How to Eat facts for kids
First edition
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| Author | Nigella Lawson |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Subject | Cookery |
| Publisher | Chatto and Windus |
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Publication date
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1998 |
| Pages | 514 |
How to Eat is a 1998 book of English cuisine by the celebrity cook Nigella Lawson. It features culinary tips on preparation and saving time, and sold 300,000 copies in Britain. It was praised by critics as a valuable guide to cooking.
Book
Approach
The book begins with Lawson's preface, which states plainly "I am not a chef", and that she is not interested in "strenuous originality". She states that her goal, rather, is "to make you feel that I'm there with you".
The book is divided into themed chapters, such as cooking for "One or Two". Most of each chapter consists of recipes, but the chapters begin with a few pages of general advice on the theme.
Each recipe is headed with its name, generally in English, though with foreign words as needed, as "Pea Soufflé". A recipe like "Scallops and Bacon" then begins with a paragraph of advice on its suitability, in this case stressing that the dish strikes
just the right balance between nursery comfort and dining-room elegance and takes hardly any time to cook
followed by a paragraph about marketing, how to buy and store the ingredients.
The ingredients and quantities are tabulated in red boldface type. The recipe itself is given as a paragraph of instructions in light type.
The techniques used are not rigidly traditional: in her recipe for Ratatouille, introduced to Britain by Elizabeth David, Lawson admits that she is departing from David's prescriptions, but states that this does not seem to make much difference as she does not get a "soggy mush" by skipping the hour spent salting the aubergine and courgettes, but she explains the David method in an aside, just in case anyone want to try it.
Contents
Page numbers refer to the first edition.
- Charts & Conversions xii
- Basics etc. 2
- Cooking in advance 84
- One and Two 132
- Fast food 176
- Weekend lunch 212
- Dinner 328
- Low fat 101
- Feedin
- Gazetteer 506
- Bibliography 512
