Cons: Not for novice cooks or those who would rather not cook at all
The Bottom Line: Yes, these recipes produce good food quickly. But you need some good culinary instincts to prepare them confidently, and a well stocked pantry to prepare them easily.
lyagushka's Full Review: Nigella Lawson - Nigella Express: Good Food, Fast
I love cookbooks and anything to do with real food. I came of age when chefs and cookbook writers were not superstars. Julia Child might have been honored, but she was no idol. But for the past twenty years or so, chefs and food writers have become more and more hip. Consequently, cooking shows and cookbook covers have featured cooks and authors who are more attractive, younger, better dressed, and thinner than those I read while cutting my culinary teeth. This annoys me for some reason. I resent the apparent assumption - particularly for female chefs - that you have to be beautiful to have anything to offer the world of cooking. I'd heard of Nigella Lawson, but I pigeonholed her as just another pretty face of the Food Network. I avoided her books for a while because I figured she got her contract based on her looks.
But recently one of her books, Nigella Express, popped up on the new additions shelf at my library, which I screen regularly. I wasn't expecting much, but I had nothing to lose by checking it out of the library. I have to say that even if we assume that she has a battalion of assistant recipe developers helping her piece things together, someone with serious food moxie - someone who can write - had a hand in this book. I like her attitude - she's saucy, if you'll pardon the pun, and just a little catty, which appeals to my own sensibilities.
Nigella Express is another drop in the sea of "quick and easy" recipe collections. I'm generally not interested in these sorts of books because I don't mind spending an hour or more preparing a meal, and because "quick and easy" usually produces mediocre results at best, even when a seasoned cookbook writer pens the recipes. Still, I had to admit that the pictures in Lawson's cookbook looked tempting, and the recipes weren't pitched to the lowest common denominator. These recipes really can be prepared very quickly, and all those that I tried surprised me with how tasty they were. This is a discovery for me among the fast-cooked-at-home genre.
Most of the recipes in Nigella Express call for a limited number of ingredients. Five or six is probably average, while a few have as many as eight or as few as three. Lawson will use shortcuts with prepared ingredients sometimes (such as store bought crepes) and at others urge readers to make something from scratch (such as pesto). One thing that is a little deceptive about this book is that although the recipes are "simple" in terms of the time and effort needed to prepare them, they often call for ingredients that only an accomplished cook would happen to have around the house. If you don't already like to cook and do so on a regular basis, few of these recipes are going to be either quick or easy for you. You'll have to go grocery shopping for stuff like harissa, demerara sugar, puy lentils, panko crumbs, Roquefort cheese, and buttermilk. So in a sense, these are quick recipes specifically designed for gourmet home cooks, not for drive-thru habitués.
Further contributing to this impression, Lawson does not hold the reader's hand overmuch when it comes to instruction in the recipe. While this makes a recipe look less intimidating because it takes up so little room on the page, it also requires the cook either to know from experience what to do, or take a shot in the dark. As an example, the recipe for the Mirin-Glazed Salmon that I prepared instructs the reader to heat a skillet and lay the salmon filets in the dry pan, then later flip them over to continue cooking. Lawson doesn't say how high the heat should be under the pan. Nor does she indicate whether the fish should first go into the pan skin side down or the reverse. Possibly the way the fish goes into the pan doesn't much matter, but the heat of the pan certainly would. I thought the dish turned out great, but I doubt it would have if I had no experience at all in the kitchen.
Some of the recipes are simple enough that just about anyone could prepare them, provided the ingredients are on hand. The Nutella crepes couldn't be easier (nor more delicious); though again the recipe calls for an ingredient (Frangelico) that a novice cook is unlikely to have around the house. I prepared her Pea and Pesto soup on a night when we had no fresh green vegetables in the house and little energy for cooking. If circumstances had been otherwise, I probably would never have tried it, because on the page the recipe seemed lackluster. I was pleasantly surprised by the results, which we enjoyed quite a bit. Her portion size seems a little off on this recipe though. She claims it'll feed two. We got four servings out of it.
I have really enjoyed preparing some of Lawson's recipes, and I've found them useful for using up an amazing amount of stuff that I have in my pantry. In fact, that's what this book seems designed for. I haven't bought anything at all specifically to prepare these foods. I've used Lawson's recipes to make something delicious out of stuff I just happen to have around. Also, her thoughts introducing her chapter on quick breakfasts resonated deeply with me:
"I don't wish to sound unsympathetic. Obviously, the fact that I am writing a book expressly concerned, as it were, with good food that can be pulled together quickly, establishes, I hope, my bona fides in this regard, but I have to own up to some degree of impatience. The thing is, whenever people, perhaps showing a slightly patronizing amusement at how often I cook (and maybe it's that which irks), claim that they themselves never have the time to cook, it makes me feel uncharacteristically aggressive. What I want to point out is that they are hardly using the time they save by not cooking writing War and Peace."
-She then goes on to confess that if she followed her own inclinations, she'd rarely eat breakfast but for two completely obligatory cups of tea. It's hard for me not to like someone who expresses such ideas in such language, with the casual British flair for coherent thought and grammatical writing. She even said "I hope," instead of the thoroughly abused "hopefully."
I've already recommended this book to a few family members. I would extend that recommendation to anyone who really likes to cook good food at home. If you're a complete novice, I doubt that you'll have the ingredients for many of Lawson's recipes at home. Likewise, you'll probably be frustrated with the sketchiness of some recipe directions. If, like me, you already have a huge and well-stocked pantry I think you'll find many pleasing recipes in Nigella Express. I probably won't buy this book, just because I'm cheap. But I will take it out of the library repeatedly, and some recipes have already been copied into my personal collection.
Featuring fabulous fast foods, ingenious shortcuts, terrific time-saving ideas, and easy, delicious meals, "Nigella Express" is the Food Network stars...More at CHEFS Catalog
This is the first time that we ve ever launched a cookbook alongside a b rand new show. Nigella s ratings are through the roof, and she was recently f...More at Buy.com
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