Be patient, lift up and swirl the pan often and monitor it closely; as Tammy almost sang, Stand By Your Pan. This book - her greatest since How to Eat in 1998 - is about embracing the idea of cooking as a series of soothing rituals. From PLEASURES, page 31:📝 ‘If I could ban any phrase, it would, without doubt, be that overused, viscerally irritating, and far-from-innocent term itself, the Guilty Pleasure.

Oh, and there are many wonderful sounding recipes— and food notes, variations, and asides— that I plan on trying. Those with a sweet tooth will delight in Rhubarb and Custard Trifle; Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake; Rice Pudding Cake; and Cherry and Almond Crumble. Food, for me, is a constant pleasure: I like to think greedily about it, reflect deeply on it, learn from it; it . The dishes here are as comforting as any Nigella fan could wish for, from Basque burnt cheesecake to fish finger bhorta. These are the type used by Nigella and her descriptions of the ways to prepare them ( the tinned variety) really whetted my appetite.No quote sums it up better, IMO, than that from The Times:📝 'Twenty-two years after her first book, How To Eat, Nigella Lawson has produced what feels like its answer: Cook, Eat, Repeat.

We all have to move on, but I can't help but feel it is the TV programme that is going to sell this title. However, depending on eyesight, good light is required for the narrower book format as the font is generally on the small side, IMO, and there are large unbroken areas of writing, at times.

COOK EAT REPEAT is a delicious and delightful combination of recipes intertwined with narrative essays about food, all written in Nigella’s engaging and insightful prose. She doesn’t believe in guilty pleasures—she thinks of all eating as pleasure and doesn’t believe in feeling guilty for that. While I don't mind a good food book (with or without recipes) I was more wanting to read through a more regular cookbook to get new recipe ideas.

There is so much around us that we cannot control, but food gives shape to our pleasures and offers both immersion and escape. Cook, Eat, Repeat is a delicious and delightful combination of recipes intertwined with narrative essays about food, all written in Nigella Lawson’s engaging and insightful prose. And above and beyond the recipes, this is a profound and consoling defence of the pleasures of the kitchen. But these recipes are also about family, about the time and energy cooks spend making magic for those that they love, about heart and soul and putting your best on the plate for yourself and for those you care the most about. From the initial chapter that is a deep dive into what a recipe is and how it’s created through all Lawson’s notes on each individual recipe, these are dishes that sing with flavor.The book, which does have some ‘white space’ dotted around, plays out with a page of ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, on page 344, which includes:📝 ‘JONATHAN LOVEKIN, whose painterly photographs ~ taken under novel conditions ~ illuminate these pages…’The book comes complete with a pinky-red fabric ribbon to keep your place, similar to the colour of the accent shade throughout including the subtitle on the cover and the recipe titles, headings etc. Serves 8-10, although I still make this if there are fewer of us; leftovers are to be relished, or generously boxed up and given to people to take home.

Her love of food and cooking is abundantly clear, but she also has an air of the ridiculous over her, leaning into the projected image of her being some kind of sensual queen of the kitchen. I love looking at the recipes and the pictures but I especially love the reflective essays Nigella wrote for this book.If, when friends come over for dinner, the best thing to be said about the evening was that the food was great, consider it a failure. Some of the recipes seem recycled ideas or borrowing from others (which is fine)- marzipan loaf, the banana and tahini bread, the NYT loaf, another lemon and almond cake- and overall an esoteric collection of ingredients that normally I would default as an 'Ottolenghi' move: marrowbone, celeriac, a lot of chestnuts. Read it for the careful pushback against what Instagram has done to eating; read it for luxurious ideas on how to treat yourself (it's not for nothing that Lawson says making a creme caramel for one person is ridiculous—and then proceeds to tell you how); read it for a gleeful reminder of how delicious and wonderful food and eating can be.