I spent Christmas with Nigella
If only in my imagination
Christmas is my favourite time of year. I take the spirit of the season — comfort, togetherness, joy — seriously and with no irony or detachment whatsoever. I inherited this from my mother, who in turn, inherited it from her mother, who every year did a traditional 12 days of Christmas with the tree not going up until 24 December, the night before Jesus’s birth, and coming down on the Epiphany, marking the arrival of the Wise Men, on 6 January. My mother’s family were devout, traditional Catholics, and Christmas is one of the few ways in which the sacred seeped into my otherwise secular life.
I have loved to cook since I was a teenager, (I have loved eating since I was born) and I have loved Nigella Lawson for the better part of a decade, so it’s surprising that it took me until my 45th year to buy her Christmas cookbook.
It’s a winner. It is the perfect delivery mechanism for a luxurious but relaxed Christmas vibe that even Scrooge would go for.
It reminded me of an essay I wrote in homage to Nigella five years ago, for my now-defunct food website, which was called Sugarpiece. The essay, much like my love for the woman herself, has stood the test of time. So I post it again, in order that it may live on.
“I’m not a celebrity follower or much of a fan girl. Sure, I hate-read the Daily Mail and look at pictures of celeb mums and their babies. But I’ve never stood in a queue for one. Ever. Until I heard Nigella was in town.
In the pantheon of celebrity chefs, Nigella is the warm, supportive friend who may have done much better than you in life, but whose gracious, positive presence you crave in times of need. (Jaime Oliver is your annoyingly upbeat neighbour and Gordon Ramsey is your terrifying boss.)
Nigella is beautiful, no doubt, but she’s also interesting and articulate. In both her show and her books, clever alliterations trip off her tongue (or jump from the page, if you’re a stickler). Imagine how much fun one of her dinner parties would be!
So off I went last Friday to Easons in Belfast, bought her latest cookbook, Simply Nigella, and joined the long line of men and women waiting to get a book signed. I really didn’t know what to expect. As soon as I took my place in the queue, an Eason’s employee came by to give us all the run-down. He wrote our names and the salutation we hoped to get from Nigella on a post-it and stuck it inside our copies, with a disclaimer that it was not guaranteed she would actually write our name (her only obligation being to sign her own name), nor would she pose for any photos. It was a bit disheartening, to be given a list of things Nigella would not do. Especially since we are such good friends in my imagination!
So duly noted of Nigella’s t’s & c’s, I chatted to the ladies on either side of me in the queue, and they echoed my feelings about the British chef.
“She has quite a supportive approach to cooking,” said Sarah, a Belfast resident who mentioned Nigella’s steak tagliata for two as one of her favourite recipes. “Everything’s doable.”
“There’s always a Nigella recipe going on in our house,” said Kate. She named the key lime pie recipe as her family’s preferred sweet. “My sister would make it. It’s the favourite dessert in our house.”
Ciara had come from Lurgan to have her book signed by the domestic goddess. “She’s my favourite chef. I like her techniques, I like the way she’s not afraid of comfort, she’s not afraid of her waistline,” Ciara said. “I love watching her show, watching her cook with a smile on her face. That’s real enticing.”
Nigella is aspirational, yes. But not in a striving way. She creates a world you would like to inhabit, but when the show ends and you look about the small, dark, cold room you are probably sitting in – neither Nigella nor twinkling fairy lights anywhere to be seen – you can always console yourself by making one of her fab recipes.
Because for all her earthy beauty and clever words, food is Nigella’s real gift.
My queue-mate Ciara agreed. “Her recipes are excellent. It’s very hard to find a chef that makes it look easy, and taste good as well,” she said, adding that her recipes are meant to be enjoyed in good company. “It’s a sharing type meal that she always makes.”
I couldn’t agree more. It’s often rich, food for cold, rainy days when everyone in the house needs fattened up a bit.
A few years ago, I was living in Dublin and going through a dark period in my life. Money was scarce, and my marriage was in trouble. I watched a lot of Nigella to distract myself. Coming up to my 5-year wedding anniversary, I wanted to do something special, to feel alive and positive again after being battered by life’s cruel fortunes for a few years.
Cooking is how I soothe myself, and not surprisingly, Nigella delivered the perfect recipe: a seafood and potato bake that felt just luxurious enough (I had to go into town, to Dublin’s fancy food shop Fallon & Byrne, to procure the prawns, clams, squid and mussels) but also possible within our constrained circumstances.
I made the dish, put on a pretty dress and for the evening forgot my troubles. Sadly, the marriage did not last, but the happy – if bittersweet – memory endures. I think Nigella would appreciate that.
Although Nigella is often associated with comfort food, she has plenty of clean, light recipes in her books and shows as well.
I am an intuitive cook, so I mostly don’t use recipes. But of course, there are times when your imagination simply doesn’t deliver, and you get stuck in a rut. On one of those occassions, completely by happenstance, Nigella shoved me out of my boring lunch routine (grilled cheese, anyone?) and showed me how quick and easy it would be to make an Asian-style lunch instead.
This was probably the first time I watched her show and I came upon it by chance. Until then, my Asian-style dishes were limited to cubes of tofu swimming in soy sauce and scallions, maybe thrown on top of a salad. Wet and messy, but I just can’t get enough soy sauce so the dish’s failings didn’t bother me too much.
I hadn’t really thought about bok choi or noodles before (I am an Italian at heart.) Watching her quickly throw together what she calls Noodle Soup for Needy People, I was transfixed. Not only was she educating me in how effortless stepping outside your culinary comfort zone can sometimes be, she really got the essence of what I think home cooking is. She captured what’s most important about it.
And what is that? Comforting and nourishing those you love, by using what you have to hand. Don’t overthink it. Don’t plan it. Don’t measure or weigh it. Chop a bit, stir a bit, and serve.
There are some days that’s the only thing for it.
And when I finally got to the top of the queue last week in Eason’s, I admit to feeling slight trepidation that she would belie her warm TV persona and be brusque or impatient. I needn’t have worried. I had asked her to make the book out to Sugarpiece, which she did, paying close attention to her spelling. I told her it was my food website, and she replied with a hint of actual interest “oh, I must look it up.” That was more than enough for me. I left with the same warm, fuzzy feeling you get from her television show, my fantasies about being her friend wholly intact. ” — Originally posted Dec. 2015