Chef Nigella Lawson Shares Exclusive Recipes From Her BBC Series

Nigella Lawson is a celebrated English food writer and television cook. The Oxford graduate has worked as a book reviewer, restaurant critic, and editor, and has now taken on a new role starting her own series. Nigella's Cook, Eat, Repeat now premiering on BBC Player on Prime Video Channels. Sign up now and don’t miss the opportunity to join Nigella, one of the world's most celebrated and beloved cooks, as she shares the rhythms and rituals of her kitchen through a multitude of delicious new recipes. To give you an inside scoop of the BBC series, Slurrp interviewed Nigella Lawson. Read on to know more about the series and some of her exclusive recipes that you can try at your home.

How would you describe the new series?

At its heart, it’s a celebration of the power of food to transform every single day: while Cook, Eat, Repeat re-dates the pandemic as a project, I think we all learnt over lockdown that thinking about what to eat, cooking it, sitting down to what we’ve cooked, really gave a focus to our lives that we were grateful for. But the series is also a passion project, delving into the ingredients I love, the recipes I always return to, and the pleasure of cooking and eating.

What does the series have in store for the viewers?

It’s full of recipes that celebrate my favourite ingredients and tell the story of what I’m cooking now: from a spicy broth with noodles, fried chicken sandwich with major crunch factor, brown butter colcannon and meatballs with a difference, a lemony chicken cooked whole with carrots, leeks and orzo pasta, my new favourite thing to cook with fish fingers, crab mac’n’cheese, fear-free fish stew, and so many recipes to make your cooking pleasurable and eating blissful! And those with a sweet tooth haven’t, of course, been forgotten either! I can’t wait to share my chocolate peanut butter cake, Basque burnt cheesecake, rice pudding cake, and a luscious creme caramel for one.

What are some other recipes later in the series, such as crab mac and cheese?

The crab mac’n’cheese is just luscious. It’s a strange thing, it manages to be both rich and delicate at the same time. Maybe this is what makes it so beguiling. It’s comfort food that is also a sumptuous treat. But I’ve got so many recipes in this series that I could describe like that: mood-boosting, life-enhancing and warming dishes that are needed in a dark and difficult winter.

Also Read: Nigella Lawson Cooks Panchphoran Aloo, Calls It A ‘Glorious Potato Dish’

Why don’t you try some of the best recipes by Nigella Lawson that you can recreate in your kitchen.

Nigella Lawson’s Recipe For Pomegranate Fizz

Ingredients:

• 4–5 limes, to yield 100ml juice, or more as needed 
• 1–1½ pomegranates, to yield 100ml juice 
• 1 x 75cl bottle of sweet Fizzy Muscat wine, chilled 

Instructions:

1. Juice the limes, pouring them into a small measuring jug as you go, and stop when you get to 100ml. Cover and place in the fridge. 
2. Now juice the pomegranate, bearing down on top and against the sides of the halved pomegranate so that the seeds really come into contact with the citrus press, after each half is done, squeeze the juiced half with your hands to get out any more drops you can.
3. When you have 100ml, duly strain this into a cup, glass or little jug, and place this in the fridge, too. If you have room, put the serving jug into the fridge at the same time. 
4. When it’s drinks time, open the fizzy Muscat and pour it slowly into your serving jug, so as not to let it froth up too much. 
5. Once the bubbles have quietened down, add the pomegranate juice, give the gentlest of stirs, then add half the lime juice, give another gentle stir, and spoon a little out into a shot glass to taste, then slowly – sipping after each addition, but steady now – pouring in as much of the remaining lime juice as you need to make it exactly as you like it.

Nigella Lawson’s Recipe For Crab Mac ‘N’ Cheese Nachos

Ingredients for mac and cheese:

• 100 grams Gruyere cheese
• 15g or 2 x 15ml tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan
• 15g or 1½ x 15ml tablespoons plain flour
• ¼ teaspoon ground mace
• ¼ teaspoon smoked sweet paprika
• ⅛ teaspoon Aleppo pepper or hot smoked paprika, plus more to sprinkle
• 250 millilitres full fat milk
• 1 x 15ml tablespoon tomato puree
• 30g or 2 x 15ml tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 fat clove of garlic
• ½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 200 grams conchiglie rigate pasta
• 100 grams mixed white and brown crab meat (50/50)

Instructions for mac and cheese:

1. Grate the Gruyère into a bowl and add the 2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan. Mix the flour with the spices in a small cup. 
2. Pour the milk into a measuring jug and stir in the tablespoon of tomato purée. Put a pan of water on to boil for the pasta.
3. Find a smallish heavy-based saucepan; I use one of 18cm / 7 inches diameter. Over lowish heat, melt the butter, then peel and mince or grate in the garlic and stir it around in the pan quickly. Turn the heat up to medium and add the flour and spices. 
4. Whisk over the heat until it all coheres into an orange, fragrant, loose paste; this will take no longer than a minute. It soon looks like a tangerine-tinted foaming honeycomb. Take off the heat and very gradually whisk in the tomatoey milk, until it’s completely smooth. Use a spatula to scrape down any sauce that’s stuck to the sides of the pan.
5. Put back on the heat, turn up to medium and cook, stirring, until it has thickened and lost any taste of flouriness; this will take anything from 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce.
6. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the grated cheese. It’ll look rather fabulously like Velveeta now. Put a lid on the saucepan, or cover tightly with foil, and leave on the hob, but with the heat off, while you get on with the pasta. If you have an electric or ceramic hob it may be better to take the pan off completely.
7. So, add salt to the boiling water in the pasta pan, then add the pasta and cook according to the packet instructions, though start checking it a couple of minutes earlier.
8. When the pasta is just about al dente, add the crabmeat to the smoky cheese sauce, then once you’re happy that the pasta shells are ready, use a spider to lift them into the sauce or drain them, reserving some pasta-cooking liquid first, and drop the shells in. Stir over a lowish heat until the crabmeat is hot. If you want to make the sauce any more fluid, as indeed you might, add as much of the pasta-cooking water as you need. Taste to see if you want to add salt — the crab meat you get in tubs tends to be quite salty already, but if you’ve got yours from your fishmonger, it might need it.
9. Divide between two small shallow bowls and sprinkle with Aleppo pepper or hot smoked paprika.

Ingredients for mac and cheese nachos:

• Mac 'n' cheese sauce OR crab mac 'n' cheese sauce
• 300 ml full-fat milk
• Unsalted tortilla chips
• 1 red chilli
• 1 radish
• Spring onions

Instructions for mac and cheese nachos:

1. Add milk to leftover mac ‘n’ cheese sauce, stirring, to thin out the mixture.  Tip good unsalted tortilla chips out on a platter, and warm in a low oven at around 150 C (130 C fan-forced) while you make the sauce.
2. Drape the chips with it, then put them back into the oven while you chop a red chilli into rings, and finely slice some radishes; I like to use a mandolin for the radishes to get them almost transparently thin. But if you prefer the idea of finely sliced spring onions, go with that, in which case a knife is all you need.
3. Sprinkle gaily over the warmed nachos and watch them disappear almost immediately. 

Nigella further adds a tip, “You can scatter over whatever you want, although I’d guard against adding avocado or anything that will increase rather than offset the richness of the sauce. And I have an inkling that it could be quite glorious as a warm, queso-like dip, chips on the side rather than underneath, though you would need to boost quantities to fill a bowl.”