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  • Published: 5 June 2014
  • ISBN: 9781407086262
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 560

How To Eat

The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food




A flapped paperback Vintage Classics anniversary edition to celebrate 20 years of How to Eat and cement its true status as a classic, as enjoyable and inspiring as it is practical.

'At its heart, a deeply practical yet joyously readable book...you are all set to head off to the kitchen and have a truly glorious time' Nigel Slater, Guardian

Revisit and discover the sensational first cookbook from Nigella Lawson.

When Nigella Lawson's first book, How to Eat, was published in 1998, two things were immediately clear: that this fresh and fiercely intelligent voice would revolutionise cookery writing, and that How to Eat was an instant classic of the genre.

Here was a versatile culinary bible, through which a generation discovered how to feel at home in the kitchen and found the confidence to experiment and adapt recipes to their own needs. This was the book to reach for when hastily organising a last-minute supper with friends, when planning a luxurious weekend lunch or contemplating a store-cupboard meal for one, or when trying to tempt a fussy toddler. This was a book about home cooking for busy lives.

The chief revelation was the writing. Rather than a set of intimidating instructions, Nigella's recipes provide inspiration. She has a gift for finding the right words to spark the reader's imagination, evoking the taste of the ingredients, the simple, sensual pleasures of the practical process, the deep reward of the finished dish. Passionate, trenchant, convivial and wise, Nigella's prose demands to be savoured, and ensures that the joy and value of How to Eat will endure for decades to come.

'How to eat, how to cook, how to write: I want two copies of this book, one to reference in the kitchen and one to read in bed' Yotam Ottolenghi

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JEANETTE WINTERSON

  • Published: 5 June 2014
  • ISBN: 9781407086262
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 560

About the author

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson has written eleven bestselling cookery books including the classics How to Eat and How To Be A Domestic Goddess – the book that inspired a whole new generation of bakers. These books, and her TV series, have made her a household name around the world.

www.nigella.com
@Nigella_Lawson

Also by Nigella Lawson

See all

Praise for How To Eat

The one book you have to buy this year

Daily Mail

My book of the decade... I love this book: its prose, its intelligence and, above all, its workable, soul-warming recipes

Nigel Slater

A love letter to all things culinary

Tatler

The domestic bible for the millennium generation

Spectator

If you could have just one food book this year, make it How To Eat

Time Out

A gloriously sensual wander through the possibilities of food. The recipes read more like seduction than instruction

Independent

The most valuable culinary guide published this decade

Sunday Telegraph

A chatty, sometimes cheeky celebration of home–cooked meals

USA Today

[Nigella] brings you into her life and tells you how she thinks about food, how meals come together in her head...and how she cooks for family and friends... A breakthrough...with hundreds of appealing and accessible recipes

Amanda Hesser, New York Times

Nigella Lawson serves up irony and sensuality with her comforting recipes...the Queen of Come–On Cooking

Los Angeles Times

Nigella Lawson is, whisks down, Britain's funniest and sexiest food writer, a raconteur who is delicious whether detailing every step on the way towards a heavenly roast chicken and root vegetable couscous or explaining why 'cooking is not just about joining the dots'

Richard Story, Vogue

Nigella Lawson is one of the best and most influential of British food writers ... The staple cookbook for a whole generation

Ruth Rogers, co-author of The River Café Cookbook

How to Eat may just be the best cookery book ever

Daily Telegraph

A big book in every sense of the word: passionate, informative, detailed, bossy and admirably practical.

Evening Standard

This book, with its evocative writing style and empowering approach (it's all about experimentation, and broadening skills and knowledge) was the one that most inspired my cooking when it was first published back in 1998. The joy is, it's now available in hardback, which will please the legions of cooks who, like me, have a falling-apart paperback copy on their shelf

Delicious

A masterclass in food writing – one glance shows how good she really is

Yotam Ottolenghi, Metro

A classic of the genre: a book that easily gathers both experiences and novice cooks under its wing, with something to teach them all, and a witty confiding manner as it does so. Frankly, no kitchen is complete without.

The Irish Independent

My kitchen bible to this day... You made me realise that every meal is a celebration. You didn’t teach me how to cook. You taught me how to eat.

Nigel Slater, Observer

How to eat, how to cook, how to write: I want two copies of this book, one to reference in the kitchen and one to read in bed.

Yotam Ottolenghi

A brilliant book… If you haven’t discovered Nigella’s very first cookbook yet, there is something missing from your bookshelf. I’m so evangelical about this book that if I find any of my friends don’t own it, I generally buy them a copy at the next available opportunity.

April Harris

It’s the first cookbook I ever properly read, and I loved it on three levels: for the quality of the writing, for the way it encourages you not to follow a recipe slavishly but to be bold, experiment and explore variations as you cook – and for the way Nigella captures the magic that happens when people sit down and eat together

Karen Barnes, Delicious

I’m inspired by Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat… It’s about a lifestyle and an attitude

Kathryn Parsons, Harper's Bazaar

This is a book I constantly return to, as reference in the kitchen or just to read for the sheer pleasure of Nigella’s writing. There are so many people telling us how to eat these days that this book, ironically, feels like a non-dictatorial return to common sense

Yotam Ottolenghi, Waitrose Weekend

[Nigella] brings you into her life and tells you how she thinks about food, how meals come together in her head...and how she cooks for family and friends... A breakthrough

New York Times

How to Eat is suffused with the idea that eating a good meal – together, with another, or on your own – is healing and renewing, no matter how simple the meal, no matter how difficult the circumstances

Diana Henry, Sunday Telegraph

A classic of the genre

Irish Independent

A gloriously sensual wander through the possibilities of food. The recipes read more like seduction than instruction

Independent

A masterclass in food writing – one glance shows how good she really is

Yotam Ottolenghi

Her prose is as nourishing as her recipes

Salman Rushdie, Observer

I love Nigella Lawson’s writing and I love her recipes

Delia Smith

I’m inspired by Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat… It’s about a lifestyle and an attitude

Kathryn Parsons, tech entrepreneur, Harper's Bazaar

If I could only keep one cookbook, this would be it. How To Eat suits the way I cook. It is as if Nigella is sitting on a stool next to me in the kitchen as I’m cooking ... With every page you know she loves this stuff, and she wants you to love it too. It’s a very, very special book for me. My own copy is falling apart.

Nigel Slater

Miss Lawson is the Thinking Person’s Cook. She tells stories, she explains why things must be the way she says they must be... enlightenment and sensual pleasure

Jeanette Winterson, The Times

Nigella Lawson is one of the best and most influential of British food writers

Ruth Rogers, co-author of The River Café Cookbook

Nigella Lawson is, whisks down, Britain's funniest and sexiest food writer, a raconteur who is delicious whether detailing every step on the way towards a heavenly roast chicken and root vegetable couscous or explaining why 'cooking is not just about joining the dots'

Vogue

Only one [cookbook] among my collection could be described as a true friend

Ellen E Jones, Evening Standard

The domestic bible for the millennium generation

Spectator

The recipes are stories as much as instructions… while there are ingredients lists, the words run on like a well-ordered stream of consciousness

UK Press Syndication

This is a book to be read cover to cover, like a novel. Buy yourself two copies: one for reading and one for use in the kitchen

Constance Craig Smith, Daily Mail, **Books of the Year**

This is a book to reach for when hastily organising a last-minute dinner with friends; contemplating a store-cupboard meal for one; trying to tempt a fussy toddler; or when planning a leisurely weekend lunch, when you have nothing to do but stir a pot… Nigella's back catalogue has steered us through many a social situation

SheerLuxe

Two decades on, the task of trusting our own palates to tell us what to eat has become more complicated than ever… There has never been a better time to return to the sanity of this book and its call to come to our senses in the kitchen

Bee Wilsom, Guardian

What sets her apart from every other food writer is her empathy with working women and her realism

The Times