Put what you want in your pasta, Nigella

YOU always know when Nigella has a new recipe book coming out — because the first thing to be cooked up is a controversy. Cue outrage about the authenticity of her spaghetti carbonara recipe, which was originally published in 2004. Thirteen years later, it has suddenly become an international incident because Nigella includes cream and vermouth in her version. What doesn’t she include cream and vermouth in, I ask you? Still, Italian fans have been posting howls of fury about her desecration of this ‘traditional’ recipe on her Facebook page, where Nigella’s team published it. Can I just say something? A ‘trad’ carbonara barely exists. This dish is not some ancient formula. In fact, it was unrecorded before World War II, and is widely believed to have been made popular by GIs hungry for bacon and eggs. And if it were hundreds of years old, every village in Italy would have its own version anyway — though admittedly the addition of cream would be unlikely. Perhaps more pertinent is that for newly super-slim Nigella, pasta must seem like something she once ate a lifetime ago, in a galaxy far, far away. But if she wants to add cream, vermouth, caviar and moondust to her outrageous dishes, why not? Sometimes at Moir Towers I go mad and put some toasted pine nuts in my crab spaghetti. Shoot me.