Guest Post: On Screen Kitchen Dreams- Nigella Lawson

Our first guest post! Annie Mole wants us to know she really likes Nigella Lawson, and she wants us to know why…

Nigella Lawson by Paul Harvey http://www.stuckism.com/Harvey/Index.html

Nigella Lawson is an extraordinarily beautiful TV cook, newspaper and magazine columnist, mother and Domestic Goddess.

Hold on, I’ll correct that, she is the Domestic Goddess.

Very few people have a bad word to say about Nigella or her series.

Her story has added poignancy when you learn that her first husband died of cancer and that her mother and sister both died of the same illness too.

Nigella gets my vote because she cooks in the most normal way under the sun.

She doesn’t wear an apron, she doesn’t tie back her flowing locks and she’s always eating tonnes of her food while she cooks it.

Nigella uses stock cubes plus you can see her on TV with her hands in dish water, elbow-deep in dirty pots and pans.

In short, she does her own washing up.

TV cooks in the main are extremely irritating. Most of them think we’ve all got the time and inclination to make stock from scratch, that we’ve got a garden brimming with fresh herbs and that we all own a ‘magi mix’.

The worst are Jamie Oliver, Ainsley Harriott and Antony Worrall Thompson.

The best are those who just get on with the cooking and let the food do the talking. Like Nigella’s mate Nigel Slater (melted Toblerone over icecream – what a perfect dessert); pure and simple, Delia Smith (chocolate bread-and-butter pudding so easy and delicious that even I could make it); and enemy to fish everywhere, Rick Stein.

However Nigella stands out from these for the following reasons:

1. She’s beautiful.

2. She’s not as skinny as a twig

3. She takes an almost orgasmic pleasure in food.

4. She uses stock cubes.

5. She advocates the use of frozen peas.

6. She doesn’t seem to have anything to do with a supermarket chain.

7. She makes cooking risotto look almost worthwhile (why anyone should want to stand around stirring a pot continuously for about half an hour to produce a generally tasteless yet savoury version of a rice pudding, has always been beyond me).

8. She comes down to the kitchen at midnight and wolfs down huge slices of chocolate cake.

9. She has a body that looks as though she comes down to the kitchen at midnight and wolfs down huge slices of chocolate cake (although not on a daily basis).

Try to make a slot for Nigella’s shows if you can.  They’re camp, they’re kitsch and they’re full of Nigella doing what she does best – loving the camera and being very naughty in a sort of saucy English nanny ‘I won’t tell your mum if you want to lick the chocolate cake mix from the bowl’ type of way.

You’ll drool as she scoops a mound of creamy risotto onto a huge golden platter.

You’ll salivate as she runs her finger round the bowl of her silken chocolate cake mix and licks it longingly.

You’ll gasp as she throws back her head, flicking her long dark tresses, and then drops perfect morsels of food into her perfectly shaped cherry red mouth (oops, you can tell I used to work for Harlequin Mills & Boon).

You’ll swoon as she gives the camera remarkably knowing looks about the joys of cooking with whole pats of butter and full cream.

It may all be an act … but it’s a class act (oh, did I say she had a lovely voice too?) and one certainly not to be missed.