Product Description

We use food to mark occasions that are important to us in life. Feast is not just about the way we cook and eat at the great religious festivals or big- deal special occasions, but about how food is the vital way we celebrate anything that matters...it's how we mark the connections between us, how we celebrate life.' Essentially about families and food, about public holidays and private passions, about how to celebrate the small everyday pleasures as well as the big occasions, it includes everything from Christmas, Thanksgiving , Hanukkah and Eid, to Passover and Easter; from Valentine's Day to that first breakfast in bed and Sunday lunch fit for the In-Laws; from Meatless Feasts to Midnight Feasts, from Partytime to the ultimate Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame; from weddings to funerals, from Georgian and Venetian feasts to children's favourites. Heartwarming, passionate, informed, refreshingly uncomplicated and full of ideas, Feast is destined to become a classic like How to Eat. Written with the same enjoyment, sensuality and practical awareness, and packed with over 300 recipes from all over the world and from near to home, Feast proclaims Nigella's love of life and great food to celebrate it with.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6068 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

Time Out
"A great sense of place and occasion in a recipe book... Nigella is a very talented and evocative food writer."

Tom Norrington-Davies, Guardian
Feast, like so much of Lawson's work, is a voluptuous and delicious piece of food writing

From the Publisher
A feast for the eyes and the senses and now available in a handsome paperback edition, Feast is a must for every kitchen. In the style and tradition of Nigella's classic How to Eat, it applies those same 'Pleasures and Principles of Good Food' to celebrations from feast days to familiar rites of passage.

Customer Reviews

A great success!
I can't cook well, so when I try to use a book I appreciate a food writer who is clear and doesn't assume you have trained as a chef already. Nigella makes the grade spectacularly! Her commentary is also brill because she clearly adores sharing what she does.

It is designed with recipes covering loads of special occasions but I've tried a fair few without passing a single one on the calander, and they have all been delicious!

What is different to almost all of the 'tv chef' books I have seen is that the recipes contain simple easy to find ingrediants that you won't have to spend hours trudging round specialist shops to get. They all claim to do this, but really this is the best one I have seen for it. This is so valuable in a cookbook. Probably like most people who have a busy life, I only occasionally want to push the boat out and try something fancy, most of the time I just want something different. This has different, plus quick, plus easy and accessible... real recipes you can use in real life.

The home made custard creams recipe is brilliant - my friends thought I was bonkers making something readily available - and all went off wanting the recipe themselves!

Easy enough to do, Fancy enough to impress your friends!
Nigella's 'Feast' is an absolute essential to any kitchen regardless of whether you're a novice or a pro. What makes this book so great is that Nigella's recipes are written in a way that is clear and straight forward enough that it would be difficult to go wrong with them, yet at the same time she emphasises that a reader should feel free to adapt ingredients and measurements at your own will, meaning the more adventurous cook can be a bit creative! Nigella's obvious love for the food she is writing about and cooking makes it all the more appealing.
While the focus of 'Feast' is on festive food, it is also filled with some brilliant everyday recipes. I have made the 'chicken noodle soup' about ten times now and it is amazing and takes less than ten minutes!
So whether you want something a bit different on a week night or want to create something delicious and spectacular for a special occasion (or just a saturday!) then there will be something in this book for you.

worth your money.......probably
This is a fascinating subject covered by a highly talented author and as such I can't help but feel that this book should be better than it is.

As Brand Nigella has gathered pace her books have increased in glossy photography including a few too many of the author. Despite Nigella's stunning good looks, I can't help but feel most cooks would trade the gloss for a bit more of her magical prose.

If you are new to this kind of cooking I think this is a worthwhile book which is simple to follow. If you have been cooking and reading about food for a good few years you will probably find much of the source material already on your book shelves. In addition, there are a lot of cake recipes and if you nod off while reading it you could wake up think you are reading Domestic Goddess. I don't deny that cakes are pretty central to feasts but as you turn the pages it can feel like a bit of extra padding between the covers.

That being said, it is a diverting read whilst sprawled on the sofa with a drink and has enough inspiring stuff to send you off for a potter around the kitchen.

Nigella's seminal work is, in my view 'How to Eat' and if you don't own it, buy it (no pictures at all though- one extreme to the other). Feast is less ground breaking but is still very good indeed.