How to Eat

by Nigella Lawson

  PEA SOUFFLÉ

  2 tablespoons unsalted butter

  1 cup frozen young peas

  4 ounces Gruyère, grated

  2 tablespoons Italian 00 or all-purpose flour

  ½ cup milk

  2 eggs plus 1 extra egg white

  salt and freshly milled black pepper

  pinch ground mace or freshly grated nutmeg

  Preheat the oven to 400°F and put a baking pan in it to heat up. Butter a soufflé dish with about a 2-cup capacity, if you’ve got one. Otherwise, any same-sized casserole or container, preferably round, should do. If you’ve got any Parmesan at hand, then you could grate some over the buttered soufflé dish, tapping the dish so that it’s lightly covered with it, much as you would when flouring a greased cake pan.

  Put 1 tablespoon of the butter in a saucepan and cook the peas in it till soft. Purée them with the grated cheese and set this aside while you make the paste-thick white sauce. Melt the remaining butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and stir in the flour. Cook, still stirring, for 2–3 minutes, then, off the heat, very gradually whisk in the milk. When all is smoothly amalgamated, put back over low heat and cook, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes or until the sauce is thick and all flouriness gone; if you’re using all-purpose flour, you may find that you need another 5 minutes. Let the white sauce cool slightly.

  Separate the eggs and put the yolks aside. If you’ve got a lemon in the house, slice it in half and wipe its cut side around the interior of a bowl—preferably copper or else other metal. Put in all the egg whites and a pinch of salt and whisk until they stand in soft peaks. You want the whites firm, but not dry or stiff.

  Leave the whites for a moment and add 1 yolk to the white sauce, beating well, then add the other and beat that in. Then beat in the cheese and pea purée. Taste and season with the salt and pepper and sprinkle on the mace or add the nutmeg. Remember the egg whites will damp down the flavor. Take a clean spoon and add a big dollop of the whisked whites to the now pea-green sauce. Beat this in as roughly as you like; you could use an electric whisk and it wouldn’t matter. The idea is just to lighten the mixture to make it easier to fold the remaining egg whites in gently, which you should now do.

  When the whites have been serenely and lightly folded in, pour the mixture into the prepared dish—it should be about three quarters full—and put it on the baking sheet in the oven. Immediately turn the heat down to 350°F and cook for about 30 minutes or until the soufflé is risen to well above the rim of the dish. I’m presuming you’ve got an oven with a glass door and a light that works so that you can see the action inside.

  Take out of the oven and eat immediately. This is intended to be supper in its entirety; it’s not a delicate item before something more substantial. Mind you, some prosciutto eaten alongside is not a bad idea.

  Serves 2.

  In theory, at least, I prefer meatier, chunkier soups (preferably with pasta in, too), but when I need soothing rather than bolstering, this nostalgic chicken soup is unparalleled.

  CREAM OF CHICKEN SOUP

  Use slender leeks for this, if you can find them. Discard most of the green part—you want this creamily white, not a pale, lurid lime green. I happily use chicken bouillon cubes in place of the stock here; half of one in 1¼ cups water will be fine.

  4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter

  3 slender leeks (white part only) or

  1 regular, sliced very finely

  1¼ cups chicken stock

  1¼ cups milk

  2 bay leaves

  1 garlic clove, peeled

  1 free-range chicken cutlet (½ whole breast; about 6 ounces)

  1 tablespoon Italian 00 or

  all-purpose flour

  pinch salt

  pinch ground mace

  1 egg yolk

  3–4 tablespoons heavy cream to taste

  Put 2 tablespoons of the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt it, and in it cook the leeks gently until soft. Meanwhile, put the stock and milk in a saucepan with the bay leaves, garlic, and chicken. Bring to the boil, turn down the heat, and simmer until the chicken is just tender. I know it sounds not very long, but about another 5 minutes should do it. A couple or so minutes before the chicken’s ready, the leeks should be soft and cooked enough. Into the leek mixture stir the flour and cook on a low heat, stirring, for a couple of minutes.

  By this time the chicken should be ready to come out, so remove it and pour the milk mixture into the floury leeks, stirring while you do so. Bring this to just below the boil, stirring occasionally. While you’re not stirring, shred or finely chop the chicken and return it to the saucepan. Add the salt and mace and keep cooking over a lowish heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Add the remaining butter and cook in the same way for another 5 minutes. If the soup looks as if it’s getting too thick and white-saucy, just add a glug of milk or as much as you feel you need.

  Pour into a blender in batches of about 1 cup of liquid at a time and whizz and then push through a strainer back into the rinsed-out saucepan.

  Put back on the heat, stirring until warm enough to eat. Mix the egg yolk and cream together and, off the heat, stir into the soup.

  Serves 1–2.

  BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND PASTA SOUP

  This is robuster stuff altogether. I make it for lunch when it’s cold and I want to cook something easy but with some distracting chopping involved. You can use best-quality vegetable bouillon cubes to make the stock for this.

  ½ tablespoon olive oil

  ½ small onion, minced

  8–9 ounces butternut squash, peeled and cut into ½-inch dice

  ¼ cup white wine or vermouth

  2½ cups vegetable stock

  1 bay leaf

  2 ounces ditalini or other soup pasta

  salt, if needed

  Parmesan, for grating at table

  Put the oil in a biggish, heavy-bottomed pan on the stove and, when hot, add the onion. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until soft, then add the squash and turn well in the pan for 2 minutes. Pour in the wine, let it bubble up, then add the stock and bay leaf. Bring to the simmering point, then leave to simmer away for about 10 minutes. Take out a ladleful, purée it, then put it back in the pan. Turn up the heat and add the ditalini. Cook for 10–12 minutes until the pasta is cooked. Taste and add salt, if needed, remembering that Parmesan will be added to each serving, then ladle this thick, sweet stew of a soup into your bowl. Grate the Parmesan over as you eat.

  Serves 2.

  I see in my notes I’ve called this Sunday Night Chicken Noodle, and it’s true I do often cook this, or a version of it, on Sunday nights. But if I do, I almost certainly have to have a rerun of it on Monday evening. You can use chicken bouillon cubes, the best you can buy, to make the stock for this.

  SUNDAY NIGHT CHICKEN NOODLE

  4 tablespoons sake

  3 tablespoons mirin

  1 tablespoon soy sauce

  1 fat garlic clove crushed with flat

  of knife

  1 dried red chili pepper

  1 chicken cutlet (about 6 ounces), cut diagonally into ¼-inch strips

  4 ounces fresh noodles

  handful choi sum or other Asian green

  2 cups chicken stock

  1 tablespoon vegetable oil plus few drops sesame oil

  1 tablespoon chopped coriander

  Mix the sake, mirin, soy sauce, garlic, and chili in a bowl. Add the chicken and coat with this marinade. Leave for an hour.

  Cook the noodles in boiling salted water and throw in the choi sum during the last 2 minutes of cooking. Drain. Heat up the stock.

  Into a hot wok or frying pan pour the oils and, when they in turn are hot, throw

  in the pieces of chicken and toss about till cooked, about 3 minutes. Pour over the marinade and, when it’s bubbled nearly away and the chicken is glossy and dark, put the noodles in a bowl, pour the stock over them, and top with the pieces of wok-bronzed chic
ken. Sprinkle over the coriander and eat.

  Serves 1.

  SPAGHETTI AGLIO OLIO

  Pasta is inevitably, these days, what one eats just in the normal run of things in the evening. You don’t need a recipe for this any more than you do for bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches, but this is not meant to be a manual to cook from so much as a prompt or companion guide to eating. These, then, are suggestions based on a presumption of interest rather than barked instructions to be carried out to the patronizing letter. At home, alone, especially if I’ve been working late, I make a vast bowl of spaghetti aglio olio (sometimes, peperoncino): just spaghetti, or spaghettini, turned in some olive oil, in which some fat cloves of garlic have been turned till golden and then discarded, with maybe a sprinkling of dried red chili pepper. A glass of cold beer is wonderful with it. If you are so exhausted you want an even easier version, then I suggest you buy a bottle of garlic-infused olive oil and use it to make the dish.

  LINGUINE WITH BACON

  This is a particularly good, particularly low-effort supper. Get in from work. Run your bath. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Put some bacon slices cut into ¼-inch strips on a baking tray with a few cloves of garlic, peeled and minced, thrown over. Drizzle with about 1 tablespoon olive oil. Put the water for the pasta on to boil and put the tray of garlic-strewn bacon in the oven. When the water’s boiling, add salt and throw in the pasta—linguine or spaghetti—and run up to your bath, taking with you the timer, set for 10 minutes (the pasta should take about 12 minutes). When the timer goes off, rush down in your towel, taste the pasta and, when it’s ready, drain it, reserving a cup of the water. Take the cooked bacon out of the oven and toss with the pasta, adding a drop or two of the cooking water if you think it needs lubrication. Decant into a bowl and, if you like, take it back up to the bath with you.

  SPAGHETTI CARBONARA

  This is my favorite—along with all my other favorites. I love the buttery, eggy creaminess of the sauce, saltily spiked with hot cubed pancetta—it’s comforting, but not in a sofa-bound kind of way. It feels like proper dinner, only it takes hardly any time to cook. This is my most regular dinner for two; I keep, at all times, the wherewithal to make it in the house. You can add heavy cream to the egg-and-cheese mixture if you want—a couple of tablespoons, but then use 2 yolks only, rather than one yolk and one whole egg—but this takes it away from being something one can get together with ingredients at hand. On this ease-of-assembly principle, do by all means substitute 3 or 4 slices of bacon, cut into strips, for the pancetta. But it’s not so hard to buy several 4-ounce chunks of pancetta at one time and just bag them up and freeze them separately; this, really, is what I’d advise.

  ½ pound spaghetti

  4 ounces pancetta, cut into ¼-inch dice or in ¼-inch strips

  2 teaspoons olive oil

  4 tablespoons vermouth or white wine

  1 egg yolk

  1 whole egg

  ¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan

  freshly milled black pepper

  whole nutmeg

  1 generous tablespoon unsalted butter

  Put some water on and, when it’s boiling, add a decent amount of salt and then, when it’s boiling again, the pasta. Italians say the water pasta cooks in should be as salty as the Mediterranean. Put the pancetta in a frying pan with the oil on medium to high and fry for about 5 minutes, maybe more, until it is beginning to crisp. Throw in the vermouth and let it bubble away for about 3 minutes until you have about 2 teaspoons or so of syrupy wine-infested bacon fat. Remove from the heat, unless you have so brilliantly timed it that the egg mixture is prepared and the pasta cooked.

  For the egg mixture, simply beat the yolk, the whole egg, and cheese. Season with the pepper, grate in some nutmeg to taste (the pancetta or bacon and the cheese should provide enough salt), and mix with a fork. When the pasta’s ready, quickly put the pancetta pan back on the heat, adding the butter as you do so. Give the pasta a good shake in the colander (but mind it isn’t too drained) and then turn it into the hot pan. Turn it with a spatula and a wooden spoon, or whatever works for you, and then when it’s all covered and any excess liquid absorbed, turn off the heat (take the pan away from the burner if your stove’s electric), pour the egg mixture over the bacony pasta, and quickly and thoroughly turn the pasta so that it’s all covered in the sauce. Be patient; whatever you do, don’t turn the heat back on or you’ll have scrambled eggs. In time, the hot pasta along with the residual heat of the pan will set the eggs to form a thickly creamy sauce that binds and clings lightly to each strand of pasta.

  This makes two platefuls; it’s up to you whether you conclude this is enough for one or two of you. I incline toward two for lunch and one for dinner.

  PASTA WITH BUTTER AND BOUILLON CUBE JUICES

  The Italians do a wonderful pasta sauce that is really just the meat juices left in the roasting pan after their particularly flavorsome way of cooking what they call rosbif. They make it with the rosemary-spiked juices left from a roast chicken, too, and you can adapt this to the last-minute, pantry school of cookery by melting part of a crumbled bouillon cube in some rosemary-flecked butter. Again, I like linguine here, but spaghetti’s good, too.

  While about ¼ pound of pasta is cooking—I’m taking it you’re eating this alone, but just double for two of you—melt 2 tablespoons butter in a saucepan and add 1 teaspoon olive oil and 2 peeled garlic cloves, crushed with the flat of a knife. When the butter starts fizzing, throw in the very finely chopped leaves from a finger-length sprig of rosemary. When the cloves of garlic turn brown, remove them and in their place crumble in about half a meat or chicken bouillon cube, preferably Italian. Turn in the pan, adding another dollop of butter, and then add 1 tablespoon white wine or vermouth and 1 tablespoon water and carry on cooking for a minute or so before spooning in another nut of butter.

  When the pasta’s ready, drain it, reserving a small cupful of water. Toss the pasta in the stock sauce, adding some of the water if the pasta absorbs too much of the liquid too fast. Grate over some Parmesan and eat.

  PASTA WITH UNPESTOED PESTO

  In summer, when you might consider eating outside, make a large bowl, just for the two of you, of linguine with what I think of as pesto in its discrete parts: we’re talking culinary deconstruction here. While the pasta’s cooking, pour some preferably Ligurian olive oil into a large frying pan and throw in some peeled cloves of garlic. Cook over gentle heat until the garlic colors and its scent wafts upward. Remove the cloves from the pan and the pan from the heat. Roughly tear up or shred a mound of basil leaves, set aside, and, in a second dry frying pan, toast a handful or so of pine nuts. When the pasta’s ready, drain it, toss it in the garlic-infused olive oil, then transfer to a warm bowl. Grate over some Parmesan, then, using a vegetable peeler, shave in some pecorino (and, frankly, it doesn’t matter if you use Parmesan for both grating and shaving; who wouldn’t, really?) and sprinkle with the toasted pine nuts. Toss well, throw over all but a small handful of the basil leaves, and turn again. Grate a little more cheese over and sprinkle with the remaining shredded basil leaves. Leave the bottle of oil within reach.

  Mostly, when I’m cooking some pasta for myself I want it to take as little time as possible. But I don’t mind that the recipe that follows is, well, not laborious, but time-consuming. I just love it. It’s a version of the Venetian bigoli in salsa, the salsa in question being a pungent, long-cooked, almost emulsified sauce of onions and anchovies. Bigoli are the only pasta with an excuse for being whole wheat—that’s how they are traditionally made. I made this the first time, though, to use up some spelt pasta—pasta made with farro—I had. I’d been writing a piece for Vogue on farro and had been sent, as part of the requested consignment, some pasta made with this grain. I tried it once and loathed it. Then it occurred to me that with a heartier sauce, something with real depth to it, it might work. I tried this and was transported, converted. I’ve made it since many times with ordinary spaghetti—which work
s fine—and you can use any whole-wheat version of pasta. And any long, hollow pasta, such as perciatelli or bucatini (in effect, non-wholewheat bigoli) is wonderful here. If you’re intent on locating spaghetti di farro, turn to page 461 for a source.

  PASTA WITH ANCHOVY SAUCE

  My mother always soaked anchovies in milk, just as she did kidneys and chicken livers; therefore, so do I. The inclusion of Marsala is a non-Venetian innovation, but its dry, deep mellowness works well with the fierce saltiness of the anchovies.

  What makes this ideal for me for eating alone is that I don’t need to worry about any other person’s tiresomeness about anchovies.

  6 anchovy fillets in olive oil

  4 tablespoons milk plus more,

  if needed

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  1 medium onion, sliced very finely (use a processor, if possible)

  2 tablespoons Marsala

  4 ounces regular or whole-wheat long or shaped dry pasta (see above)

  2 heaping tablespoons chopped parsley

  Wipe the anchovies with a paper towel, put them in a small dish—a ramekin, say—and cover with some of the milk; about 2 tablespoons should do it. In a heavy-bottomed frying pan, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil and then add the onion. Cook uncovered over low heat for about 5 minutes, then add the Marsala and cook for about 30 minutes, till you have a soft, golden, oniony mush. You may need to sprinkle in some water while it’s cooking to keep it from drying up or sticking to the pan. If you make a lid out of foil and press down on the top of the onions (rather than the pan), this will help. Then turn up the heat and cook uncovered for 1–2 minutes, stirring to prevent sticking. While all this is going on, put on some water for the pasta.

  Remove the anchovies from the milk and chop them finely. Add them to the onion mixture, stir well, pour in the milk in which they’d been soaking, and keep stirring. When the anchovies have been incorporated into the purée, add the remaining milk, the remaining oil, and about half the parsley. Stir well and remove from the heat. Taste to see if you’d like some more milk; it will soften the taste and loosen the texture. When the pasta’s cooked, drain it, and then quickly but thoroughly turn it in the warm anchovy and onion sauce. Transfer to your bowl or plate and sprinkle over the remaining parsley.