If you’ve been reading along you know that Nigella Lawson is one of my personal deities. She is a goddess among women, not just because she is drop dead gorgeous, not just because she cooks like a demon, not just because she is a strong woman who has taken more than a few body blows in life and kept her wits about her, and not just because she is as obviously in love with the English language as she is with food. It’s all of the above and the fact that every interview I’ve seen or read shows a self-deprecating, humble woman who acknowledges the luck and support that got her where she is and that she doesn’t like to be called a chef because she’s a home cook.
Given all that, I was anxious to watch the premiere of her new Food Network show. It didn’t disappoint. Her recipes included a cornbread topped chili with Black Forest-inspired trifle. She also made guacamole and a toppings tray to go with the chili. Per her signature style, the chili had a few additions that veer from the traditional. She added cardamom pods to the chili and cinnamon to the cornbread. She also added cocoa to the chili, but that is something I have seen done before and definitely harkens back to traditional Mexican cooking. She takes a detour into her pantry (oh, I am so envious) to show off her souvenirs from her travels, a fancy broth base from Italy and cloud berry jam from Sweden. I completely connected to that little aside, as all of my trips in the States and abroad have added cooking accoutrements or odd ingredients to my bursting cabinets. Of course, I also prowl Nashville’s international markets for the unique and bizarre.
The guacamole was fun to watch because it appears that Nigella and I have come to the same conclusions about what Guacamole entails. We’ve both skipped the tomatoes. She opted out on onions and uses scallions. I cut back the onion component and switched to red onion. We both add cilantro, though I tend to use way more than she does. I also make a paste of a clove of garlic and kosher salt for mine.
The trifle is a glorious cloud of a thing with a base of chocolate pound cake-cherry jam sandwiches, soaked with liqueur, dotted with cherries, smothered in chocolate custard (pudding for us Yanks) and then gilded with a mound of softly whipped cream. Per the usual, Nigella’s offhand comments and clumsily deft work, make the viewer, well me anyway, want to dive right in and taste it or at least run to the Harris Teeter to stock up on all the necessary ingredients. Keifel has requested that I make the trifle for him to take to work. He would have to take it to work to keep me from bathing in it.
Keifel watched the show with me and we both instantly noticed that this show looks different than the original series and Forever Summer. The other two were filmed and have an engaging warmth that digital video lacks. The new series was filmed in the kitchen of the Shepard’s Bush house that Lawson shared with her deceased husband, John Diamond. I can’t imagine what that was like, but the familiarity of the setting is wonderful for those of us who feel like we got to know Lawson in her trips into her office/library, pantry, bathrooms, kids’ rooms, etc. I can excuse the video because of that.
At the dinner party feast finale we get a glimpse of Nigella’s circle and of course get to watch her eat. I believe one of her guests is her sister Horatia that viewers met in the Legacy cooking episode of Nigella Bites. Keifel thinks Horatia gives Nigella a run for her money on the gorgeousness front. I have to agree. Horatia has a rounder face than her sister, but shares her coloring and the striking eyes. Again, a note of the familiar for the Nigella-obsessed.
She makes a few statements that make me love her all the more. Before dumping the meat into the pot for the chili, she says that she feels safer with organic meat. Yay! I do really feel that those of us who choose to eat meat should demand a safer food supply chain and that organic and free range meat make a much smaller mark on the environment. I don’t think Nigella has the suggestive power of Oprah (I wish) but it all helps. It is expensive. I think it’s worth it to pay more and eat less. ::Kicks soapbox back to the side::
In the signature moment established in the first series, Nigella’s midnight fridge raid, we see the door crack open spilling light into a dark room and a pajama-clad Nigella taking a bit of sour cream and a bite of chili then wrapping the chili pot in her arm, wooden spoon in mouth, disappear into the night. I do love that moment in every show. It is emblematic of the casualness of her cooking, the homey if decidedly posh, vibe she exudes. I’ve read reviews of this and previous shows that harp on her disconnect with her audience and her snobbery and I just don’t get it.
I do realize that economically, she is in a place that is silly for me to even aspire, but cooking is cooking. Ingredients and equipment aside, technique is technique. Anyone who cooks has their own well-worn path and deviations, the same ingredients they figure out how to work into everything, the tools that they would be lost without. Ultimately, her show is on television. She has her hair and makeup done, she surely has prep cooks, someone else deals with kitchen turned set. These are not realities for the home cook. That doesn’t mean that she isn’t offering anything of use to those of us not as high in the food chain financially. Also, I am picky about what I eat and cook with ingredient- and tool-wise. I detest the term food snob because I think it is closely tied to that much, much bigger and nastier concept of anti-intellectualism (I’m trying not to get myself started here), but I don’t object to what it means. And I am “snobby” only so long as I am in control of the situation. I would no more turn down food prepared and presented to me by a friend or family member than I would kick them. I might not make it like they do, and I might not use ingredients that they see as a staple (cream of mushroom soup, I am talking to you, laughingly), but they cooked for me and cooking is an act of charity, an act of love and one of the things that civilizes us.
So, I don’t think Nigella is a snob, but if she is, I don’t really care. And besides, she uses paper napkins out of her detestation of ironing. I try to avoid them out of not using disposable things, but I don’t iron the cloth napkins my friends and family use. So there.
