Nigella Lawson recipes Nigella's thoughts on food

Date Published:

11/10/2007

Nigella has a unique outlook on cooking, her role and the audience. The following are juicy quotes from a variety of her books to give you a better idea of her philosophy.

On her role as a cook

"I am not a chef. I am not even a trained or professional cook. My qualification is as an eater." (How To Eat)

On being a domestic goddess

"The trouble with much modern cooking is not that the food it produces is not good, but that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes that's the best we can manage, but to others we want to feel not like a postmodern, post feminist, overstretched modern woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake. So what I'm talking about is not being a domestic goddess, exactly, but feeling like one." (Domestic Goddess)

On cooking

"Cooking is not about just joining the dots, following one recipe slavishly and then moving on to the next. It's about developing an understanding of food, a sense of assurance in the kitchen, about the simple desire to make yourself something to eat. And 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 own instincts. Without habit, which itself is just trial and error, this can be harder than following the most elaborate of recipes. But it's what works, what's important." (How To Eat)

Following recipes

"I'm not interested in barking instructions: this isn?t meant to be a monologue. As I've said before, I want to be there in the kitchen with you; my words are merely my side of the conversation I imagine we might have." ( Nigella Bites)

Bringing your personality to cooking

"Cooking is not just about applying heat, procedure, method, but about transformation of a more intimate kind; none of us cooks without bringing our own character to bear on the food in front of us. Just as I've toyed with my recipes, fiddled with them to become my food, so I expect them to be remodelled in your own kitchen." (Forever Summer)

Nigella's Top Ten Recipe Books