Big City, Little Kitchen

Anyone who knows me can attest to how much I adore Nigella Lawson.  I think she is a fantastic, engaging writer who has a way of making her recipes sound both comforting and exciting.  So it was with great anticipation that I awaited her latest book, Nigella Express.  Happily, it is the same mix of entertaining prose and inventive recipes that Nigella’s audience has come to expect, uncompromised by the ”express” element.

Unlike many a chef whose hallmark is speed, Nigella rarely incorporates ready-made products into her recipes.  This is not a book on how to best accessorize a frozen pie crust or embellish a grocery store’s rotisserie chicken (that said, she does advocate the use of pre-made puff pastry, but it’s the rare home baker who makes his own anyway).  Instead, she emphasizes advance preparation, simple use of fresh ingredients, and effective ways to add spices and herbs.  Refreshingly, her dishes aren’t riffs on favorites; they ARE those favorites, re-jiggered to be on the table sooner.  Coq au Riesling, for example, is a classic Alsatian dish whose preparation she breaks down into steps–it becomes so simple, yet retains sophistication.  The same goes for a chicken schnitzel, accessorized with bacon.  Her soups, quickly prepared and blitzed until smooth, can easily serve as a substantial first course, or a lighter dinner;  my favorites are the pea-pesto and the butternut squash-and-sweet potato. 

As Nigella emphasizes in her introduction, not every recipe is stove-to-table in under an hour.  Rather, many of them are prepared in advance, like the maple chicken and ribs, or are quickly thrown together then left, unattended, to cook slowly, as in her directions for a lamb tagine.  She also scatters helpful tips throughout:  thinly-pounded slices of meat cook more quickly, leave potatoes in a gratin unpeeled, shred leftover roasted chicken into a salad for lunch or dinner.  A particularly Nigellan trick that I’ve come to appreciate, and that is prevalent in Express, is the roasted bird:  put a body in a roasting pan, rub it with some kind of fat, throw into oven.  Varying the birds and the rubs yields a seemingly endless list of options for getting a hot, comforting dinner on the table with relatively little effort.

I worried that this new book would compromise what Nigella’s audience has come to love about her writing:  that cooking does not have to be just a way to provide sustenance, but, rather, is a celebration of feeding yourself and others, and enjoying the therapeutic act of creating something delicious.  Those values remain, but perhaps beg the question:  why, then, write a book about efficiency, rather than pleasure?  Is it an attempt to remain relevant in a food era dominated by Rachael Ray and 30-minute dinners (and, even more ridiculous, 60-minute Thanksgiving!)?  Ultimately, my impression is that Express uses the “quick” concept more liberally than a Food Network prime-time segment, and so successfully delivers the message that cooking can still be fun, without being a major time commitment.  And I cannot wait to make the croque-monsieur bake on a weeknight.