British Celebrity Cook and author of cookbooks, Nigella Lawson has graced our television screens for more than two decades now, and her charmingly yet unpretentious approach to cooking, food, and life has never resonated with home cooks more.
Nigella who couldn’t have predicted a global pandemic, would upend restaurant culture and send us back to our kitchens for the bulk of a year.
Her latest cookbook, Cook, Eat, Repeat, is filled with recipes that could easily be adapted through this unprecedented period of time.
Cook, Eat, Repeat is a delicious and delightful combination of recipes intertwined with narrative essays about food, all written in Nigella’s engaging and insightful prose.
Whether asking ‘What is a Recipe?’ or declaring death to the Guilty Pleasure, Nigella’s wisdom about food and life comes to the fore, with tasty new recipes that readers will want to try again and again.
“The recipes I write come from my life, my home”, says Nigella, and in this book, she shares the rhythms and rituals of her kitchen through over 150 new recipes that make the most of her favourite ingredients.
Nigella viewed putting together Cook, Eat, Repeat as a therapeutic process but ultimately as a practice of gratitude as well.
Every day, she would wake up and taste-test—while simultaneously reflecting on the memories that fuel her recipes—in between moments of connecting with fans on social media who were also revisiting and reimagining their kitchens like never before. The routine reminded Nigella of why she dedicated her life to the pleasure of food in the first place.
Like so many of us, Nigella took pleasure in comfort recipes like lasagne, fried chicken sandwiches, and salty, chewy chocolate cookies. She isn’t here to shame anyone for their personal cravings—in or out of quarantine. In fact, she has an entire chapter of the book titled “Pleasures,” followed by a persuasive essay on why no one should feel guilty for merely enjoying a meal.
Mine-all-mine Sweet And Salty Chocolate Cookies
Ingredients
50g plain flour (or gluten-free plain flour)
10g cocoa powder
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
50g soft unsalted butter
25g caster sugar
15g soft dark brown sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
25g dark chocolate chips
1/4 tsp sea salt flakes
Method
1. Heat the oven to 180 deg C (160 deg C fan) and get out a non-stick baking sheet or line it with a sheet of parchment paper.
2. Stir the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and fine sea salt together in a small bowl to combine them.
3. In a slightly larger bowl, vigorously beat the butter, both the sugars and the vanilla extract with a small wooden spoon until you have a creamy mixture.
4. Add a generous spoonful of the dry ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar and beat it in gently with your wooden spoon. Then, beat in the rest of your dry ingredients, in about three batches. Once the dry ingredients are absorbed, beat vigorously until you have a sticky, rich-brown dough that clumps together, at which point you can stir in the chocolate chips.
5. Weigh the mixture and halve it equally. Squidge each half in your hands to form two fat patties about 7cm in diameter and place them on your baking sheet at least 10cm apart, as they spread while cooking.
6. Sprinkle 1/8 tsp of sea salt flakes over each cookie, and bake in the oven for about 12 minutes, until the top of each cookie is riven with cracks.
7. Once the surface is cracked – in the last two minutes of baking – and the cookies have spread, they are ready. They will feel very soft to the touch. Take the baking sheet out and leave to rest for five minutes.
8. Slide a metal spatula under the cookies and gently transfer them to a wire rack. For optimal eating pleasure, leave for another 10 minutes before biting into one.
Give it a go as the recipe makes two large cookies!!!
