麻豆社

1. No amount of food is worth sobbing over in the kitchen

How to Eat was an antidote to our nineties’ obsession with elaborate restaurant food. Putting home cooking back on the map was “a driving force” for Nigella. She recalls being at a friend’s dinner party where there were “courses upon courses” and where the friend could be heard “sobbing very noisily from the kitchen.” “No amount of food is worth that,” says Nigella. “Phone up, get a pizza... We’ll have fish finger sandwiches,” she says, “and have a great evening.”

2. You can memorialise lost loved ones through food

Nigella’s mother and sister Thomasina, who was sixteen months younger than her, both died young. This is something that “fed” Nigella to write How to Eat. “I missed their food and I missed talking to them about what I was cooking,” says Nigella, “so in many ways it was a very important way of memorialising them.” She goes on: “For me, talking about people, you do it best by the food they cooked or ate and it’s a way of keeping that conversation alive.”

3. Never cause cheese anxiety

On revisiting her first book, Nigella says she still agrees with much of her earlier advice. One tip that still resonates relates to cheese: "Don’t get small amounts of many different cheeses if you’re doing cheese,” the cook says. “Just get big amounts of one or two or three if you must. You don’t want anyone to have to look up anxiously as they’re cutting a bit of cheese,” she says, and worry whether they are leaving enough for the next person. “That’s too awful.”

4. If you’re shy, find a reason to overcome it

Nigella was shy and “very withdrawn” as a child and although she’s now known for television presenting and public appearances, she says those feelings are still there: “I don’t think being shy and being on television are opposites actually,” says Nigella. Although she has “grown into someone who can talk on a stage to a lot of people” she is still someone who, if she isn’t working, “would find it daunting walking into a room.” But work helps her to overcome this side of her personality: “When I have a purpose I can do it,” she says.

5. Not everything at the Christmas dinner needs to be hot

For many, Nigella’s food is synonymous with Christmas. (She once provoked nationwide despair when the supermarkets ran out of goose fat!) “I love Christmas food,” the chef says. If she could give one piece of advice about festive food it’s that “not everything has to be hot.” “Roast potatoes need to be there at the last minute,” she says, and “gravy has to be hot” but “you can’t get everything out of the oven or the saucepan at the same time” so “let it go.”

6. Always invite a guest to the family feast

As much we might love the notion of being around the table at Christmas, “We all know that the family meal can be a very tense occasion as well,” says Nigella. “I always feel that there are two things that make people kind of lose it very easily: family plus food. And you have them in a very intense conjunction.” Her tip for diffusing festive family feuds? Always “invite someone to Christmas dinner that your family don’t know well enough to behave badly in front of – it’s the human shield, that’s who you need!”

7. The easiest way to learn how to cook is by watching

In How to Eat Nigella states how, “The easiest way to learn how to cook is by watching, and bearing that in mind I have tried more to talk you through a recipe than bark out instructions. As much as possible I’ve wanted to make you feel that I’m there with you, in the kitchen as you cook.” We can’t all have Nigella on hand to help, but her books are the next best thing!