SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Nov. 4, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — There’s a tasty treat in store for Utah theatergoers on Nov. 18, especially those who love food and food culture. That’s the night Eccles Theater dishes up “An Evening with Nigella Lawson,” a live stage production featuring the delightful and wildly popular British food writer, whose life’s focus may be best summed up in the title of her recently re-released, best-selling book, “How to Eat, the Pleasures and Principles of Good Food,” first published in 1998.
Twenty-four years later, Lawson now has 12 best-selling books to her name, including her latest effort, “Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes, and Stories.” Her TV shows are seen in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States. Yet despite her popularity and enduring critical and commercial success, she humbly refers to herself as “an eater.”
I spoke with Nigella from her home in London about the upcoming U.S. theater tour, which starts Nov. 7 in Boston and wraps up Nov. 29 in Canton, Ohio.
Performing Live
“One of the wonderful things about live events is that they have a trajectory and a dynamic of their own, which has a lot to do, obviously, with the interviewer but also with the audience, because the second half is questions from the audience,” she said. “So the talk will go where the audience wants it to go really, and that I love, that spontaneousness.
“But essentially, I couldn’t come to the states, sadly, last year when my book came out there, so it’s a delayed book tour,” she added. “So I will be talking about my latest book ‘Cook, Eat, Repeat,’ but it won’t be just going on about the book because what the book is about, really, is my thoughts on cooking and what it means, and what makes it easier and how we gain so much from returning to familiar dishes, cooking the same thing again, or repeating, the notion of repetition.
“Because one of the things that makes cooking, I think, so welcoming to doing something different is that even when you cook something you haven’t cooked before, (you have) all the processes, and I’m talking about home cooking, not talking about technical feats that require molecular gastronomy or 10 years at cooking school, I’m talking about home cooking.”
The Essence of “Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes, and Stories”
“Even if you’re cooking something you haven’t done before, it’s going to rest on repeating actions you’ve done several times: chopping an onion, stirring a pot, adding spices. Now you may do slightly different ones, but the wonderful thing about cooking is that it’s actually based on processes that have been around for so long; yes, you might then use a process or a stand mixer, but it’s the same as if you’re using a hand whisk and a bowl or a wooden spoon.”
Keeping It Real
“So I think in a way a lot of what I’ve done throughout my life is to try and demystify, or demythologize cooking, because it can be so simple to deliver quite complex flavors, because you don’t need to do fancy techniques or special processes…you’re not looking to dazzle and to make people who come and sit at your kitchen table say, ‘I’ve never had something like this before.’ You just want them to feel, ‘that was delicious, and I feel really looked after, and what a wonderful evening.’
“I think to some extent, the rise of reality cooking shows, which I know can be riveting, and you can learn a lot from them, so I’m not mocking them, but I think they can make people feel a bit as if they’re being judged when they cook, as if somehow people are going to come to your house and say, ‘Well, this isn’t really good enough.’ People aren’t going to do that. It’s a privilege to be cooked for, and you are there trying to welcome your friends and forge memories and make connections, and that is what food is about; it’s about pleasure, it’s about structure, and it’s about the way we connect with one another, which is more important than people clapping a dish because it looks so complicated, and it doesn’t necessarily taste any better.”
Salt Lake City Chat with Like-Minded People
“So really, I want to talk about, when I come — and I haven’t been to Salt Lake City, so I’m very excited — you must tell me where I should look out for in the eating front, because obviously that’s always at the forefront of my mind, but I really want it to be a wide-ranging discussion.
“I’m not there just to promote myself or a book. I want to talk about food and how lovely that there’ll be an audience of like-minded people who’ve got questions to ask, contributions to make. The communication and the connection happens when you cook and when you talk about food with people, and so the atmosphere often has both a cozy and yet an exciting component; both, as I feel eating and cooking do, too. It’s a mixture of things, and you harness them, and you must be prepared to go where they take you.”
Cooking and the Pandemic
“I think it gave people a structure,” she said. “I think it gave people something good to focus on, and think, ‘This is a moment, when we can forget our worries and the real stresses, and come together, those of us who are fortunate enough to have food on our tables, you know, we’re very lucky.’
“I found it interesting from my perspective, because everyone suddenly — the sort of people who don’t normally think of themselves as cooks — suddenly, there’s not much alternative really. I think it gave a lot of people confidence.
“I was on Twitter a lot of that time, trying to steer people and talk about how to substitute ingredients that you don’t have, because, also, you couldn’t go shopping that much, so you had to make do with what you’ve got. So I think it was interesting to talk to people about how you substitute ingredients, what decisions you make when you’re doing that. I think people did grow in confidence. I mean, I’ve always been a food-obsessed person, so it was interesting everyone having just one meal and talking about their next meal. Sounds decadent, but it is a pleasure to look forward to on another day.
“It was funny for me, because I’ve always cooked for myself, I have to say, but I have never cooked exclusively for myself for so long. And I didn’t, just because I would often make stuff for myself and put half of it outside my neighbor’s front door, or people who had cars that were passing my door on their way to the shops, and I could say, have half a loaf of bread or something.
“But I rather loved it, and I very much felt it was important to encourage the sort of people who said, ‘I don’t know if I can be bothered to cook for myself,’ and I feel that’s a sad thing to say, and I was very much trying to say it’s such a wonderful thing. And if you’re nervous about cooking even before all this, in my earliest book, a long time ago, I did say to people, cooking for yourself is such a wonderful way to learn how to cook. Because you’re not worried about peoples’ judgment, so you relax more and you don’t make mistakes and you really can focus on ‘Do I like the flavor of this or not, that was too strong so next time I won’t use as much, I think I prefer it with more lemon.’ You know, it allows you to work out what you want to do and how you want to do it with the ingredients you’ve got and the palate you have, and that is such an authentic way of learning to cook. And I think it stands you in incredible good stead when you’re back cooking for others.”
Room Service or Dine Out
I also asked Lawson if she is more of the room service type when she is on tour, or whether she likes to go out and explore the cuisine of the city she is in.
“I do like to do that,” Lawson said. “Obviously, it depends how late I finish at night, and some days I can’t go out. And some days if you’ve been on a plane and have jet lag and you’ve got a late night, my first instinct has to be to make sure I don’t lose my voice or send myself into a spiral of fragmentation because I’m so tired. So I will go to sleep. But I always like to find out some good bakeries nearby, where I can just go and pick up something good if I don’t have time to go out, but also it’s difficult because you can’t give a fair testing to many places. I never want fancy, you know, fancy-shmancy restaurants. I just want some good food and some good food that tells me about the region, the produce that is grown there, dishes that people are proud of. I want to learn as much as possible, I suppose, and eat delicious things.”
I asked Lawson about her self-confessed “appalling alliteration addiction.”
“I’m trying to train myself out of it,” she laughed. “It’s an astonishing thing and sometimes I just can’t stop myself. When I do my TV shows I’m not scripted, and there are times when I just say to the director, can you just stop me, it’s going too far now… I think it’s also because I like a rhythm of a sentence and the structure and the sound, so perhaps words jump into my head because they are alliterative, but too much, and it is like some awful old musical entertainer, some vaudeville entertainer, so I have to be careful.”
Lawson also spoke about whether there are any food trends, chefs, or restaurants that she is currently excited about.
“I go out to restaurants much more when I’m away from home than when I’m at home. I go out a bit, but I love reading about everything. I love reading about all the new restaurants even if I don’t go to them,” she said.
“A lot of restaurants that open now, certainly in London, are a long way east, which means it takes a long time to get there, but it’s always rather lovely to try something.
“There’s a restaurant called Café Cecilia [in Hackney] and that’s been doing very well. It’s wonderful food. It’s a really good local neighborhood restaurant, but good enough that I will make the long expedition east. But there’s something that will appeal to you I think, it certainly appeals to an English appetite, which is deep-fried bread and butter pudding with custard. In a way, for Americans I’d say that if you imagine a bread pudding that has been deep fried and then with a Crème Anglaise, it’s pretty spectacular. On the whole, it’s just cozy food done exquisitely, which is always smile-inducing.”
She added: “I would steer people coming to London — although I would say you must book well ahead because it’s a small place and it gets booked up a lot — there’s a restaurant, pretty central, just off Regent Street, called Sabor. Now Sabor is a tapas place and you don’t need to book for that; in fact I’m not sure you can. But upstairs there is a restaurant called El Asador, and I think it’s some of the best food in London. Spanish — she’s Basque — and it’s really tremendous food; inventive but not tricksy, such full-on flavors, and I think that if you really want to have a gorgeous eating experience at, as I say, what I think is some of the absolute best food in London. Best cooking, wonderful atmosphere, really relaxing ‘cos it’s not in any way posh — it’s one of those things where the food is exceptional but it’s not tablecloths and ties.”
She also talked about the other things in her life that bring her joy.
“I read a lot, and I like humans,” Lawson said. “I like to be able to see people, but not in huge crowds — a friend at a time or a couple of friends, and I suppose it’s talking and listening, and that’s what food often facilitates, people telling you about a book they’ve read or what’s good on TV at the moment, or a funny story about someone they’ve bumped into. It’s that sort of thing that makes life worth it and that makes you really think, those moments that you just laugh and when you think of an evening, you think, we had such fun that evening. Or you connect with someone in a way, as I say, over books you like. I think that matters, but I am a reader and I do like a fair old amount of solitude and silence, which is often why I don’t go out to restaurants, because at the end of the day I don’t feel I can cope with all the noise of a restaurant.”
I chatted with Lawson at around 4 p.m. her time and asked if she had planned her dinner for that night.
“Well I do, but that’s just because I have leftovers of stuff that I’m still finishing up,” she said. “I am having sausages that are delicious. And I made at the weekend, for a vegan friend, something that I call vegan spag bol. When we say spag bol, it’s a very English thing, when there’s much too much sauce and not enough pasta, but this is a vegan version which is quite slow-cooked, with eggplant, dried mushrooms, three different sorts of lentils, tomatoes, bit of chili, cooked for a long time and, I mean, I’m a meat eater, but I love it, so I won’t have it with pasta. So I’ll have sausages, with that, a very hefty serving of lentils. That’s on my website actually, if you fancy it.”
More information about Lawson is available here. For tickets to the show at the Eccles, click here.
