Food for thought inspired by Nigella
Brunch with Nigella: A sold out event. Pix by Sameera Weerasekera
Quite curiously, about 400 Sri Lankans managed to all be on time and at Cinnamon Lakeside by 11.30 a.m. sharp. That speaks volumes of the cultural impact that British celebrity TV cook and writer Nigella Lawson has had all around the world. Despite a hefty price tag for a 40-minute conversation followed by brunch, the event presented by Cinnamon Life was sold out and the room was packed!
There has never been a more complicated time to be in the culinary industry than now. In Europe a more health conscious society is forming with a particular focus on “clean eating” – consuming fresh, unprocessed food with a lot of vegetables on the side. Furthermore, in the wake of Instagram’s popularity and the relentless need for pictures to be visually pleasing, food has also had to shape itself to be prettier and aesthetic…what a nightmare for chefs, I think. But they have duly adapted –Nigella herself has produced recipes that incorporate chia seeds and made headlines with her…avocado on toast. However, she remains resistant to some of the trappings of the modern food industry remarking that her signature dish “My Mother’s Praised Chicken” (a dish of braised chicken cooked in a pot of vegetables) “isn’t the prettiest one for Instagram but by far the tastiest and reminiscent of home”.
Furthermore one of her favourite ingredients to use is fat commenting that it’s “like moisturizer for the inside and you see those women who don’t eat any fat…they’re all shrivelled up!” With a dry wit and disarming charm, Nigella deftly takes over the event.
Nigella has the aura of someone completely comfortable in her own skin. Born to Nigel Lawson, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Vanessa Salmon, whose family owned a food and catering business, she had a difficult childhood, shifting school several times and this was only compounded by the fraught relationship she had with her mother. But as a young adult, Nigella’s career in journalism blossomed and she became deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times, aged just 26! The focus, though, always gravitated towards food.
During the conversation she remarked that her late first husband, John Diamond, once said to her, “You think everyone has these strong opinions about what should go with what but not everyone does – and you should do something about that!” It’s a quote that holds steady as she discussed how she was invited to a friend’s place for an elaborate dinner but at one point could hear the hostess crying (the crème caramel had not set) – “I kept thinking ‘This is ridiculous, this is not what cooking is meant to be!’ So I was motivated to write about food. I thought the world of cooking had been dominated by chefs and sometimes that can make it intimidating for people.”
Dazzling her audience: Nigella Lawson
True to her word, her unique selling point has always been the fact she is not a trained chef (“I never thought of myself as a chef…when I chop, I chop like a normal person”). Even her method of cooking seems so accessible – “The first time I’m cooking may be as simple as opening up the fridge and having to use up the things left inside. I cook first in a very spontaneous way and it’s only afterwards do I make it into a recipe and I pay more attention to weights and measurements. Generally speaking it’s very rare that I would do it in a systematic way – I would never work out a recipe before I cooked.” Moreover, for her, a great cook book “is a sort of pleasure that has to be utterly reliable and practical, and at the same time be interesting to read”. Twelve books and three million copies later, who are we to argue with that formula.
Some of the topics from Nigella’s past may have been deemed too sensitive to be discussed at the brunch but Nigella herself has been frequently open about them. She lost her mother, sister and first husband all due to cancer and in 2013, pictures of her second husband grabbing her neck in a restaurant were published. In the divorce proceedings which followed she described being subjected to “intimate terrorism” and emotional abuse by him. However, most media outlets tend to focus on her experimentation with drugs as a result of her unhappy marriage.
It reminds me that celebrity culture is not just limited to those who embody it but those who interact with it. The premise of being a celebrity is built upon the notion that they are untouchable, God-like figures who are different from the layman.That point becomes quite apparent when there’s a rush to take photos and selfies with Nigella as she walks round, despite the audience being warned multiple times not to take selfies (official photographs with her would be provided for each guest), that sense of common courtesy and respect for her personal space being lost for a minute amongst the crowd.
Often we are as quick to praise celebrities as we are to criticise them for misdemeanours so in a sense people become famous for their work but more notable for their mistakes. We put them on a pedestal but are hungry to feel like they’re not actually any better than us. This attitude is more often than not gendered. As opposed to her male colleagues, Nigella has come under intense media scrutiny for her body and her perceived “sexualized” presenting style. On an Australian TV show, the male host read out several quotes from her show and insisted that she had “a way of saying things”. She replied: “I have this way of people projecting things on me. I’m so not. I don’t get it. I need you to explain to me.”
I ask her about it. When she comes round to the journalists’ section of the room, she talks to everybody, much to the chagrin of her manager who is very eager to shuttle her from table to table and get this done as quickly as possible. A whole host of cameras and a bright light is projected onto her so it’s slightly awkward but I blurt out a question about how she reacts to the sexualisation of her TV shows and the criticism about her appearance. She pauses and looks at me for a couple of seconds (I can almost feel her manager bristling behind me) then looks away and dismissively says, “Well you’re going to encounter these silly things wherever you go…but you learn to just push on”. Her tone is polite but firm.
Listening back to the tapes, I hear similarities to an answer she gave when asked about the challenges she’s faced: “I do what I do with good faith and I trust people to take it in that way but I try not to dwell too much on how things are received because I think you have to concentrate on what you do and not to be too focused on what other people think.”
That morning there was no doubt in anyone’s mind just how amazing Nigella is but the fact she’s cultivated an impressive career despite the implosion of her own personal life makes her that much more inspiring. The zen attitude she has towards life filters into her cooking – ‘I’m a great believer in cooking for yourself, cooking is an act of kindness and generosity but it is also important to be kind to yourself.” So in summary, the strongest cook is sometimes the only person standing in the kitchen who learns to cope despite the mistakes or the pressure. It may go terribly wrong, but it can also go very right. Now that’s quite a delicious thought.