Product Description

It’s sensuous summer all year long with Nigella -- in a fabulous new cookbook that draws on the best from all over the world: to tie in with her new 8-part television series.

Summer food doesn’t have to be eaten just in summer. Even on our coldest days, indeed especially then, we need to summon up a little warmth on our plate. Summer cooking is relaxed cooking that conjures up a mood of sunny expansiveness: easy cooking, easy eating. No one wants to slave over a hot stove for hours: the keynote, as ever with Nigella, is simplicity. The ideal is of lazy abundance.

The food of Italy and Spain, the fragrant mezze of the Eastern Mediterranean, the traditional strawberries-and-cream feel of an English summer afternoon: all these notes and flavours are reflected in Forever Summer. The uniting force is attitude as well as palate so the food is far-reaching but personalised, and fresh so that it fits in with the way we live. It’s a way of celebrating summer while it lasts, and extending it into the months beyond.

Forever Summer has the practical appeal of a cookbook as well as the aspirational lure of a travel book, the sort one might flick through longingly in winter, dreaming of much-needed sunshine.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #686964 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-08
• Released on: 2002-10-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
The cover of Forever Summer features Nigella Lawson posing in a convertible car with luggage piled behind her, as though driving along the Riviera. Her beaming smile, however, betrays a hint of strain. Can she be wondering whether success and fame constitute something of a treadmill? Given that she has attained iconic single- name status, will she ever be able to return, should she wish, to the humble obscurity of serious journalism?

If treadmill it is, it's one she continues to work with considerable panache. What she never lacks is poise: her effortless blend of the artless and the deeply considered does not fail, here, to beguile. Nigella's appeal is, of course, a lifestyle thing--you, too, could be at once an intelligent modern woman and an old-fashioned vamp, draped in pashminas and liable impulsively to pop off for a run down to Monte. In all this, and especially if you take her television persona into account, the food can seem a little incidental. But it is of course at the heart of the project. Nigella Lawson seems to have a knack for thinking creatively about food which allows her to turn a recipe over in her hands, as it were, give it a tweak, and turn it into something livelier and fresher than it was before. So her Greek Salad marinates the red onion and omits the sapid cucumber, substituting sliced fennel. Barbecued Sea Bass is stuffed with preserved lemons (pickled, incidentally, in a usefully unusual way). Roast Potatoes are given in their Swedish Hasselback form (sliced nearly through, so they fan out in cooking). The section on ices is adorned with Margarita Ice Cream ("surely what angels would eat at their hen night"), while Nigella indulges her inner slapper with Slut-Red Raspberries in Chardonnay Jelly. Above all, she communicates, through dozens and dozens of recipes, the ideals of freshness, simplicity, spontaneity, and immediacy, a combination that's hard to resist. --Robin Davidson

From Publishers Weekly
Setting the warm, relaxed tone befitting the season, U.K. food goddess Lawson (Nigella Bites) presents her newest volume as an ode to summer, to freshness, and, in gray weather, to a time to "conjure up the sun, some light, a lazy feeling of having all the wide-skied time in the world to sit back and eat warmly with friends." Befitting a book of simply prepared summer dishes, Lawson takes her inspiration from such warm climes as southern Europe, the Middle East and southeast Asia. For starters, Lawson offers Grilled Eggplant with Feta, Mint and Chilli, where the ingredients are rolled inside the thinly sliced eggplant, and then moves on to Flatbread Pizzas, whose dough is made with za'atar, a mixture of thyme, sumac and sesame. Her pastas and salads are innovative and wonderfully fresh, such as Linguine with Chilli, Crab and Watercress; Watermelon, Feta and Black Olive Salad; or Shrimp and Black Rice Salad with Vietnamese Dressing. Main courses include Keralan Fish Curry with Lemon Rice, as well as Porchetta, which is chopped pork shoulder cooked with fennel, garlic and rosemary and sandwiched within a ciabatta roll. Winding down the meal, Lawson serves such cooling fare as Figs for a Thousand and One Nights, which are broiled and then pulled open until they look like "young birds squawking to be fed worms by their mommy" before they are drizzled with rose water, orange water and sugar. As viewers of her shows will notice, the book's photos-of both Nigella and the food-are just as cool and luscious as the recipes themselves.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
“Considerable panache. What she never lacks is poise: her effortless blend of the artless and the deeply considered does not fail, here, to beguile…. Nigella Lawson seems to have a knack of thinking creatively about food which allows her to turn a recipe over in her hands, as it were, give it a tweak and turn it into something livelier and fresher than it was before…. Above all, she communicates, through dozens and dozens of recipes, the ideals of freshness, simplicity, spontaneity and immediacy, a combination it's hard to resist.” -- Amazon.co.uk

“The food is so good, and colour photographs by Petrina Tinslay so mouthwatering, readers will tolerate the British measurements (a conversion chart is included).” -- The Gazette (Montreal)

Praise for Nigella:

“[Nigella] brings to life the sensual aspects of cooking, helping you understand not only what you are after but also the pleasure of the journey, and she encourages you along the way.” -- The New York Times

“I love Nigella Lawson’s writing and I love her recipes.” -- Delia Smith

“How to Eat [is] my book of the decade.” -- Nigel Slater, author of Appetite