Welcome to “Cookbook of the Week.” This is a series where I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While finding a particular recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has a magic all its own.
There are only a couple celebrity chefs that I can say with certainty inspired me to pursue a career in food, and only one whose unchained pleasure in the act of cooking and eating I’ve marveled at since I was a teen. It was a feeling I fully related to but quieted to be polite. This queen of indulgence is Nigella Lawson, and this week, I’ve chosen to spotlight her cookbook, Cook, Eat, Repeat.
One of the first things I noticed after watching episode after episode of Nigella’s shows was her unmatched skill for description. I specifically remember her calling pomegranate seeds “ruby gems” once. This was not the ordinary cooking show. She was showing her admiration of ingredients, demonstrating how to love the food you’re cooking from every roast down to the smallest seed. After all, you’re nourishing yourself or the people you care about. Cooking is an act of nurture and simultaneously completely hedonistic. It was from watching her shows and listening to her descriptions that I realized this wonderful chef was rather a writer at heart.
A bit about the book
Cook, Eat, Repeat shares a title with one of her BBC shows, and is the latest cookbook of Lawson’s, though it was published in 2020 during some of the grimmest days of lockdown. While there is undoubtedly reference to the state of the world at the time, and certainly we were all doing a lot of what the title demands, the cookbook spans far more than that. There are stories where she considers a particular ingredient, like rhubarb for example, and retells her development of a particular recipe—at which point she’ll interrupt herself, with full awareness, and give you that recipe in steps. Afterward, she’ll complete her reflection and the chapter of recipes will begin.
This cookbook doesn’t structure sections in the expected breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, or other typical categorizing of foods. Rather, each chapter feels like it was written because it is a passionate topic that she needed to get off her chest. You’ll see titles like “A is for Anchovy,” “Pleasures,” and “Much Depends on Dinner.” You’ll be happy to find a wide assortment of recipes in this cookbook, including all the courses of a full day, recipes for one serving, vegan sweets, and gluten free recipes.
A great cookbook for the ravenous reader
Pun intended. A large part of Nigella’s charm is how she communicates her feelings about ingredients, their roles in developing flavor, and the recipes that resulted. She’s truly an expert at crafting prose and you really must be a reader to fully appreciate every word.
But not just a reader. Not even just a nonfiction reader, but one who comes to life reading a chapter about anchovies bringing out the sweetness in meats, someone who is thrilled by a chapter about rhubarb and its unflappable tartness, and fortified by a section defending stews and other slow cooked brown foods that aren’t social media “pretty.”
You must be okay with fewer pictures. While there are tempting photographs of food frequently peeking through the chapters, they aren’t demanding the spotlight. You’ll know from some of my past cookbook reviews that I do love food photography. And even though I like a bit of eye candy, I’ve been happy to exchange that space for Lawson’s recipe insights and good sense of humor.
The recipes you can expect
You can expect a pleasant balance of hearty soups, easy breads, colorful salads, silky dips, and indulgent desserts. Nigella has a knack for keeping meals interesting without needlessly complicated preparations or overwhelming ingredient lists. In fact, it’s not the typical formula of recipe + glossy photo after the next in this cookbook, which is the expectation of most lately. What’s special about this cookbook is that it’s chock-full of personal stories, musings, and food experimentation. But of course, there are recipes. There are even recipes hidden inside of recipes in these pages.
As I mentioned, I appreciate the reasonably sized ingredient lists, and the instructions are just as manageable and clear. Where you can make a substitution, she’ll let you know. Where you cannot, she will insist you do not. I’d like to acknowledge that you may, on occasion, run into a British-ism—a word that we don’t typically use in American English. That, along with her creative word choices, may take a moment to figure out, but it’s nothing that context and Google can’t figure out. If you watch Bake-Off or any British TV—I’m partial to watching their murder mysteries and the maestro of gardening himself, Monty Don—you’ll be just fine.
Something I don’t always come across in cookbooks is a clear log on how to store leftovers. In the back of Cook, Eat, Repeat, before the glossary, she includes a section that details how to make ahead, freeze, or store each applicable recipe in the book. It’s incredibly helpful for large batch recipes, or rich and filling ones.
The dish I made this week
No matter the book, whether old or new, I always choose a recipe from it to give me some perspective through my tastebuds. This week I made Nigella’s Beet and Chickpea Dip. I admit, I really wanted to make her chocolate peanut butter layer cake, but I featured a cake from a baking cookbook last week, Milk Street Bakes, and one must take a break from cake, I guess.
Well, I’m glad I did because the beet and chickpea dip was fabulous. It’s what you’d imagine a beet hummus to be (a blend of cooked beets, chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, and salt), and she says as much in the lead up to the recipe. I chose this one because I had those ingredients already and the instructions were simple enough—and isn’t that exactly how we choose recipes to cook? It’s a testament to how Lawson keeps the average home cook in mind.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
I followed the recipe as written, for the most part. I did a terrible thing and went against one of her warnings. She insists that the beets be freshly roasted, and warned against using packaged cooked beets. Well, your girl here loves Trader Joe’s steamed beets so that’s what I used. Nigella, if you’re reading this, I’m happy to report that your recipe still turns out wonderfully. The dip is light but hearty, bright and balanced with savory notes from the garlic and chickpeas and sweetness from the beets.
I ate it in the afternoon with crackers and again for dinner as a sauce with my roasted chicken. This recipe is the flexible sort you could make just for yourself to snack on over the course of a few days, and also perfect for a dinner party. The flavors are nuanced but familiar, and the vivacious pink hue is absolutely presentation worthy.
I already mentioned the cake (sounds like a plan for Saturday), but I’m very much looking forward to tearing through more of the recipes in this book. Unlike any other cookbook I’ve ever owned, with this one I expect I’ll prepare the meal, sit down with it and open the book once more to read about the dish as I enjoy it.
How to buy it
You can order this gem on the internet of course, but if you’re the type who enjoys a hardcover cookbook, you probably love roaming the aisles of a real-life bookstore. Check out your local store, and if they don’t have it in stock, see if they can order it for you. You can likely buy it at Barnes and Noble, which seems to have copies near me even though the book is four years old, or just place an order through them.
