The One-Cookbook Dinner Party: Nigella Bites

Who wouldn’t want to cook with Nigella, whose technique and sexy penchant for licking her fingers prompted one food critic to describe as a “prelude to an orgy”?

British cookbook writer/TV hostess Nigella Lawson’s breezy and talkative style is meant to break down kitchen-phobia and teach people the sensual joys of cooking and eating. To say that Nigella’s recipes are written in a “conversational” manner would be an understatement. They were a bit kooky and rambling (like herself) but in the end, quite tasty!

I rounded up another group of test monkeys and gave “Nigella Bites” a whirl:

Watermelon Daiquiris: Luscious, beautiful and so easy!

Union Square Café’s Bar Nuts: Bursting with fresh rosemary, cayenne, brown sugar and sea salt.

Elvis Presley’s Fried Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwiches: Hands-down, the most decadent thing any of us had eaten in a long time: sweet, creamy and buttery. I cut the sandwiches in triangles and served as appetizer bites.

Liptauer Spread (with bagel chips): It looked like something an old Jewish lady (i.e. my grandma) would eat…But I was intrigued by the combination of flavors, which included caraway seeds, cornichons and “French” mustard (I’m assuming she meant Dijon, which is what I used) processed with cream and cottage cheeses. Delicious. (And utterly fantastic on toasted bagels the next morning.)

Soft and Sharp Involtini: First, she explains how she makes this southern Italian recipe with one set of ingredients which sounds great….but the recipe she actually provides, she goes on to say, is more “Greek in nature.” So I made her Greek version of fried eggplant slices rolled around a hearty filling of bulgur, pistachios, and feta, topped with a lush homemade tomato sauce and baked (I made a batch of lasagna noodle bundles for the anti-eggplant contingent.). It takes a bit of time to prepare as you have to precook the eggplant which makes it pretty oily but otherwise, it’s a great recipe, especially for feeding a crowd. And it would be just as good—and easier—if you wanted to skip the eggplant altogether and use lasagna noodles instead.

Raspberry and Lemongrass Trifle: I used strawberries since they were in abundance and less expensive. I nearly had a custard emergency—she isn’t clear on how long it takes to thicken and I don’t make custard from scratch very often (well, never, really!) so I overcooked it and it started to curdle. I snapped into Plan B and dug out a box of vanilla pudding, mixed it and shoved it in the fridge to chill. Meanwhile, the cute redhead passes through the kitchen and drops a suggestion: put it in the food processor to smooth it out. It worked! The trifle was amazing despite the custard SNAFU—which I’m glad could be salvaged because it had been steeped with lemongrass stalks and had a delicate flavor that old Mr. Jell-O Pudding would have sorely lacked.

Chocolate Cloud Cake: Dense, rich flourless dessert, but her crazy-ass sugar measurements threw me off mid-recipe and I had to call in my mathematician. The orange zest and Cointreau provided a nice hint of the exotic, but overall, it didn’t make me do cartwheels or anything.

Nigella’s recipes burst with rich flavors and promise a sensation for the taste buds—nothing bland about THIS British cooking. The sumptuous photos in her cookbooks, whether gooey fried mozzarella sandwiches bubbling in olive oil or the voluptuous hostess herself gazing seductively over the bowl as she sips hot & sour soup, make it easy to see why she’s been called “the queen of food porn.”