How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking - Hardcover

Lawson, Nigella

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786867973 ISBN 13: 9780786867974

Publisher: Hachette Books, 2001

Synopsis

A leading British chef shares the secrets of fine baking with a selection of more than 220 delectable recipes for cakes, pies, pastries, preserves, puddings, breads, and cookies. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Those who love comfort food have cause to be grateful for Nigella Lawson's book How to Be a Domestic Goddess. Cause, too, perhaps, to wonder that she isn't the size of a house, since baked comfort foods typically encompass large quantities of butter, cream, eggs, sugar, chocolate, nuts, cream cheese and all the other foodstuffs to which with dreary inevitability attaches the deadly word "sinful". But in Nigella Lawson's hands these dangerous, even feared, substances are transmuted alchemically into the healing balms of the goddess, who presides (perhaps a little ironically) over a harmonious kitchen realm.

The recipes are suitably divine, covering cakes, biscuits, pies, puddings, breads, with special sections on cooking for (and by) children and Christmas. Most are sweet, though there is a choice selection of savoury pies and puddings--Pizza Rustica, Steak and Kidney Pudding, Cornish Pasties. The sweet things range from the airy elegance of Pistachio Macaroons, through the luscious spiciness of Norwegian Cinnamon Buns, to the trailer-trashiness of Coca-Cola Cake.

Nigella Lawson's poise never falters, whether she is discussing serving mulled wine with mince pies ("Don't fight it") or a strange passion-fruit liqueur required for one of her trifles ("the most divinely camp liqueur you could ever come across"). She plays a kind of game with her readers, insisting constantly on her greed, but really invoking our own. What a fascinating book: hints of obsessiveness revealed behind the beautifully projected personality of a laid-back voluptuary.--Robin Davidson

Review:

"What this deliciously reassuring and mouth-watering cookbook shows is that it's not hard to bake a tray of muffins, or a sponge layer cake - but the rewards are high" (Mrs D-Daily (Blog))

"Part of a collection of reissues with stylish redesigned covers... Nigella's millennial masterpiece [is] home baking's sacred text. Not only will you want to eat everything in it, there's a fair chance you'll actually want to cook it too. Most importantly, the recipes are well written and rarely turn out disappointing results." (Guardian)

"Working mothers must give thanks to Nigella... What sets her apart from every other food writer is her empathy with working women and her realism... Every page of How to be a Domestic Goddess is imbued with warmth" (The Times)

"How to Eat was sheer joy... Now she's done it again. If ever baking needed pepping up, Nigella does it" (Daily Express)

"Her prose is as nourishing as her recipes" (Salman Rushdie Observer)

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0786867973
• ISBN 13: 9780786867974
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 374