Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home [Hardcover]

CSI gloves, goosegogs and buying kitchen appliances you never use. This is no ordinary cookery book. Nigella writes in a way that is at once unique and so very ordinary, page after page. I was on a long train journey and entered the world of Kitchen and lost time till Crewe. You can't say better than that, even the smell of the Virgin train loos passed me by. What a recommendation. You can forget all the hyperbole about Nigella Lawson, she is the Dorothy Rowe of the culinary arts for me. She makes meaning, She lets us see into not just what she cooks and serves day to day but also the meaning and significance it has for her. She is an invaluable teacher of the art of being human and engaging with the material world. I thought this book full of insights as well as a source of useful recipes. It seemed so real, a friend on the page. Who wouldn't mix butter and Marmite and toss a bowl of pasta in it? I could imagine a nice bit of Judge Judy on the telly and a bowl of that on my lap and isn't she honest about drawers? There are two books in one here. One is about important and central messages about us being human and enjoying the very moment of eating, the other is how to do great food day to day. I will praise chicken this weekend and I even found a typo, 'still' rather than 'stir' - but who cares? Please keep on sharing your fascinating take on life and food in this most real way, i'll keep reading you.

It's a lovely treat to find a warmer, more relaxed and low-key, funnier Nigella on show in this new book than ever before. She invites us into her home kitchen for more typically everyday cooking than the six previous books (Christmas in particular saw her becoming almost a cartoon character version of her own finger-lickin' self), and the tone of this book is intimate and friendly, whilst retaining her knack for a turn of phrase.

'Kitchen' begins with an essay in praise of cooking that is enjoyable and thought-provoking: for example, why does restaurant cooking aim for sameness, when most of us could pick out our own mum's Bolognese in a blind tasting? There's also an intriguing exploration of kitchen equipment plus a totally hilarious discussion of the dozen most useless gadgets she's ever bought.

In the end, though, the book is about the recipes: we'll be cooking them over the next few months, finding our favourites, but in the meantime, here's a flavour of what you'll get:

PART ONE
Recipes to suit children, including a dozen crowd-pleasing frittata, pizza, chicken and mince dishes. A dozen quick suppers, fairly sophisticated mostly, like mussels, lamb chops, lemon sole, scallops, calamari. Midweek dinner party menus, including couscous, Indian lamb chops, a butternut squash salad that is top priority to try, chicken with chorizo, lemony salmon - lots of simple tempting things.
A section on using up ingredients: wilting apples to make muffins and black bananas for Banoffee Cheescake. There's also a coconut and cherry banana loaf and a chocolate chip bread pudding that make me feel fat just reading them.
A whole batch of new puddings, from chocolate key lime pie tthrough chocolate peanut butter cheesecake to Frangelico tiramisu (ah, we can finally use up the bottle we bought for the Nutella cake in Domestic Goddess).
And storecupboard dishes such as pasta puttanesca, pantry paella, halloumi with beetroot and lime, and chorizo and chickpea stew.

PART TWO
A whole section of chicken recipes, including many different useful leftover recipes to encourage us to cook a bigger bird to start with, in anticipation.
A lot of baking recipes: blueberry muffins, a devil's food cake, a simple coffee sponge, scones, bakewell and treacle slices, the inevitable [this time, red velvet ] cupcakes. Preserves, too.
A section of "weekend" recipes, like roast seafood, jerk chicken with rice and peas, a "date" steak, and its opposite, chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. Five risotto dishes; some recipes using meat on bones, like ham hocks, spare ribs and pork knuckles -as well as a great rib dish; a couple of pages on pasties.
Finally, a chapter on snacks, with home-made pork scratchings, sausages and coconut crab cakes; and one on Sunday night dishes, such as Toad in the Hole, meatloaf and her very own version of Heinz tomato soup.

It's a testament to how much we've learned to trust her that I'm looking forward to trying peanut butter humous, pasta with Marmite and Guiness gingerbread, rather than just being scared. And the book as a whole is really charming, modest and whimsical: the nicest Nigella book yet.

This really is a wonderful book - an autobiography through cooking! Nigella starts with outlining her own kitchen ethos and also includes an excellent summary of all her necessary kitchen gadgets and the ones that didn't live up to her expectations. She certainly seems to have relaxed in her views of 'must have' tools and ingredients, often suggesting easier alternatives of items you are more likely to have to hand. I really enjoy the introductions she gives to each section and recipe, it's hard not to feel inspired to cook (and enjoy it) when her enthusiasm radiates from each recipe!
Each recipe (and there is an awful lot of them!) is well laid out and described and there are a wonderful range of complex and very simple recipes (marmite pasta) for easy cooking as well as some excellent ideas for easy midweek entertaining.
I think what really marks Nigella's books overall as different from other cooking books, is that she is a self proclaimed cook, not a chef and she positively encourages her readers to enjoy and experiment in the kitchen. This is a great book and excellent value for money!