Get caper. Prepare caper. Fry
I like Nigella Lawson, in that I like the fact that she's not a trained chef, but is allowed to have her own cookery programme. I like the fact that she carries the buttery, creamy, chocoately food she makes around with her on her own body. Some of her tips are very useful. But the new series on BBC2, Nigella Express (you've got to come up with new ways of slicing the same cake), has two problems. One, it's about making food really fast, which is all very well for the busy lives we are supposed to leave, and perhaps a riposte to those who've accused her of using unattainable ingredients (unattainable unless you live above a family-run deli or go abroad a lot), but it also means that, on the evidence so far, most of the recipes involve shop-bought sauces and pastes. Oh, how the shops would love us to use more of these, and less of those fresh ingredients which they stock as loss leaders. (The food manufacturers and supermarkets like processed food because it "adds value" to ingredients that don't cost much, and up the price can be hiked.) Secondly, they seem to have cranked up the "personal life" aspect. No matter that Nigella's home has been lovingly recreated in a studio this time around, we must still keep up the pretence that this is a glimpse into her perfect world - hence, the recruitment of her two kids for show two, Bruno and Cosima (not their fault), who were forced to act out domestic scenes, such as a conversation about homework. Painful. Bruno looks like a miniature member of the Klaxons with the face of Nigel Lawson. Poor kid. We've seen plenty of Nigella's beautiful friends, coming round for dinner, on previous series, but this one seems to have pushed the boat out a bit too far into private wates. Don't make performing monkeys of your own kin. Just when Jamie's taking things back to basics and calming down in his garden. (It's interesting that we seem to have got closer and yet further away from Nigella's reality in one go - and that her husband Charles Saatchi never appears. He's no fool.) Another complaint: Nigella linked the beginning of show two from the top deck of a London bus. Don't patronise people who actually take buses! She doesn't use public transport. I expect she got a taxi to and from school. (We also saw her loading a washing machine. I don't think she does that sort of thing either, does she?)
It would be easy to despise her, with her endless free time and her friendly butcher and fishmonger and walk-in larder and her made-up name bestowed by an egomaniacal father, but for me, her love of eating comes through, and that's a rare condiment on television. I'm not going to defend her like I had to with Kate Nash, by the way. So do your worst. I'd never thought of dry-frying chorizo, thus releasing the oils from the sausage, and then frying scallops in the chorizo oil. Brilliant.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 12:54 PM
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17 Comments:
I love Nigella Lawson. Perhaps a bit too much.
I'm currently eating a Pot Noodle though, so probably not best placed to comment on food matters...
I've been dry-frying my chroizo for years - nothing to do with Nigella and everything to do with being the only concession I've been able to come up with after having been told my cholesterol was too high.
chorizo, that is.
who cares about the food - she's lovely!!!
AnonoNick eating boots sandwich deal - bargain at £2.99 for sandwich/crisps and coke
What a headline, Andrew. You must have punched the air when that one sprang to mind!
I like and truly respect her as a posotive role model for women. This may sound highly cheesy, but it's true. Men everywhere say how fit she is because she has curves, and when I get a bit down on myself I remind myself as this, and treat myself to a chocolate cake (mini one of course.) Really found this blog intresting
I love her...but really dislike the way she is becoming a parody of herself in this series. It's all a little too knowing and, as you put it, staged.
Nigella on the bus also made me cringe.
Indeed I hated the stagey family bits including the mini nu-rave boy on the skateboard, and i dont like th recourse to shop bought sauces, but at least she admits to it. And at least her dress size isnt flashed up next to her name and isnt forced to cook in high heels with fully 'done' hair (tho she is naturally glam, it doesnt seem as false) with a patronising 'now girls, heres the science bit' voice-over a la ch4's 'Cook yourself thin'.
I like her show, even though the acted out bits are cringeworthy beyond belief.
I just wish she had a proper name. Nigella? It's worse than Alanis.
Genius title.
I was a bit unsure of the lovely Nigella last week. She seemed a bit drunk. Or maybe that was her just being coqettish. I've never really been able to tell.
I wasn't convinced the chicken was cooked either. But I did like the chorizo oil idea.
I'm not too worried about her patronising people from the top deck of a bus, more concerned with where she found a Routemaster these days. I thought they'd all been retired. Do you think that as the years pass she'll start to look more and more like her father?
"No matter that Nigella's home has been lovingly recreated in a studio this time around..." - I heard her say on Simon Mayo's 5Live show a couple of weeks ago that it is not her kitchen at her home, but it is the kitchen in the house she uses as her office. Though using the kids etc does give the impression it is her home kitchen.
I am lowerish middle-class and to me, Nigella seems like a hideous mixture of Fanny Craddock and Beverly from Abigail's Party, the absolute worst of middle-class pretention.
I'm sure she loves food and prepares much better meals than old Craddock, but I can't watch her show for long because I can't stand the ghastly presentation and 'performance' she gives.
I enjoyed her previous shows more -why can't we have less (fake) life-style interludes and more recipes ? Yes, we know she wafts through a fabulous life, but I'd like to see more of Nigella the cook. But I agree that her evident love of food & the fact that she is a normal size is a Good Thing.
There have been some comments about her name - yes, I imagine she was named after her Dad, but Nigella is the Latin name for that beautiful cottage garden flower, "Love-in-a-Mist", so perhaps she was named for that...unlikely though !
I feel like I have taken drugs or something when I watch her. This cartoonish, primary coloured British Hollywood world, where an impossibly glowing sexily knowing curvaceous Italianate earth godess flounces around her kitchen coyly smiling at you, licking her lips, seducing you with her food. Food, sex, I can't tell the difference anymore, I have entered a strange modern seaside postcard world relocated to Notting Hill. I think I hallucinated when she said linguini that it was lingerie, argh I can't tell the difference anymore. I must go and lie down in a bed of black satin sheets with a piquant oil and balsamic vinegar compress.
I've said this before on another blog, but I practically have to watch her from behind a cushion ( and not in the way some of the blokes probably do, either). She makes me cringe with embarrassment - for me, it's like walking in on someone and finding them having a wank; something you just don't need to see.
I can cope with her books, though - she manages to give a decent written recipe without conveying the fact that she's on the point of orgasm.
Give me Nigel Slater any day.
Nigella makes me feel less middle class, and for that reason alone I like her. I could understand Paint Along With Nancy, but the idea of sitting and watching someone making their dinner is completely alien to me. And I can't make head nor tail of the penultimate sentence in this blog entry.
Don't you think she's grinning just a bit too much in this series? Not enough to look mental, just enough to look false.
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