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Forever summer with Nigella

"Summer food, even when eaten in deepest winter, contains within it the idea of simple cooking." Nigella Lawson


This is one of the two cookbooks I found out in the wilds of Nillumbik the other day, which I have now perused. I confess to being marginally disappointed with the recipes, but I see that I have bookmarked three or four for consideration at some point, and if, as they say publishers say, you cook two things from a cookbook then it's a success, well then it's a success.


It's actually quite an old book - her fourth I think, first published in 2002. I suspect that my copy is a later reprint, but the publishing information in the book doesn't tell me that. I have not been an ardent follower of Nigella, although I do have three or four of her books, and the latest ones are pretty good.


Her first book How to Eat is a classic and quite rightfully so - no pictures at all, but a lot of stories, wise advice and marginally philosophic thoughts about life, the universe and everything as relating to food. An excellent first cookbook for someone who is interested, because all the classics are there.


There is some of that in this book - every recipe has an introduction, some longer than others, but always with something of value to say - as for this Mauritian prawn curry


"Mostly I cook in lieu of travelling, but this is my way of reminding myself that I once was that person who sat in the shade on gold sand under blue skies gazing at an ocean bluer still ..."


Irrelevant I suppose if all you are interested in is the recipe - and interestingly on her website those words have been admitted. Only those referring to the dish itself are there:


"This is a sprightly curry, fierily orange and warm with cinnamon and nutmeg. Make some plain basmati rice to go with it and you’re done."


Also interestingly the website mentions that it is from the book Nigella Summer - which, maybe is a revised version of this book, and whose title doesn't have quite the same ring about it does it? So I looked - here it is - and it is indeed a reprint of Forever Summer. The cover here is rather beautiful in a minimalist way, and in sync with other of her books of the period, but for me it lacks that carefree image of Nigella herself. But then the first edition was probably published around the time when her image of the sexy kitchen goddess was being polished and promoted. I confess I have always wondered about that image, and whether it is true to Nigella herself, because, read between the lines and it seems to me there is always a touch of slight melancholy in her writing.


Even the last words of her introduction to my book, notionally optimistic, are also a touch sad:


"Life has its difficulties, why add to them in the kitchen? It is not because I believe there is nothing but endless unclouded blue sky in Nigellaland, but because I still believe the kitchen is not a place you escape from, but the place you escape to."


What you have to ask is she escaping from? Well lots, as we know, in her personal life. But that's not for this post. I've watched a few of her cooking programs, and suspect that her handlers, whoever they may be, are the ones telling her to do all the irritating over the top stuff. I watch those programs because you actually learn something - as with Jamie too - equally irritating in another way. A reviewer on the website Thriftbooks said it better than I:


"If you already know Nigella, you already know how you feel about her. But if you don't know Nigella yet, you should know that she is absolutely unlike anyone else. Even when she is writing about things I would never in my life cook (and for me this is true of many of her recipes, even though I live to experiment in the kitchen), I learn from her. She helps me understand, by way of contrast, what my assumptions about food and ingredients and the experience of eating are."


But back to the book. Nigella's intent here is to get away from all the seasonal stuff:


"In the ideal world inhabited by the chef, there may indeed be a place for the lyrical insistence on using only those ingredients that the month in hand offers up to the market place, but my kitchen, my home, the way I cook, resist such purist strictures."


The picture is the invitation into the section on Puddings which includes a number of delicious looking ice-creams, of which she says:


"You don't need summer as an excuse to make them - really you don't"


The intention of the book then is:


"Summer, then, is an idea, a memory, a hopeful projection. Sometimes when it's grey outside and cold within, we need to conjure up the sun, some light, a lazy feeling of having all the wide-skied time in the world to sit back and eat warmly with friends. I am not talking about creating some overblown idyll of perpetual Provençal summer, but of extending that purring sense of sunny expansiveness."


I was disappointed then to read one review by a blogger, which said that even though it was supposedly a book designed to show you how to cook in a summery way all year round, she found that it was actually really about summer food because you couldn't get the ingredients. Surely this is not true. It's certainly not true if you have nothing against imported fresh ingredients, or you have plenty of money. However, even for those of us who do worry about those things, albeit just a little, these days there are only a very few ingredients that you cannot get all year round. Of course they are better and cheaper when they are in season and you should certainly make the best of them when they are - like the asparagus of this particular moment here in Melbourne - but if I really wanted to eat asparagus in the depths of winter I could - they import it from Mexico - or you can get it out of a can - Nigel has a fondness for asparagus in a can and in his book Tender Volume 1 he actually gives a recipe for a A tart of asparagus and tarragon which uses canned asparagus. Mind you he does have another version which uses fresh tarragon. The canned version is not online.


As I said earlier, I was not tempted by all that many recipes in the book - there was a touch of 'been there, done that', about them, but let's look at a few to see if indeed you could make them in the depths of winter:


Yes it's summery - the kind of dish you would find in heaps of summery cookbooks from Elizabeth David onwards, but in some ways it's hard to see why - maybe it's the lemons, and the garlic which used to be something you could only find if you went to the Continent - as the British call the rest of Europe. Everything, however is available all year round now - albeit at varying prices for the lemons. But yes it's somehow summery:


"you just put everything in the roasting dish and leave it to cook in the oven, pervading the house, at any time of year, with the summer scent of lemon and thyme — and of course, mellow, almost honeyed garlic." Nigella Lawson


I actually think of blackberries as autumnal rather than summery, and they are not always available, fresh, although these days they are probably grown in greenhouses all year round. But there is always frozen. For Nigella I think the summery factor is that


"I find it hard ot come back from holiday in Italy without lugging strange lemon-shaped bottles of local liqueurs"


So I guess it's that memory that makes it summery for her. For me, for some reason - maybe it was a Christmas thing - trifle is a winter dish. This one looked pretty nice however, mascarpone and blackcurrant jam are also involved, as well as amaretti biscuits and that limoncello. Easy to make your own by the way.


This is actually an Australian recipe that she received from her 'erstwhile editor, Eugenie Boyd', although she has modified it a little. Chardonnay - cool and summery. raspberries too - but like those blackberries available virtually all year round - at varying prices admittedly - and in the freezer cabinet of your local supermarket. I've never made a jelly that wasn't out of a packet so maybe I should try it some time.


I was interested in some other recipes but they are not illustrated and also not always online, and so I have left them out. These might just give you a taste.


Nigella, of course is a Londoner and the winters there are somewhat more miserable than those here.


"Seasonal cooking is anyway better suited to those who live in sunnier climates. The rest of us need to make the most of what warmth is offered, and much of the time this has to emanate from the kitchen rather than from the skies outside."


I imagine, however, that the supermarkets are even better stocked than those here, with fresh food from here there and anywhere, canned and frozen too. My negative reviewer mentioned mangoes as one ingredient she could not access, which may well be true. They are indeed somewhat seasonal here as well, but again - frozen, canned ... Imported at a price? When Elizabeth David was writing Summer Cooking, this would not have been so - even the canned and frozen products were more limited. Today there is no excuse - and yes we should cheer ourselves up on a wet and cold day with summery things. Even ice-cream. Ice-cream and apple crumble - summer and winter on one plate.


Maybe the main virtue of Nigella is as described by that reviewer from Thriftbooks:


"This is the sort of thing I long to eat, but always think is too exotic for me to make at home. But Nigella helps me realize that's ridiculous, that in fact I have almost everything I need, but I just needed permission to assemble them."


Read and learn, for as in all Nigella's books:


"the best recipes are never blueprints, only ideas hungrily mooted." Nigella Lawson



POSTSCRIPT

A 3 1/2 star result (like Nigella's book) I think for my chicken dish of last night.


Chicken, plus onions, two sliced stalks of celery and asparagus plus a belated one sliced Swiss brown mushroom - it was a big one - in my home-made leftovers green sauce plus a big spoonful of yoghurt. Served with rice. Somewhat better than OK but probably not brilliant. The Yarrambat Winery 2005 Chardonnay was however and so was the blueberry bread and butter pudding, which I, of course, forgot to photograph.


THOSE YEARS GONE BY

October 26

2023 - Nothing

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Oct 26
Rated 3 out of 5 stars.

After your comments about the sadness in her writimgs, I googled Nigella and found this from The Mirror in Oct 2023: "Television cook and writer Nigella Lawson has had a complicated and painful love life in the public eye over the years, and has overcame many heartbreaking struggles"

Does this show in her food recipes?

Your Home made Leftovers was pretty good, but 3 and 1/2 was about right.

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