She has just flown in and has barely had time to eat lunch. So after the interview, Nigella Lawson (57) quickly fishes a sandwich out of a plastic bag from her bag. The successful British television chef has a killer schedule promoting her new cookbook, and there is no more than this between interviews. Just under half an hour is allowed and personal questions are forbidden - a stern grey man in the corner oversees that.
After a tumultuous few years due to, among other things, a rumoured divorce from Charles Saatchi, Lawson is back with a new cookbook about the happiness of cooking at home: At my table. Next year, she will celebrate her 20th anniversary as a culinary writer and television producer. In all these years, Lawson has built an empire: her fortune is estimated at just under 120 million. 'But I am not a chef or a professional,' she hastens to say, and she writes as much in the introduction to her new, twelfth cookbook At my table.
You have been cooking for work for 20 years, but you are not a professional?
'No, and I don't say that out of false modesty. For a chef or a professional cook, cooking is his profession. I don't cook for my profession, I write about cooking for my profession. I am a home cook, and that is not inferior, but very different from cooking for your job. Preparing food for groups of people does not interest me, nor does having to prepare the same dishes every night. I would struggle with the repetition involved.'
'As a home cook, no one expects the same quality from you all the time, you can vary spices and just open the fridge to see what ingredients you are going to use. That's a very different way of cooking from that of a professional chef. Sure, I love feeding others, but with that, it's mostly about the friendship and connection with the people at the table, more than the food itself.'
At my table was touted as a personal book, but there are few memories or intimate stories in it. So what makes it personal after all?
'All my cookbooks are personal because they stem from where I am in life at that moment. My first book How to eat from 1998, for example, contained a chapter on cooking for toddlers and small children, because I had young children at the time. My books have grown with me and my life, so to speak. A recipe is a concise autobiographical form: when I think of a dish, I remember who I was sitting at the table with when I ate it, where I lived, what the kitchen looked like and what kind of table it was. That's all woven into it, even when I add new things to it, like a new ingredient.'
‘At my table has the similarity to my very first book that it has no overarching theme or story. But as I worked on it, I noticed that each recipe did contain a story that I was initially unaware of. For example, I wrote about a chicken fricassee, a recipe that harkened back to the way my paternal grandmother used to prepare it, a rather old-fashioned way. She reheated leftover chicken in a thick sauce of milk and flour, with mushrooms in it, and that with rice all around.'
'I love fricassee, but I don't cook that way and don't want a thick, white milk sauce. I found dried porcini mushrooms in my pantry and there is always a bottle of Marsala on the kitchen counter. Furthermore, I used fresh chicken, and instead of throwing it into the sauce, I first put it through a seasoned flour and then prepared the chicken and then the sauce, rather than the other way around. A different approach, which suits this day and age. You taste the spices better, the flavours are more intense, the dish is lighter but more pronounced.'
Do you have a all-time favourite?
'No, then I wouldn't be able to make cookbooks - in fact, I have to defend a lot of recipes to give them a place in the book. Some dishes I make quite often for a while, and then I have to call myself to order and ban myself from making them for a month. Recipes that I've been making a lot lately are oddly vegetarian, sometimes even vegan, even though I'm quite a meat eater. A Moroccan vegetable stew and a pumpkin sweet potato curry. And sometimes I have these dishes that I make so often that I don't even think about them as a recipe, like roasted chicory. What do you guys call that, I believe chicory? I make that very often, and suddenly I thought: that should be in the book. I especially like the red chicory. The white one is better to wrap in ham or bacon and bake in the oven.'
You seem to consciously ignore contemporary food hypes, such as superfoods, paleo diets, gluten-free, lactose-free or carbohydrate-free.
'I ignore it as a trend, but if you eat in a normal, balanced way, all these things are part of your diet. When I was working on the register of this cookbook, I noticed that quite a few recipes are gluten- or lactose-free, and there are something like 50 vegetarian and maybe 30 vegan recipes in there, and I don't even count the desserts. A normal, healthy diet naturally includes all that; your body naturally likes variety.'
'As a cook, I love the challenge of cooking with different ingredients. When I used to have to come up with a vegan meal, I sometimes thought: what on earth should I serve someone? Now I actually enjoy the challenge.'
With age, your taste buds change and decrease in number
'That's a gloomy thought, don't you think?'
... Have your tastes changed a lot during your lifetime?
'That's not so bad. I always liked bitter, sour and salty.'
Even as a child?
'No, as a child I didn't like food at all! That only changed in my late teens. I always liked baking, though. I do like sweet things, but I don't have a real sweet tooth - it wouldn't occur to me to make dessert every day. I mainly do that when friends come over for dinner. I like spicy food, the spicier the better. Some people can no longer tolerate spicy food when they are old, and that is my biggest fear: that I won't be able to eat all those nice spicy sauces. But when I looked at my first cookbook the other day, funnily enough, I saw that even in it I used things like miso, pomegranate and salty things.'
'I have low blood pressure, so I can happily eat salt, and I really like nice sea salt. If you salt good, fresh food the right way, it's still really different from factory food that has a lot of salt in it. But I also realise very well that I am privileged to be able to afford myself good-quality products. Not everyone has that choice, and I would never want to saddle others with feeling bad because they can't afford it themselves.'
The range of products on offer has changed and grown enormously in recent years. Does that affect your cooking style?
'Yes, because I love going out for ingredients and scouring the market. I always try to find different uses for an ingredient. For this new cookbook, for example, I used pickled lemon. I had added it in a Moroccan casserole and then what I had left was just sitting in the fridge. I thought: what else can I use that for? And then I made up other recipes, like Brussels sprouts with pickled lemon and pomegranate.'
In 20 years, you have built quite an empire. What remains of the essence you started with 20 years ago?
'I was lucky that I was not very young when I started, I was already in my late thirties. I made it clear right then that I wouldn't be releasing a book a year. If you don't have to do a book or television show every year, it's not so bad with that whole industry around you, you know. I'm not in a strangling rhythm.'
'I love writing and dread it at the same time, a strange combination that journalists also often have. When I finish a book, I am happy to get back into the kitchen to cook. Cooking doesn't feel like work.'
For many people, food is a form of comfort
'And to celebrate something! Above all, let's stay positive.'
... You have had some difficult years in your personal life. Does food provide comfort for you too?
'For me, cooking is more a form of comfort than eating. Comfort food is not a good thing. Actually, it's a misnomer - it doesn't really make anyone feel better, whereas cooking does have that effect. Cooking is a great way to bring grinding thoughts in your head to a stop. Everyone these days talks about mindfulness, because that makes you present in the here and now and more aware of sensory experiences. That's exactly what cooking does too. The smell of grated lemon, the shape of the tomato... Food is beautiful. And beauty is indeed a great comfort in life.'
Got hungry?
Nigella Lawson, At my table. The happiness of home cooking has been published by AtlasContact, €34.99
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