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Frankly Speaking With Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson sits down with Jackie Frank to talk food, family, and why "diet" is a dirty word. Photo: marie claire

JACKIE FRANK: You have such a passion for food. Were you always like that?
NIGELLA LAWSON: As a child, I had no passion for it and mealtimes were a great ordeal. But I learnt to cook when I was very young because my mother believed in child labour, so I was set to work.

JF: When did it become a passion?
NL: I was a very shy child, but I went to Italy in my gap year and I found my voice. For many people, moving away from home lets you develop who you are outside of the family script. I was working in a [family-run] hotel, and the Italian grandmother was straight from Central Casting – there was a lot of sign language, but I learnt to cook by watching her. It was a wonderful education.

JF: Did that love of cooking continue when you returned to England?
NL: Yes, I went to [Oxford] University and I just became a person who cooked. I was the queen of onion soup with a baguette. But I would also cook with really inexpensive cuts [of meat], as I was feeding people a lot.

JF: You’ve been feeding people ever since. Where did that instinct come from?
NL: It possibly started off as a shy person’s way of communicating. Both my grandmothers were very interested in food and my mother was a wonderful cook, so I came from that cooking culture. When I started working as a young journalist, I would often make soup as I was thinking about what to say in a column. Cooking is a wonderful way of decompressing, but I never intended to do it as a job.

JF: Between the books, TV shows and cookware, you’ve built a real empire. You must be very busy.
NL: I work absolutely frantically in the years that I bring books out, but then I get quiet and I potter about cooking.

JF: How do you spend the quiet periods?
NL: I see friends. I do a lot of very good time wasting, by which I mean I’m wallowing in time – there’s a lot of lolling about on sofas, reading or hanging about with my kids.

JF: I read that for you, chicken comes with really fond memories of childhood. Is that still a family staple?
NL: Yes – because my mother cooked that. It was our central meal, either roasted with lemons in it or braised, and I now cook that for my children. My mother died very young [of liver cancer, at the age of 48] so it’s a way of eating my mother’s food, but also for my children to eat my mother’s food. That means an awful lot to me.

JF: Some people can find cooking for other people very stressful. Are you a perfectionist in the kitchen?
NL: I know what my limitations are. It’s exactly what I say to my readers – things go wrong; sometimes you overcook or undercook the potatoes. I allow myself to apologise for it once, but any more than that and I think it’s an imposition on your guests. You’re not cooking to impress people; you’re cooking so they can feel happy and welcome.

JF: You’re obviously very well known not just in the UK, but around the world. Do you still get shy of being in the spotlight?
NL: My mother used to say to me, "I don’t know why you’re shy. No-one is interested in you anyway." It wasn’t helpful at the time, when I was 13, but now I understand that entirely. Whenever I feel shy, if I work on making the other person feel at ease, it banishes my own shyness. And there are some things that make me [more confident] than others. When I talk about food or things that I love, I’m not at all shy. Having my photograph taken makes me feel a bit shy, but it has to be done, so I’ll do it.

JF: What about being on TV?
NL: I have a very small crew and I’ve worked with them forever. But when the director says "action", I am still slightly terrified and I just talk to fill the silence.

JF: You’ve called baking a feminist act?
NL: When I wrote [my second cookbook] How To Be A Domestic Goddess, people were writing in saying that I was going back in time. I thought [their view] was anti-feminist. When everything took off about food and male chefs were rock stars, home cooking was despised; I felt that to denigrate an activity because it has traditionally been done by women was profoundly anti-feminist.

JF: You’ve often talked about having no shame in enjoying food, and you’ve spoken out against dieting and the so-called “clean eating” trend. What is it about it that you don’t like?
NL: I hate this notion that eating is dirty, and I don’t like people thinking they are a better person because they don’t eat gluten or something. If you have a restricted diet for medical or moral reasons, I don’t question it, but you need to have balance. People are right to be concerned about what they are putting into their bodies, but it shouldn’t go so far that [it] becomes a source of anxiety.

JF: Do you think too many people worry about what they eat?
NL: I have had quite a bit to do with young women who have had eating disorders, helping to make them see that food is a friend, not an enemy. I’ve learnt it often starts off as, "This is really good for me", but becomes a form of self-persecution, and then more and more things become restricted. You have to watch it.

JF: And how about you, do you watch what you eat?
NL: I’m very careful about what I eat in the sense that I want to be healthy. I’m my children’s only parent [their father and Nigella’s first husband, journalist and broadcaster John Diamond, died of throat cancer in 2001]. I want to feel well. But that doesn’t mean there is no room for chocolate cake when you have friends over!

JF: Being in the public eye, have you battled with your own weight at all?
NL: I wouldn’t say battle. It’s a seesaw – what goes up must come down and there’s an equilibrium at the end of it. But I don’t equate thinness with health.

JF: You’re on your 12th book, and have made almost as many TV series. What still keeps you interested in food and cooking?
NL: I’m always interested in what people eat. The food they like is often the truest thing about them. People often pretend to like books they don’t like, or not to like TV programs they do. But when they sit down to eat, they eat the food they like eating.