Recipes By Nigella Lawson
145 recipes found
Easter Egg Nest Cake
It is, I hope, the acceptable face of culinary cute: a chocolaty flourless cake that falls on cooling. The sides crack, forming the outside of the nest, and into the cake's sunken cavity you spread a soft, voluptuous mixture of whipped cream and melted chocolate. And on top of this you drop small, sugar-coated candy Easter eggs. It's ease itself — especially as you can make the cake the day before, and given that the cracks and crevices are part of its charm, you don't need to be filled with perfectionist angst. And if not complying with the traditions of this holiday, you can fill the crater instead with cream whipped with a teaspoon of vanilla, and dust the top, cappuccino-style, with some cocoa pushed through a strainer. I've used both bittersweet and semisweet chocolate in this cake. Either way it works, either way it seduces. It has the denseness of a chocolate cake, but the lightness of a mousse. Even those who customarily push dessert away, smugly claiming not to eat sweets, will be coming back for second helpings.
Chicken and Apricot Masala
I love curry, but on the whole I am not interested in cooking that involves too much spice-grinding or many-layered processes. Thus this chicken masala is my version of a curry: it demands little effort and delivers a huge amount of flavor.
Chicken Noodle Soup for One
Home alone? This is a superfast soup that is meant to feed one person — that’s right, one. Soy sauce, sherry and ginger give tang and heat to the broth, and udon noodles lend a decidedly Asian feel. And with the added flavors of chicken, spinach and sugar-snap peas, it’s healthy and filling.
Blueberries and Cream
Nigella Lawson called this "the ultimate in a no-cook dessert": nothing more than Greek or whole-milk yogurt and heavy cream combined in a bowl and given a thick sprinkled covering of soft brown sugar, light or dark as you wish. It's a dish her grandmother made, calling it Barbados cream (presumably because the sugar she used came from Barbados). After combining the yogurt, cream and sugar, you wrap the bowl in plastic and put it in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours to let the sugar turn into a dark bronze liquid, slowly seeping into the cream and yogurt. It tastes like a light, uncrunched crème brûlée. When you are ready to eat it, take the cream-yogurt mixture to the table with another bowl filled with blueberries. And then sit down and feel quietly pleased with yourself: you have made a lovely summer dessert and have not so much as broken a sweat.
Coconut Marzipan Cake
If you live near a store that sells good coconut ice cream, then please buy a tub to serve alongside. But these days I am all restraint and go simply for a jeweled scattering of raspberries.
Oven-Baked Polenta
Ligurian Risotto
This Ligurian risotto is not something you would actually come across in Liguria, that green and gorgeous coastal strip of northwest Italy. But I call it that because the components of my recipe are, give or take, the discrete parts of that Ligurian wonder-sauce, pesto.
Summer Berry Cream Cake
A sweet ending for a summer solstice party, this spongecake is light and not too sweet, and the cream and berries make it seem almost more of an unmolded trifle than a cake. I seem to remember that in Norway alcohol is poured over the split sponge, but here I’ve moistened the cake with a strawberry purée. You can use any fruit.
Vietnamese Crab Coleslaw
Chocolate Raspberry Shortcakes
Here, strawberry shortcake is transformed into a chocolate raspberry shortcake, dark and delicious but somehow more grown-up than the traditional dish. Cocoa gives depth, but it can also make cake taste slightly bitter, so honey is added to the dough to counter this. Raspberries offset the chocolate cakes much better than strawberries would, though it would not be a crime to use them. If you have a supply of gorgeous dark, sour-sweet blackberries on hand, they would definitely be a suitable fruity alternative to the raspberries.
Tagliata With Radicchio And Parmesan
Beet and Danish Blue Cheese Salad
It's hard to imagine an easier salad than one of chopped cooked beets, vinegar-steeped onion and crumbled Danish blue cheese. It must surely become one of your summer stalwarts.
Salmon With Bacon And Gherkin Dice
Baked Custard
This is a snap to make: you do no more than heat some milk with a vanilla pod, if you have one, and then beat the milk into some eggs and sugar. I don't split the pod, much as I love the sight of those aromatic little black seeds; I like the vanilla taste here to be delicate rather than perfumed. Certainly it's fine to use a good quality vanilla extract instead. The custard must be cooked in a bain-marie or water bath. You place the dish of custard in a shallow baking dish. Fill this second dish with enough boiling water to come about halfway up the sides of the custard dish. The water bath stops the custard from splitting and keeps the texture perfectly silky and smooth.
Chocolate Orange Drizzle Cake
Chocolate and orange are a traditional pairing, but not one that I've always liked. Chocolate has all the muscle in the partnership. It mocks the pleading, too-sweet orange. But there is such a difference when you use Seville oranges. The plain cocoa-dark loaf here, drenched in bitter orange syrup, is unfussy but sensational. The syrup permeates the cake unevenly, so that every now and again, in a dark, chocolaty mouthful you get an explosion of fizzing orange sherbet.
Potato Hash With a Fried Egg
This potato and onion hash is hearty and no-nonsense, substantial comfort food at its simple best. Although I tend to cook it just for myself at home, I bet if you gave it to a tableful of people when they came round for supper, they would be weepingly grateful, fashionable dietary restrictions notwithstanding. I like a little Tabasco sprinkled over the egg.
Italian Guacamole
Aztec Hot Chocolate Pudding
It looks alarming when you make it -- it's hard to believe that sprinkling sugar and cocoa on top of a cake batter and then pouring hot water over it will end up edible, but it does, it truly does. This is a luscious, homey dessert, one of those self-saucing puddings that turn themselves as they bake into a layer of gooey sauce topped with tender cake.
Blueberry Kuchen
Nigella Lawson's Red Cabbage
Tarragon Turkey
Tarragon Chicken
I hesitate even to call this a recipe. Don't think of that sauce-heavy French traditional dish, but rather a quick way of infusing poultry with a liquorish herbal hit of summery freshness. You can marinate it in the fridge all day in advance, but if planning ahead is not one of your strengths, then know that even half an hour at room temperature does its bit.
Spiced Beef in Red Wine
There is nothing to stop you from serving spiced beef in red wine at a dinner party, but proper cooking should not be undertaken only for company. I make a batch of the beef and, when it is cool, bag it up in single portions and put it in the freezer. It makes a great warming supper for nights when you are lazing on a sofa watching television. Just because it's Wednesday, you need not have to resort to a bagel or grilled cheese for dinner.
Mango Cheesecake
Now, I love cheesecake and I love mangoes, the mangoes best eaten in their natural state, and preferably in the bath. But the two together make a dessert that manages to be both comforting and elegant. The scented flesh of the fruit does more than add to the taste of the cheesecake: it transforms the texture, too. This mango cheesecake reminds me of those light French fruit-mousse tarts, with their glassy, mirrored tops. And the color! The radiant, golden yellow is instant sunshine in the kitchen, just as the taste is summer on the tongue.