Exclusive: Nigella Lawson's new Cook, Eat, Repeat show is her most personal one yet

At 61, Lawson says she is not ready to give up on writing and talking about food as she loves it so much and feels so lucky to be able to do it. — Photos: BBC LIFESTYLE

Like nearly every human being on the planet, British cooking icon Nigella Lawson spent the larger part of 2020 in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. But unlike everyone else on the planet, those months in lockdown resulted in a critically-acclaimed cookbook, titled Cook, Eat, Repeat.

Lawson initially began writing the cookbook before the onset of the pandemic, but ended up finishing it during the months of lockdown in Britain last year, an experience that coloured how she tackled the book, and consequently gave it a far more insightful, personal sheen.

This intimacy has been carried through in Nigella’s Cook, Eat, Repeat – a six-episode cooking show featuring recipes from the book that came quick on the heels of the cookbook (a formula Lawson has adopted numerous times).

The show marries Lawson’s personal charm, sensuousness and literary leanings with the sort of fascinating cooking that has garnered her an international fan base.

Lawson says her latest cooking show has been such a blessing in that she has been able to connect with audiences in a more meaningful way and talk about the importance of food and cooking at a time when people have felt very disconnected and isolated.

The series also achieves the seemingly impossible in that it really does feel as though even through a television screen – Lawson has been able to forge a deeper relationship with viewers at a time when human interaction and physical connection are virtually impossible.

“All my TV programmes are very personal, but this one – it felt so lovely to be able to share my enthusiasm and my thoughts about food at a time when we spent so much time in isolation.

“And I think what it felt like was the joy of making connection with people. That felt like such a blessing to me,” says Lawson in an exclusive Zoom interview with The Star.

The queen of cooking shows

It’s hard to imagine anyone not knowing who Nigella Lawson is – the Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman recently equated Lawson with Princess Diana, in that both share the sort of recognition that requires no surnames. Simply say Nigella and no one could possibly imagine you’re talking about anyone else but Nigella Lawson.

But although she’s been a food sensation for over two decades now, the Oxford-educated Lawson actually spent most of her twenties and thirties as a journalist. It was only in her late thirties that she wrote her acclaimed first cookbook, How to Eat. The phenomenal popularity of that inaugural cookbook (it sold over 300,000 copies) spurred her advent in television at 40, a propitious event that ultimately catapulted her to global fame.

Since then, Lawson has gone on to write 11 more cookbooks, including the hugely popular How To Be A Domestic Goddess, and has appeared in nearly the same amount of television shows – most made to coincide with her cookbooks.

Lawson spent most of the lockdown in the UK last year in isolation, so some of her recipes like these giant cookies are designed as guilty pleasures for the solo eater.

On screen, Lawson is magnetic – there is a seductive, addictive quality to her that means most people simply cannot take their eyes off her – or her shows.

Some of her most endearing qualities are natural. Her physical beauty for instance, is obvious and hasn’t lost its lustre, even though Lawson is now 61.

But there’s more to it – there is her down-to-earth approachability when she says things like “I’ve burnt my mouth so many times in my hurry to eat this” and perhaps key to it all – the beautiful, almost poetic way she talks about food.

In the Cook, Eat, Repeat show for instance, she waxes lyrical about frying onions and says, “It’s one of the essential rhythms of the kitchen.” She also calls the kitchen “a pleasure palace” and says that “Cooking isn’t a performance, it is simply a series of small, repeated tasks that weave their way through the days.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard cooking described in quite this way before. What’s even more astounding is that Lawson says she doesn’t have scripts on hand for any of her cooking shows and just comes up with these phrases off the top of her head!

Although she normally shares the meals she cooks on the show with her close-knit crew, Lawson says the pandemic meant it was harder to share the food, so she ended up eating more of it than she normally would.

“No, I NEVER have a script, I couldn’t do that – I’m not a performer. I think I try always to have an idea of how I’m going to start off, so I might try and get an opening sentence in my head just before we film and of course I’ve written the book, so certain words are lodged in my head anyway. But then I just have to go with the flow,” she says.

While Lawson is in peak performance from the very first scene of Nigella’s Cook, Eat, Repeat, she says there were some challenges in putting together this particular series, as it was filmed during the pandemic, when restrictions were in place.

“Some people will film two shows a day but my show requires four or five days for each episode. And of course certain things did take longer because everyone had to keep a few metres away from everyone else. The logistics were more complicated.

“But in a way, what happened with this series was we had to re-think it a bit and I think in many ways, I could get more of my voice in and talk about food and why it matters and what the cooking process is about, because there was more time to film, because we didn’t have all the outside episodes where we wander about or go to shops,” says Lawson passionately.

Inventive cooking

Lawson is a sponge when it comes to recipes and gets inspiration from all sorts of (sometimes unlikely) sources – from Twitter to family to holiday meals. This is evident on the Cook, Eat, Repeat show where you’ll see a series of recipes like crab mac and cheese, chocolate peanut butter cake and Gojuchang lamb shanks.

None of these meals bear any similarity to each other, except that they all come from the fertile mind of a woman who cooks literally all the time.

The fish finger bhorta on the show, for example, features a classic British everyday staple interspersed with an Indian (and Bangladeshi) mashed vegetable dish called bhorta. It’s not a traditional union by any stretch of the imagination, certainly not one people would typically think to put together.

Because she cooks all the time, Lawson makes use of things in her kitchen. Her recipe for bread for instance, makes use of milk that has gone sour!

“I got that idea from seeing someone tweet something about a fish finger bhorta and I was just so intrigued, I asked about it.

“So I feel I get some ideas through other people’s cooking, some might be trying to remember a dish I ate somewhere on my travels or at someone’s house, but just as often, recipes come about because I am thinking, ‘What flavours do I want to eat today?’ and ‘What have I got in the fridge and the pantry to help me make that?’

“So mostly my recipes start off in a sort of vague way and then I have to tighten them up and test and re-test. I am an obsessive tester and re-tester!” says Lawson, laughing.

Because she is a big fan of using what she has in her kitchen, Lawson is particularly adept at improvising and even better at utilising leftovers, food scraps and odds and ends that most people would end up throwing away. Her recipe for banana skin curry on the show for example is made up of – as its name implies – banana skins!

“They (banana skins) taste wonderful! I have to say it’s only because I kept re-testing banana breads and then I thought ‘I can’t bear to throw the skins away’. I had a distant memory that in certain parts, people did eat banana skin, and then I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got to try it’. I was quite bowled over by how wonderful that was. But yes, I’m a great believer in using whatever.

Lawson is a big believer in utilising ingredients, food scraps and leftovers in the kitchen to create inventive new meals, something she showcases in her show with creative dishes like banana skin curry!

“I’ve used the water from cooked pasta and potatoes to make bread and for the bread recipe that I shared on Cook, Eat, Repeat, I used milk that has gone a bit sour.

“I feel that for me, that’s such a comforting way to cook – it’s very satisfying because I think you have to think more creatively,” elaborates Lawson.

Lawson also says that going grocery shopping for new ingredients all the time without actually utilising leftovers and food scraps in the fridge and freezer creates unnecessary wastage. This practice can also dull home cooks’ imaginations and engender the sort of cooking that inevitably falls into a same-old routine.

“If you’re always starting with a shopping list and new ingredients, you can become quite lazy, you just do the same things all the time. So it’s quite nice to use a bit of everything.

“Like I have a lasagne recipe – which we couldn’t put in the show, because it would have taken too long to film – and I keep all the vegetable peelings to flavour the white sauce for the lasagne.

“So it’s really about just always thinking, ‘What am I going to get out of that bit of vegetable peeling?’ It seems silly just to put it in the bin – you could do something with it,” she enthuses.

Life in the spotlight

These days, there are countless trolls and critics on the Internet and everyone has an opinion about everything. Which is why it must be daunting for a public figure like Lawson to release new recipes when criticism is just a click away.

Although Lawson says being on television can be daunting and means she is often under scrutiny, she has to forget about all of that in order to speak honestly to viewers.

But Lawson says she doesn’t let this faze her too much and if she truly believes in something, she won’t let it be undermined by people who might say something about it – whether it’s to question the authenticity of a dish or even the choice of ingredients used.

“I think because I test my recipes such a lot, I know they work and that’s the most important thing.

“I am mindful of often saying, ‘This is not an authentic dish but it’s my version of it’. I think that in life, you have to do your best at what you do – not everyone can like everything but I think you can’t stop to worry about the people who won’t like it or who disapprove of something, because then you lose your authenticity.

“It’s important not to dwell on the haters because there are so many people who are lovely out there and why give the oxygen to the ones who aren’t as lovely?” reasons Lawson.

Lawson also says being in the spotlight as a television presenter and food personality means she is constantly being watched and evaluated, but this doesn’t stop her from being herself, something she says he has to do or else there is no point in what she’s doing.

“You know, I am aware that making a television programme means you’re under great scrutiny. Now that isn’t altogether comfortable sometimes but I have to banish that thought when I’m making the show, because otherwise you would feel so guarded and anxious all the way through and I think it’s really important to try and sort of speak honestly.

“And that doesn’t mean I can’t change my mind or I can’t revise things or think that wasn’t wise – but mostly I think you can only be the person you are. There is no point being something you’re not – for any of us,” she says.

Having had the phenomenally prolific and successful career that she has had, Lawson says she isn’t quite ready to hang up her hat just yet or even try her hand at new things, mostly because she loves what she does so much.

“You know, it’s such an extraordinary piece of good fortune to find something you really love doing. I’ve done quite a few different things and for me, talking about food, writing about food, cooking and writing recipes, seems to draw in so much from all parts of life, so I don’t think it is a narrow thing to do – for me it feels so enriching.

“Perhaps I am self-indulgent by sticking to doing what I do, but it’s too much of a pleasure for me to be ready to think, ‘Well, I’ve done lots – let’s do something else.’

“But then if you’d asked me when I was young if I was ever going to be a food writer or be on television, I would have laughed at you! So who knows?” she says, laughing.

Nigella’s Cook, Eat, Repeat premieres on Monday, 16 August at 7pm on UnifiTV on channel 512 and BBC Player.