Product Description

Hailed by many as their cookbook of 1998, if not the decade. How To Eat is far more than just an imaginative collection of over 350 uncomplicated, delecious recipes. Nigella Lawson combines a refreshingly down-to-earth practically with a passion for food and a writer's ability to find just the right words to evoke the taste of a succulent roast chicken or a home-made custard. Her excellent advice on how to organise your kitchen (and your life) for the minimum of fuss is interspersed with moments of sheer, unadulterated pleasure as she pauses to relish what she is preparing to eat. Now available as a high-quality, good-value trade paperback, readers will be able to buy two copies: one for the kitchen, one for the bed-side table. The reviews of the hardback were stunning: 'The one book you have to buy this year' Daily Mail. My book of the decade. I love this book: its prose, its intelligence and, above all, its workable, soul-warming receipes, Nigel Slater.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1793 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Nigella Lawson has long been among the most realistic as well as the most readable of writers on food. Her description of a three-star dinner really is a good second best to actually eating it yourself. But equally she knows the inestimable value of a bacon sandwich on sliced white. This wonderful book combines both of these talents as she sets out on the ambitious task to impart no less than "the Pleasures and Principles of Good Food". The book is neatly divided into categories--cooking in advance, weekend lunch, low fat and so on--each with its own passionate and intelligent introductory essay. The recipes are straightforwardly presented and the occasional school-mistress tone--"you must keep your stock in the freezer", "I loathe the acrid dustiness of standard-issue sherry"--is always justified by its implication of an entirely proper seriousness and her endless common sense. But most of all Lawson is a greedy eater who knows about food and can write like an angel. "I hate the new-age voodoo about eating", she declares. "The notion that foods are either harmful or healing, that a good diet makes you a good person". Hurrah! How to Eat is the perfect book for anyone who knows that food is more than fuel. --Nick Wroe

Review
'How to Eat may just be the best cookery book ever', The Daily Telegraph .'A love letter to all things culinary', Tatler .'A gloriously sensual wander through the possibilities of food. The recipes read more like seduction than instruction', Independent

Mrs Beeton for the new millennium, Lawson has written a bible for aspiring gastronomes. Dividing it into thematic sections from 'Basics', to 'Dinner' and 'Feeding Babies and Small Children', hits the mark. And it opens with vital basics and often dismissed basics such as stock, sauces and Victoria Sponge. It offers evocative menus from basic, no effort Saturday lunches to 'Serious - No Hostages' meals. But whatever the occasion Lawson always seems to come up with the perfect idea, taking into account such considerations as the likelihood of preparing Sunday lunch with a stinking hangover, or not wanting to leave the scene of seduction mid-dinner to whisk zabagione for pudding. So, the contents are both practical and inspirational, haute-gastronomie for real people. (Kirkus UK)

Daily Mail
‘The one book you have to buy this year.’

Customer Reviews

wonderful reading and cooking
I like the way Nigella writes- it's as if you're having a conversation with her. The introduction to each recipe is always good, a bit of historical information or personal anecdote that makes wonderful reading.

I've made a few dishes from "How to Eat" and I think her stews do work as well as making the best roast chicken, beef & gravy!

I would recommend the following:
Basic Roast Chicken- pp. 8-9
Chicken & Chick pea Tagine- pp. 111-2
Beef Stew w/ anchovies & thyme- pp. 112-3
Braised Pheasant w/ mushrooms & bacon- pp. 114-5 (I used chicken for this)
Chicken Stew w/ couscous- pp. 228-229
Roast beef & gravy- pp. 278-80

Highly recommended
if you can only have one food book in your life time, then it'll gotta be 'how to eat'. buy two, one by your bed side and one for cooking use. i don't call it cook book, as it's not only tell you how to cook, but the food philosophy.

Fun at first but never gets used
When I first received this book, I enjoyed reading through it and the organisation of recipes depending on the event you are cooking for is a nice change. However in practice I never use it. I often pick it up for inspiration but I almost never cook from it. I don't use a recipe book for everyday cooking and nothing in this book is ever quite what I am looking for if I am cooking for a family gathering or a dinner party. Nigella's lemon meringue icecream is now a staple in our house, but not much else. Also, I have to admit that her "Wow, be like me - I am so knowledgable and so fragrant and chummy and just a bit naughty" approach to life gets up my nose and usually ends up making me choose a recipe from a different book instead.