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Love has a recipe!
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Interview Cooking gives a sort of control over others, says Nigella Lawson in a chat with ANUJ KUMAR
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Cook and control Nigella Lawson’s favourite is unplanned cooking
A quick and easy way of getting healthy and fabulous food on the table fast. This is how Discovery Travel and Living channel defines Nigella Express, the new show featuring celebrated cook, food writer and TV host Nigella Lawson. Is it really possible to rustle up all these adjectives — healthy, tasty and fabulous — in a kitchen on an everyday basis? Over to Nigella: “I think the difficulty with cooking, trying to pay attention when you cook to various fads, is that fashions change and people have different views. When I was young, people thought margarine was a health food. Now they realise because it’s a trans-fat food, it’s actually not good for you. I’m a great believer in real food, like I’m very happy about butter. I know how it’s made and I’m very happy about olive oil and various cooking mediums, like that in goose fat. On the whole, if you stick to real food as much as possible, you can’t go far wrong.”
She continues, “People always exaggerate the amount used because I think that maybe people don’t cook a lot. So if they see you put four spoons of cream in something, they don’t take into account that maybe six to eight people are going to eat that dish. So it’s not a huge amount each. Plus, you don’t cook like that every, single day. So I feel that there’s a certain amount of hysteria and I often feel that the people who are the most worried about whether something is healthy or not probably eat a pretty unhealthy diet because they don’t eat real food.”
A radical view
Nigella is actually quite opposed to a low-fat diet. “I think it’s bad for your spirits and skin. I eat quite a lot of avocado, quite a lot of olive oil and a certain amount of other fats and I feel it’s healthy. Radical view, but I believe in it.”
Talking about the show, Nigella says it demonstrates the ability to eat well in a time crunch. “It is a series for the hurried and modern urbanite. Just because you’re up against the clock, doesn’t mean you can’t eat well. Understanding the need for speed all too well, I share my secret to eating well in a time crunch. It is the sort of food viewers can cook fast round the clock, any day of the week, to fit whatever amount of time is available.”
Nigella hasn’t been to India, but Indian cuisine has inspired her in the past. “We have a long tradition of Indian food in London, which probably is not representative of Indian food, but I love it. I have done a sort of Indian-inspired banquet in one of the episodes of Nigella Feasts aired earlier on Discovery Travel & Living. I don’t know how authentic it was, but some of the recipes were given by friends who have Indian heritage. I love the spices and the way that an Indian meal is made out of so many different dishes. Mughlai chicken is quite mild, but I cook that an awful lot. I also love all those Indian breads.”
On the oft-repeated argument in this part of the world that one’s food habits have an impact on the personality, Nigella quips, “My mother often cooked very resentfully and she was a wonderful cook actually. I think the “food is love” argument undersells food because the interesting thing is that food is there and is important in all of our emotions in life. I don’t really understand how you can love someone and not want to cook for them. Whereas I have friends who don’t cook at all and they don’t get that, so to me, it’s very, very important.”
On the other hand, she adds, “If you take the cooking out of the equation then many people use food — they eat when they’re angry or when they’re upset. Although I do think food is a form of love, I also think that those of us who cook have a certain controlling thing.”
Home recipes
On the relevance of home recipes in these days of growing consumerism when eating out is becoming a usual rather than an occasional habit, Nigella says, “My favourite is the sort of unplanned cooking, when I just open the fridge and see what I have left over or what’s there and I can just cook in a very relaxed way. I tend to do probably quite old-fashioned English things, a lot like a roast chicken. Yes, for us, my family, I would say chicken is probably the family dish. I think there is something quite primitive in that because I do believe that there is something in human beings that you somehow have some reminder of the animal that is being sacrificed, which is a horrible thing to say. But I do think it’s probably true at some subliminal level.”
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