A Bit Hit and Miss (How to Eat - Nigella Lawson)

Member Name: huggy2009

Product:	How to Eat - Nigella Lawson
Date:	07/06/09 (29 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some Great recipes, well written

Disadvantages: A lot of excessive recipes and silly ingredients

This is one in a collection of Nigella Lawson cook books, rather than simply showing amazing pictures of incredibly rich foods and giving recipes that have so many ingredients you'd forget what you were making, this book gives sound advice on what recipes to make using certain essential ingredients and as ever, some ridiculous ones.


The book offers some practical recipes more than many of Nigellas other books but it still lacks the common touch, the chapters are as follows:

Charts and Conversions: A handy section giving advice on weights and measurements.

Basics Etc: How to make basic sauces, breads and Christmas Goose(!), this is a bit random as some of the basics are basic and some bear no resemblance whatsoever to basic foodstuffs or recipes, the sauces are the most useful recipes and the most practical.

Cooking in advance: Ideas on foods you can cook in advance, from Lamb Stew to Barbados Cream, there are some fantastic ideas here and the Baked Spiced Aromatic Plums is wonderful and really tastes absolutely amazing. The main part of this section is stews and there are some wonderful hearty recipes.

One and Two: Cooking for yourself or just for two it offers practical ideas on meals, which require less ingredients, there are some nice pasta dishes here, including Pasta with Anchovy Sauce and a lovely easy to make Linguine but I found things like the Quail irrelevant and things I had no wish to make.

Fast Food - Advice on quick easy meals from Cod and chips to Gooey chocolate puddings, the Mackerel in Cider is exceptional and so easy to make, this is my favourite section of the book and doesn't have as many silly recipes as some other sections.

Weekend Lunches - I've not really used this section as a lot of the recipes are for serving 6 people, the Golden Root Vegetable CousCous with Chorizo sounds lovely though as does the coconut creme caramel.

Dinner - Quince, Quail, Pheasant, this section is things I have no interest in, the recipes don't interest me except for the Pavlova and the one pan chicken, although I have to say i've made better Pavlova from scratch taking away a few of the excesses of this recipe.

Low Fat - This is a shock in a Nigella Lawson book, Low-Fat recipes, I found it a tad limited as it is mostly oriental recipes and while I like these I could make these easily myself from my Chinese cookbook, this seems to be the only thing Nigella knows how to cook without excesses and it wasn't particularly interesting.

Feeding Babies and Small Children - Not something i've used not having kids.

The book is an attempt to be more practical, but its not a patch on Jamie, Gary Rhodes or Nigel Slater, it has some great recipes, but too many overly elaborate ones, the fast food expects you to have Quail, Pheasant and other non-everyday ingredients. The book is somewhat hit and miss and is something i'd not go out of my way to follow.

Summary: A Bit too posh for me