's Best of 2001
While the title How to Be a Domestic Goddess may at first make a modern woman bristle, the book itself is just as likely to inspire the woman who brings home the bacon to start baking cakes. And what's wrong with that? "This isn't a dream," writes British cookery deity Nigella Lawson in her preface. "What's more, it isn't even a nightmare." Lawson--the author of How to Eat, food editor of British Vogue, and star of her own TV cooking show, Nigella Bites--has been suspected of upholding the woman-laboring-in-the-kitchen paradigm, but there are lots of hard-working women out there who derive great satisfaction from cooking, even after a long day at the office. For those women, Lawson, who looks more Elizabeth Hurley than Martha Stewart, is the perfect guide to the wondrous world of baking.

"You know, I'm not a cook-to-impress kind of girl," Lawson says midway through the book, but she must admit there are few things more rewarding than putting a warm homemade pie or fragrant cake on the table--especially after preparing a home-cooked meal. How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking makes just such a reward possible, in fact positively enticing, with its delicious selection of easy-to-make cakes, pies, cookies, breads, even jams, presented in Lawson's chatty, pleasantly glib manner. Turns out, you don't have be a Pierre Hermé to make to-die-for chocolate confections; nor do you have to spend hours "faffing around" with hot pans and jars to have jam at teatime. You just need to try baking once, then again, and next thing you know, you'll be turning out cookies and desserts every chance you get. Many of the recipes are hand-me-downs or adaptations from other sources, be it a favorite cookbook or a restaurant in some far-off region, but all are imbued with Lawson's wit and distinctive touch. Profiteroles, My Way are "monumentally impressively better" than the original, thanks to burnt-sugar custard and toffee sauce. Her Coffee and Walnut Splodge Cookies are "American-style cookies; in other words just dropped onto the baking sheet free-form," and so on.

A sophisticated female alter ego of British mop-top Jamie Oliver, and considerably more sly and comedic than most American gourmets, Nigella is sure to convince more than a few up-and-coming hostesses that baking is indeed women's work. --Rebecca Wright


From Publishers Weekly
Called "England's it girl" by Gourmet magazine, Lawson (How to Eat) brings to America her second cookbook, highly popular in England. Lawson, the food editor for British Vogue, suggests ways to feel like a domestic goddess (rather than undergo the necessary lifestyle changes to become one), taking cooks back to an era of less stress and more simple pleasures. The recipes, written in Lawson's characteristic lively, witty manner, encourage this theme. The Store-Cupboard Chocolate-Orange Cake will please the nose with its rich, intense aroma and indulge the taste buds with its full chocolate and orange flavor. The Coconut Macaroons seem soft and chewy with a concentrated coconut essence (though they may need to bake for slightly longer than the suggested 20 minutes). The chapters cover categories from cakes to pies and from chocolate to Christmas. One chapter includes recipes for kid foods as well as recipes that children can follow. The book is designed to instill confidence and capability, positing that if Nigella can make these delights with ease and in a relaxed manner, so can anyone else, "trailing nutmeggy fumes." The beautiful color photos set the mouth to watering. (Nov.)Forecast: Timed to launch with her television series Nigella Bites on the E! channel and Style networks this fall, this book will bask in the warm, fuzzy and competent glow of Lawson's renown. She'll be a hit in the U.S.; her book will get ample promo and fly off the shelves.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Gourmet
"England's it girl...She cooks, she writes, she looks like a movie star...Nigella Lawson has the whole country talking."


Publishers Weekly
"The beautiful color photos set the mouth to watering."


New York Daily News
"...written in a warm, familiar style, is sure to win her many fans on this side of the Atlantic"


Review
?Combining the voice of a good friend and the sense of a good mother, Nigella Lawson serves up domestic bliss on a cake plate!? -- Alison Fryer, The Cookbook Store, Toronto

?I love Nigella Lawson?s writing and I love her recipes.? -- Delia Smith

?Her prose is as nourishing as her recipes? A book that should please mere readers, as well as serious cooks and happy omnivores.? -- Salman Rushdie

"Most cookbooks and food shows are about control, precision, and fear of doing something incorrectly. In Nigellaworld, the kitchen is not a science lab with rigid rules and formulas to follow. It's a place to play, sometimes with your friends and kids." -- Joe Dolce, Gourmet


Book Description
The trouble with much modern cooking is that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes that's the best we can manage, but at other times we don't want to feel stressed and overstretched, but like a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake.... --from How to Be a Domestic Goddess How to Be a Domestic Goddess is not about being a goddess, but about feeling like one. What this deliciously mouthwatering cookbook demonstrates is that it's not actually hard to bake a pan of muffins or a sponge layer cake, but the appreciation and satisfaction they bring are disproportionately high. Filled with over 220 gorgeously illustrated recipes, this book understands our anxieties, feeds our fantasies, and puts cakes, pies, pastries, preserves, puddings, breads, and cookies back in our own kitchens. The domestic goddess has to maintain her (or his) cool when faced with pastry, of course -- but with Nigella Lawson's guidance, even puff pastry can be pain-free.

FROM OUR EDITORS

"The trouble with much modern cooking is that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes that's the best we can manage, but at other times we don't want to feel stressed and over-stretched, but like a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake." Nigella Lawson, the chef-host of the Food Network's Nigella Bites series, offers pleasure in the form of more than 200 delectable (and delectably illustrated) recipes.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Now in paperback, the cookbook in which Nigella Lawson shows us how to release the domestic goddess inside each of us

￯﾿ﾽThe trouble with much modern cooking is not that the food it produces isn't good, but that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes that's the best we can manage, but at other times we don't want to feel like a postmodern, postfeminist, overstretched woman but, rather, like a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake . . .￯﾿ﾽ

How to Be a Domestic Goddess, filled with more than 220 lavishly illustrated recipes, makes cooking and baking as luxurious as it should be, with recipes for cakes, pies, pastries, and breads, and feeds our fantasies of making sumptuous treats at home.

Nigella Lawson is one of the world's most influential food writers. Her column appears every other week in the Dining In section of the New York Times, and she appears regularly on the Today show. In 2002, she was named ￯﾿ﾽTastemaker of the Year￯﾿ﾽ at Bon Appétit's fifth annual American Food & Entertaining Awards. She is the author of four other cookbooks: How to Eat, Nigella Bites, Forever Summer, and Feast. She lives in London.

FROM THE CRITICS

Gourmet

England's it girl . . . She cooks, she writes, she looks like a movie star . . . Nigella Lawson has the whole country talking.

New York Daily News

Her cookbook, written in a warm, familiar style, is sure to win her many fans on this side of the Atlantic.

Publishers Weekly