit of time in Italy when I was growing up. I still go there every year. In a way, that suits modern life because Italian cooking is pretty fast. It relies on things that can be assembled quickly. I enjoy playing with different ingredients.”
The mother of two is an advocate of “unplanned cooking. I just open the fridge and see what is left over or what’s there and cook in a relaxed way.”
Ask her if there is a food she does not like and the Oxford graduate (with a degree in Medieval and Modern Languages!) says: “I am such a greedy person that there is nothing I really dislike. The only thing I dislike is soy milk.”
Nigella differentiates between a cook and a chef when she says: “The temperaments are different. On the whole, great chefs tend to thrive on conflict. Whereas I think if you’re a home cook, you’re someone who wants harmony.”
Talking about the difference between her and the hosts of other cookery shows on the telly, Nigella says: “I suppose I’m not a chef and most people are chefs on television. So I don’t have any brilliant techniques and don’t chop a carrot at 100 miles an hour. I talk a lot in the sense I think food is very much part of life.” Nigella, who has been featured on Sexiest Women lists, is amused by the label.
“I’m getting on in years, so it’s very amusing to get that label. But I think the difficulty about television is it glamorises people to a certain extent. I think I would have found it very difficult if I had been 20 doing this because I would have found the attention awkward, and it would have made me feel self-conscious. But now, I just take it as a joke. For most of my career, I was a journalist. What I loved about this aspect was - I did a lot of radio - you lived off what came out of your brain, rather than what you looked like.”
Nigella Express airs every Monday at 8.30 p.m. and repeats the following day at 3.30 p.m. on Discovery Travel and Living.
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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