How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food

Nigella Lawson has long been among the most realistic as well as the most readable of writers on food. Her description of a three-star dinner really is a good second best to actually eating it yourself. But equally she knows the inestimable value of a bacon sandwich on sliced white. This wonderful book combines both of these talents as she sets out on the ambitious task to impart no less than "the pleasures and principles of good food".

The book is neatly divided into categories--cooking in advance, weekend lunch, low fat and so on--each with its own passionate and intelligent introductory essay. The recipes are straightforwardly presented and the occasional school-mistress tone--"You must keep your stock in the freezer," or "I loathe the acrid dustiness of standard-issue sherry"--is always justified by its implication of an entirely proper seriousness and her endless common sense. But most of all Lawson is a greedy eater who knows about food and can write like an angel. "I hate the new-age voodoo about eating," she declares. "The notion that foods are either harmful or healing, that a good diet makes you a good person." Hurrah! How to Eat is the perfect book for anyone who knows that food is more than fuel. --Nick Wroe