Nigella's Laws-on food! (Nigella Bites)

Member Name: stickywicket

Product:	Nigella Bites
Date:	28/05/01 (495 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes it all seem so simple, no silly towers or fancy sauces

Disadvantages: Jack wants to stay up late!

'Mum tape it for me, please!' begs the voice. Who? Do I have a budding schoolboy chef in the family? A teenage daughter entranced by Nigella's grace in the kitchen? No, my four and a half year old son Jack, who can name most 'celebrity chefs' that appear on Ready Steady Cook and wants as much gel in his hair as Gary Rhodes.

It's a Wednesday night Nigella Bites starts at 8.30 on Channel 4, Jack will try and stay awake for it, tucked up in the bottom bunk, but after a busy day wrestling with the playdough, watching Blues Clues, and assisting Tarzan on the Playstation his eyes are heavy and he's not going to make it! He's dropped Anthony Worral Thompson on BBC2 in favour of Nigella, and who can blame him? In Jack's words 'Mum she's got a big kitchen and black hair!' Well watch out all you three year old girls out there, this boy knows what he wants!

So I tape it for him and watch it myself. The particular theme this week was comfort food and in the first two minutes of the program she mentions those fateful words 'Mashed potato' and proceeds to use a potato ricer that discards the need for peeling, she adds the extremely fattening ingredients and within a couple of minutes has a bowlful of rather attractive looking 'mash', which she begins to consume as though she was alone with her man.

A quick tour around her house reveals a larder the size of my bathroom, where she hides her stash of chocolate (and admits to midnight feasting) in preparation for the chocolate fudge cake she makes later - and just watching that I put a stone on!

Also creating a chicken soup with dumplings and a risotto that breaks all the rules is the full menu for this particular program, I know Jack will be happy in the morning.

So how has Nigella become a celeb chef? She is not pretentious or imtimidating, she doesn't have all those irritating little glass bowls of ingredients lying
around, she's natural, beautiful uninhibited and has the children to cater for and includes this in her presentation - I mean - deep fried mozzeralla sandwiches made with Mothers Pride bread? Cheese flavoured chewing gum she declares!

One of her ploys it seems is to make it all look so easy, and giving you alernatives to required ingredients e.g.admiting that she uses stock granules rather than boiling half a vegetable plot for two days.

I think her overall message is do what you like, its as versatile as you want to make it, recipe books are for ideas not rules.

I don't like the present infatuation with the jerky camera shots adopted by all the foodie shows at the moment - I believe the team on Jamie Oliver are to blame for that one.

So Jack is happy, and with Welsh Rarebit Muffins promised this week things can only get better !

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