Eating

by Nigella Lawson

In this inspiring, witty and eminently sensible book, Nigella Lawson sets out a manifesto for how to cook (and eat) good food every day with a minimum of fuss. From basic roast chicken and pea risotto to white truffles and Turkish Delight figs, Nigella brings the joy back into the kitchen.

Selected from the books How to Eat and Kitchen by Nigella Lawson

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

For the full list of books visit vintageminis.co.uk

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Drinking by John Cheever
Home by Salman Rushdie
Summer by Laurie Lee
Liberty by Virginia Woolf

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, Cookbooks, Food and Drink, Collections, Cooking

144 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 8, 2017

About the author

Nigella Lawson is the daughter of former Conservative cabinet minister Nigel Lawson (now Lord Lawson) and the late Vanessa Salmon, socialite and heir to the Lyons Corner House empire, who died of liver cancer in 1985. Lawson attended Godolphin and Latymer School and Westminster School before graduating from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, with a degree in Medieval and Modern Languages.
Lawson wrote a restaurant column for the Spectator and a comment column for The Observer and became deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times in 1986. She became, among other things, a newspaper-reviewer on BBC1 Sunday-morning TV programme 'Breakfast with Frost'. She has also co-hosted, with David Aaronovitch, Channel 4 books discussion programme 'Booked' in the late 1990s, and was an occasional compere of BBC2's press review 'What the Papers Say', as well as appearing on BBC radio.
Following slots as a culinary sidekick on Nigel Slater's 'Real Food Show' on Channel 4, she has fronted three eponymous TV cookery series broadcast in the UK on the channel. She has had two series of 'Nigella Bites' in 1999-2001, plus a 2001 Christmas special, and 'Forever Summer with Nigella' in 2002, both of which yielded accompanying recipe books. Her style of presentation is often gently mocked by comedians and commentators, particularly in a regularly-occurring impersonation of her in the BBC television comedy series 'Dead Ringers', who perceive that she plays overtly upon her attractiveness and sexuality as a device to engage viewers of her cookery programmes, despite Lawson's repeated denials that she does so.
She was voted author of the year at the 2001 British Book Awards. More than 2 million copies of her books have been sold worldwide.

Reviews

[Smriti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did I just read a recipe book? Yes.
Did I regret it? No.
Why? Because it was awesome!!
What am I going to do now? Prepping to throw a Saturday lunch.

I'M INSPIRED.

[Sian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have preferred less writing about lamb and more writing about chocolate

[Toast · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit of a cheat really as its just 'selected from How to Eat and Kitchen'. But without the bulk. Still I do like the way NL writes about food even if I can't make any of her recipes work. She does remove the guilt factor. A great gift idea book and there's a range of them - Vintage Minis - you can be quite a well read cultural icon without having to be in charge of a shopping trolley to carry all them cultural books in.
a guilt free Toast

[CKB · Rating 3 out of 5]

was a delight to read apart from the one woody allen quote which is actually quite fitting for nigella

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally I do not like non-fiction for the simple reason that I like a story to transport me but there are certain topics that interest me. One is music, the other food. Since I’ve heard a lot about Nigella Lawson and the Vintage Minis range are affordable pocket sized books that give the reader a taster of someone’s work, I decided to buy the volume on eating, which consists of excerpts from two of Lawson’s books.

As the title states, this book is about the joy of eating, the pleasure in serving a simple meal and the difference between eating by oneself and serving a party. There are recipes and tricks on how to prepare meat or a Sunday lunch. Really though the main message is that eating is pleasurable no matter the circumstance. Lawson writes in an accessible, slightly jokey style and namedrops literary authors. I do like the bits when she enthuses about British food staples such as Yorkshire pudding or trifle as she was deprived from these things when she was a child, which goes to show that one cannot take one’s own cuisine for granted or see it as ordinary as there’s always someone who may reason things differently.

It’s a solid slim volume that is a good sampling of Lawson’s style and gives a good overview of her food philosophy. Will I check out her cookbooks? maybe? Will I check out other Vintage Minis? most probably.

[Sundram · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and now I can say even non fictions can be fun. I loved the introduction and in between real life nostalgic moments related to the recipes

[Batool · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The kitchen is not a place I want to escape from but to escape to.”
This is how Nigella finished her book, and i could not agree more.
Did i just read a recipe book? Yes. Did i like it? Hell yeah.
She is taking us on a journey of watching her cook the stables and dinner parties and Sunday’s lunch, she is just making everything simple and talking us through the whole process.
It’s mainly “British” cuisine, so it might not suit every taste but i’m sure i’ll be trying bunch of these recipes.

[Rima · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, Nigella Lawson's book has successfully made me hungry. Printed again as a @vintagebooks Mini, Eating is not about notching up recipes but suggests cooking in a way that avoids the heat and rigidity of restaurant kitchens. From basic roast chicken to white truffles, Nigella's recipes come from years of perfecting the art form of eating. Something we all excel at, no?

[Suad Shamma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book. I am a homechef by nature, and have recently launched my website and food blog, but I never thought I would actually enjoy a book about recipes and food and eating without any pictures!

Nigella Lawson surprised me to no end. I have watched her on TV, I follow her on social media, and I have previously tried her recipes (amazing cheesecake!), but I never realized she was a journalist in her previous life. Furthermore, I never knew what a fun voice she has! She emanates energy and sparkle and good humor and I loved reading her stories and recommendations for the kitchen and cooking and eating.

Some tips were actually amazing and things I never thought of before - for instance, if you're going to invite friends over and prepare a cheese platter, don't give them too many options. You don't want them to feel like they can't dig into a specific kind or have seconds due to the small quantities (but big selection). It's better to get big quantities or portions of 2 or 3 different kinds of cheeses and allow your guests the comfort of eating as much as they want, than to get a selection of 6-7 cheeses in smaller portions. Fantastic!

I am also trying her couscous salad tomorrow...so I'm very excited to see how it turns out.
There were so many things that she wrote that really resonated with me as a home chef, and made me feel so much better about the work I'm putting out there. So I'm actually very grateful for this Vintage Mini edition on food, because I don't know that I would have gone out to buy her How to Eat book that these chapters were taken from.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Filing this little book under personal development and inspiration because it’s filled with so much sensible and calming advice about the joys of eating.

[Kitty Pho Mai · Rating 3 out of 5]

chủ yếu về công thức nấu ăn nhưng cách viết rất ấm áp nên người đọc cảm nhận được tình yêu với bếp và với việc nấu ăn ấy. vì mình cũng rất yêu bếp nên dù mấy món này cũng chả nấu đâu nhưng đọc vẫn thấy hay hay vì thấy rất ấm áp, đặc biệt trong mùa giáng sinh 🥰

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five stars for Nigella's philosophy of eating and cooking, three stars for the recipes themselves.

It's impossible not to love a book about food that says things like:

Be honest, cook what you want to eat, not what you want to be seen eating.

One of the greatest hindrances to enjoying cooking is that tense-necked desire to impress others.

In cooking, as in writing, you must please yourself to please others. Strangely, it can take enormous confidence to trust your own palate, follow your instincts.

What I feel passionately is that home food is home food, even when you invite other people to eat it with you. It shouldn't be laboriously executed, daintily arranged, individually portioned. It's relaxed, expansive, authentic: it should reflect your personality, not your ambitions.

There is more to cooking than being able to put on a good show. Of course there are advantages in an increased awareness of and enthusiasm for food, but the danger is that it excites an appetite for new recipes, new ingredients: follow a recipe once and then - on to the next. Cooking isn't like that. The point about real-life cooking is that your proficiency grows exponentially. You cook something once, then again, and again. Each time you add something different (leftovers from the fridge, whatever might be in the kitchen or in season) and what you end up with differs also.

I will absolutely be trying her recommended way to roast a chicken and toss salad leaves and cook steak. But for all the professed dislike of fancy, fussy, impractical food, I wasn't expecting the book to consist mostly of recipes for things like like roast duck, homemade mayonnaise, bread, shortcrust, quince mostarda, English trifle, linguine with clams, and pea risotto. Maybe that's what counts as home food for a British restaurant critic, but not for me! I desire more vegetables. Still though, sounds delicious.

[Dane Cobain · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would definitely be your cup of tea if you’re an omnivore or a carnivore, but seeing as I’m a herbivore (I’m vegan, not a dinosaur), there wasn’t much for me here. It was very well written and you could tell that Lawson is passionate about food (as if there was any doubt), but I couldn’t use any of the recipes. There were maybe two that I could veganise, but even then.

What’s cool though is that the book is called Eating rather than Cooking for a reason. While it does include recipes, it’s more like an overall approach to eating and I could agree with that, even if I don’t agree with her dietary choices. Yep.

[Douglas Shore · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not really a book, more of a collection of statements taken from 'How To Eat' and 'Kitchen', two already published books (that I've already read) and re-words to create a small booklet on the joys of cooking.

I love Nigella's style of writing. It feels real! Like a conversation between friends - this review in no way condemnation to the content, but a book on food it is not!

Take my advice, by the original books; you will get more from them and understand the stories in full, rather than this edited version that doesn't really add to the conversation of Nigella's personal ethos.

[Ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw a collection of Vintage Minis when I visited a bookstore in London. I have heard a lot about Nigella Lawson so picked this book up as it sounded interesting. It was an okay read with some British sounding recipes in it. I don’t own any British cookbook so this was a nice addition to my cookbooks shelf. Nigella talks about what it means to be a home cook and how to cook/eat food in her essays in this short book.

[brettlikesbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

❤️
short and sweet, a treatise on the simple pleasures of cooking & eating + plus recipes🤤
🍽
“What I feel passionately is that home food is home food, even when you invite other people to eat it with you. It shouldn’t be laboriously executed, daintily arranged, individually portioned. It’s relaxed, expansive, authentic; it should reflect your personality not your aspirations.”
🍽
instagram book reviews @brettlikesbooks

[Lynn Kan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the way Nigella talks about food on her food shows and I picked this up because I was missing that in my life. Sensual, unabashedly revellous in taking pleasure in the slowness and domesticity of cooking. I made the mistake of reading the volume before a late dinner with friends and ended up ravenously hungry.

[S C · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short but mouthwatering read. This contains excerpts from Nigella Lawsons earlier books, ‘How to Eat’ (1998), and ‘Kitchen’ (2010). Having never read those cookbooks, I was pleasantly surprised by how transportive the language is when describing the preparation and enjoyment of food, even without the images that normally accompany books about food.

[Elsabe Retief · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good het conformation of the fact that we escape to the kitchen. Not from it. That we cook and eat together for pleasure - not to impress.
Love her wholesome, authentic and abundant attitude to food. With very practical advice. And I love her liberal approach to portioning and how much to cook. Making certain to have left overs.

[Ria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well i could not say that it was not a well written book. But the whole recipe explanation in between did not work for me. Useful and inspiring information about the culture of food and eating and that is why my rating is 3 stars.

[jesse slater · Rating 5 out of 5]

such a pleasure to read. her writing style is beautiful- so playful whilst maintaining clarity. made me long for recipes to be written in prose more often.
same warm comfort as liz eldridge ‘meeting the ex’ video.

[Laura Ghitoi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit dissapointed to see this book has not been adapted for international audiences, despite it being sold also outside the UK (especially about seasons, measuring units, supermarkets, local customs left unexplained etc.). Otherwise, it was pleasant and very Nigella, as expected.

[Jimmy Pressly · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely little book. I believe you should read this if you like cooking or not. As Nigella states it is not about cooking but rather knowing how to eat. It is filled with nuggets of advice that goes beyond cooking. It is a quick read and you will wish there was more.

[Lilian Li · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would recommend if you want detailed and sometimes interesting recipes. Would not recommend if you want to learn about food culture and history (which was my intention). Overall relaxing, but again, read it only if you want some good and creative recipes.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great little read. I freely confess that I love Nigella's OTT descriptions, and this was full of them. Some excellent recipes too, which I can't wait to try!

[Ashleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a delightful read

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable read and I really appreciated the way she talked about food and cooking.

[Boong · Rating 3 out of 5]

A simple cookbook with a sense of watching youtube channel while you’re reading.

It is enjoyable...it does make me wanna cook some of her basics.

[Harriet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nigella’s writing is delicious and, being a lover of cookery myself, perfectly conveys the feelings I have towards setting foot in my kitchen and treating myself to something tasty.