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If -- Star Trek-style -- I could beam up anyone in the world to cook Thanksgiving dinner at my house this year, my first choice would be the London-based food writer Nigella Lawson, who seems to be everywhere these days. She has three best-selling cookbooks out: How to Eat, How to Be a Domestic Goddess, and, most recently, Nigella Bites. Plus, she has a Style Network cooking show (also called Nigella Bites) and sometimes writes cooking articles for The New York Times.
Lawson is socially prominent. Her father is British Conservative Party politician Nigel Lawson, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer -- that's what they call the budget honcho on the other side of the Atlantic -- in the 1980s. And her companion these days is Charles Saatchi, the wealthy advertising man and art collector. But she loves rich food and is entirely unpretentious about what she eats. Her latest cookbook, for instance, includes recipes for such trashy food as Elvis' fried peanut butter and banana sandwich and ham cooked in Coca-Cola.
On top of all that, she's a knockout. With her raven hair, milky skin, and voluptuous figure, she's living evidence that a fortysomething mother of young children with a lusty appetite for highly caloric food can be glamorous and beautiful. On Nov. 15, I caught up with Lawson by phone at her home in London to get her suggestions for holiday meals. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation:
Q: Let me start with the question I asked Julia Child in a similar preholiday interview two years ago: What's your take on the low-fat food movement?
A: Low-fat food makes you very depressed, I think it's bad for the skin, and I actually quite seriously think it's bad for women reproductively. I once read a book by an endocrinologist saying that fat is one of the things that regulate fertility.
Quite apart from all that, I think it's very difficult to create balance in flavor if you're [cooking] rigidly low fat. It's surprising how just a teaspoon of olive oil dribbled on a minestrone at the end, for example, can lift it into another dimension. Fat doesn't just give [food] taste. It gives it depth and tone.
In a way, to be afraid of fat is to be afraid of food. And to be afraid of food is to be afraid of life. I think good butter, good milk, and good eggs are things we should be grateful for in life. I sort of feel: Everything in moderation and occasional excess.
Q: What I like about your writing is that you seem to almost extol pleasure, in contrast to many Americans and Anglo-Saxons generally, who tend to fear pleasure...
A: Yes, they believe that where there's pleasure there's danger. When I first started writing about food, a lot of my girlfriends would say, "How are you going to manage the hazards [of being a food writer]?" It was as if I were working in nuclear waste! I thought, this is not healthy. People who deprive themselves -- whether it's women or men -- don't feel safe around food. They won't be able to take a little bit from a stick of butter to put on their toast -- they're going to eat the whole lot. Depriving yourself makes you obsessed.
Q: True, so let's talk a bit about Thanksgiving. Since you're English, I'm wondering if you've ever celebrated American-style Thanksgiving?
A: Oh, I love the idea! The idea of a feast the only point of which, really, is the feast itself seems fabulous to me.
Q: Americans usually eat things like turkey, mashed potatoes, broccoli, and cranberries. But what would be your suggestions? What would you start out with, for instance?
A: I don't believe in a starter before a meal like this. I think that to take the edge off people's appetites before a feast is cruel, as well as decadent.
We have our turkey at Christmas, and [part of] our tradition is to cook Brussels sprouts with chestnuts. Now, Brussels sprouts are not universally acclaimed. In fact, they're pretty well vilified. But even my children will eat them when I cook them with chestnuts. They have that sweet, almost chickpea-like nuttiness. I buy the ones from France -- I'm sure you can also get them in the States -- that are peeled and vacuum packed.
What's really fabulous with turkey -- which doesn't have an enormous depth of taste -- is to cook some little cubed bits of pancetta along with the chestnuts. They give off lovely bits of salty fat -- two things any American will feel fearful of, salt and fat! Just add a teeny bit of butter, toss in the peeled chestnuts, and break them up with a wooden spoon, throw in a slug of masala -- which I love cooking with -- and let it bubble away. Then add the Brussels sprouts, turn everything so it's covered in the sweetness from the chestnuts and the saltiness from the pancetta, and [add] chopped flat-leaf parsley.
Q: What else would you suggest?
A: This is very English, but I also love parsnips. You just boil them for a minute or two until they're slightly softened, drizzle a teeny bit of honey over them after they're drained, and then put them in a roasting tin as you would potatoes. They're so sweet and wonderful. That goes fabulously with turkey, too.
Q: Do you do any turkey stuffing?
A: I do. I have some fabulous stuffing in my first book [How to Eat, which came out in 1998]. I do an orange and cranberry one and a chestnut and bacon one. I can never have too many chestnuts. I love them.
I also think good roast potatoes are wonderful. Again, this is going to make a lot of people's blood run cold, but I always roast potatoes for a special occasion in goose fat. In England, it's customary to parboil potatoes before you roast them: Boil them for about four or five minutes, then dry them in a collander, shake them up a bit and toss them in about a tablespoon of flour. But I do what my mother learned to do from an Italian woman who took care of her, which is to toss them in a tablespoon or two of semolina. It gives them a wonderful sweet coating. Also, do you do bread sauce [in America]?
Q: Do you mean bread stuffing?
A: No, bread sauce. Let me talk you through it. Get white stale bread -- just leave it out for a few days. If you want a very fine sauce you can process it in a food processor, but my mother just pulled it into little lumps with her fingers. Then, put some milk and just a tablespoon of butter with a peeled onion which you've stuck with two cloves and add a bay leaf and maybe a garlic clove if you want to go modern. Just let that infuse for about 20 minutes. Then you throw the bread in and cook stirring for a while.
It may look a bit like wallpaper paste, but it tastes fabulous. What's more, the day after, [eating] cold turkey, cold roast potatoes, and cold bread sauce straight from the fridge, still standing with the door open, is my idea of a heavenly breakfast.
Q: Before we move on to dessert, let me ask you about the recipe in your new book for ham cooked in Coca-Cola. Would that be an alternative to turkey?
A: Yes, or you could have both. One slice of ham and one slice of turkey. I always think: Don't substitute, add on! [Laughs.]
Q: O.K., now what would you suggest for dessert?
A: I love the fruits you get this time of year: pomegranates and lichees. There's something so wonderful about the slow [process] of eating a pomegranate. If you're going for a really big feast, something like a trifle would be fabulous. You should always make a dessert you have to make in advance. Otherwise, there's too much activity going on all at once. I have a trifle recipe in Nigella Bites and three in my first cookbook. Any form of berries, cream or custard, and sponge [cake] goes well with turkey. And you don't have to have a huge amount.
Q: Do you recommend drinking wine with this meal you're creating?
A: Call me vulgar, but I like champagne. And I have to have very good champagne so I don't get a headache afterwards. I also have a real weakness for expensive red wines. I like those really divine, big burgundies. Something really luscious to be drunk at room temperature, almost like an aromatic soup. And drink a lot of water at the same time.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
A: To end, I'd make a pot of fresh mint tea. Just sprigs of mint in hot water. It's something that makes the whole room smell so clean and fresh, and somehow makes you feel that you haven't just gorged yourself to within an inch of your life.
Peterson is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek Online. Follow his weekly Moveable Feast column, only on BusinessWeek Online Edited by Beth Belton
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Copyright 2002, Bloomberg L.P.
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