Technically Nigella Kitchen isn't part of my cookbook collection. As I mentioned my mom owns some of our Nigella cookbook collection (and this was a gift for her) but since I currently reside at home, I have 24hr a day access to it. I really quite like it. It's a bit of a back to basics type book (I've noticed a lot of well-known chefs with multiple books to their name have been putting out this type of book recently.) What I mean by this back to basics generalization is that she has recipes for staples like chocolate chip cookies and almost plain bread pudding (and of course many basics in the savory department.)
Unlike many of my cookbooks, this is not exclusively baking related. In fact, I'd venture to say that it is a little cooking heavy. That isn't a bad thing. Actually it is probably good! I find Nigella's recipes simple and easy to follow, so I quite like her cooking recipes.
She has included a lovely version of Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic and a really excellent section on cocktails. There's a nice variety to the recipes. Obviously they all have the homey quality that I expect from Nigella--and love about her recipes, by the way--but there are Mexican fajitas, a Tomato Curry with Coconut Rice that surprisingly calls for 1 1/2 cups of peas, and African Drumsticks. There is also a fair smattering of Italian inspired dishes--especially pasta based ones, yum--and a good helping of English dishes--lamb with mint sauce, fried fish with tartar sauce, etc. As I mentioned above, the desserts are good staple desserts like Everyday Brownies--it's a great weeknight brownie recipe, by the way. But even these have a nice diversity with dishes such as Swedish Summer Cake and Lemon Polenta Cake making appearances.
As with all Nigella's cookbooks, this book is easy to read with a nice size font--who wants to squint at a cookbook?--and lovely full color pictures. I believe there is at least one picture per recipe, so you never have to guess at what something should look like.
I do have a bone to pick about the format though; I dislike the way the recipes are organized. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I like things to be well categorized and then placed in the proper order. I almost never like how that is done in Nigella's cookbooks and this is one of my least favorites. I like a book where I can flip through a section titled salads or meat or breakfast or--well you get the point--and see everything from the book that fits in that category. Nigella's books tend to organize things in unusual ways--by cuisine or speed of preparation or sometimes a bit of both--and it almost always annoys me--it does work for Feast, which is organized by type of feast (Passover, Christmas, etc) for the most part. This is, unfortunately, one of the more annoying ones. Chapters are titled "What's for supper?," "Cook it better," "A dream of hearth and home," and "Off the cuff," for example. That's cute in a quirky sort of way, but even the subtitles don't exactly help clarify what makes a dish from "Easy does it, How it's possible to feed friends when you're frantic without losing your temper or sanity" different from one found in "At my table, Or how I found culinary contentment by banishing the dinner party from my life so that I could enjoy both the company and the cooking." Both seem to be chapters on entertaining, but what exactly makes them different? These chapters have nearly 200 pages separating them, which makes the process of flipping through chapters relevant to my current recipe needs harder--plus I have to admit I'm not sure why these specific recipes are more suited to entertaining than many of the other ones in the book. Additionally there is a chapter on dessert half way through. I bet you are thinking I'm about to say it should go at the end--this is a horribly picky point and one I stick to, but it is not actually the issue here. The issue is that other chapters also desserts thrown in. I like having all recipes of one type together and the fact that these are so scattered annoys me even more than the randomness of two entertaining chapters.
Happily this book does have a good index, so if you are looking to make something specific or use a specific ingredient, you shouldn't have a problem finding the relevant recipe. I suppose this helps to make up for rather nonsensical order of the recipes.
Regardless of my issues with the organization, I really like this book and when I eventually move out I'll be buying myself a copy (or stealing my mom's--shhh don't tell!)
To get an idea of the recipes, here are links to a few of the desserts I've tried out and discussed on my other blog.
- Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding, description here, photo here.
- Chocolate Chunk Brownies, description here, photo here.
- Guinness Gingerbread
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