Nigella’s kitchen crazes

The Domestic Goddess shares her latest must-haves I have always been a pancake person, but now it’s waffles. I use a Nordic Ware stovetop maker. It’s not cheap, but it lasts for ever. My CSI gloves – I get black disposable ones from Amazon and use them a lot, especially when handling turmeric and chilli. I wear contact lenses and I forget. Microplane graters. I have been given an electric potato masher from Lakeland called Masha, and I do like it! I can’t live without a stick blender. I use it for curry pastes and soups. I also make a coriander, jalapeño and garlic salsa with it every week. We have it with blue tortilla chips, chicken, butternut curry. I have yet to discover something you can’t eat it with! I don’t use a food processor very often now.

times a week. I do yoga three times a week. I do it with a trainer who comes in the morning. I have to do something I enjoy, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. The older I get the more I realise I have got to do lots of stretching. So even if I’m not doing yoga, I make myself do lots of stretching.

Do you still carry food around in your handbag?

I do! I came with delicious COYO salted caramel yoghurt today because I was terrified I might be hungry between morning and lunch. I’m not a grazer by nature, but I am frightened of being hungry and not being able to eat.

What makes you feel happiest?

I like my fridge to be full of things. I buy see-through takeaway boxes in bulk and have everything filled up in there. I do like things I can make ahead, like a butternut and sweet potato curry. Or my Moroccan vegetable pot, which I have by itself or with rice or with a roast. I make the veg in autumn and winter.

What are your kitchen essentials at the moment?

Preserved lemons. They are so intensely fragrant and bring a depth as well as a sharpness. I use them such a lot [and] I have made a dirty lemon martini recipe. Aleppo pepper, which is also known as pul biber, looks like little shards of terracotta. It is a wonderfully fruity, almost lemony, chilli flake. I love it on Turkish eggs and put it on just about anything.

Any favourite food shortcuts?

For me, it’s about what makes my life easier. I am very much a make-ahead person. You can do a pavlova base and the cheesecake a few days before. I have microplanes and put everything through them! Ginger and garlic, too. It means you don’t have to peel things. I don’t feel bad about using chicken stock concentrate. My late mother must be spinning in her grave, but I now get good breadcrumbs from the supermarket. I couldn’t resist the temptation! I have the spiralizer attachment to my Kitchen Aid and I once made swirly things to go with my salad. It was a bit spooky.

You are famous for tucking in to the leftovers in your fridge late at night in your TV shows. Have you always been like that?

Not when I was a child! Probably from the age of 19 onwards, though. I still ask my daughter if she is going to be home for supper because I want to know if I have to roast the chicken.

Your love of food is obvious in your books, but you say you didn’t have that pleasure as a child?

No I didn’t. That’s what I say to people who say their child won’t eat. I say just leave them alone. Don’t worry about it unless it’s a problem – that is a separate issue. I think there is something more enjoyable when you are in charge of what you eat and you are cooking as well. Although I don’t mind room service when I’m in a hotel – it makes me feel very much part of life when I’m sitting there thinking, ‘What can I have for supper?’ Sometimes I’m exhausted and I don’t cook something enormous. Even if you are just cutting a bit of bread and finding a nice bit of cheese to go with it. To be involved makes a difference to me.

Have you passed your love of cooking down to your children?

I would have thought so. They have certainly grown up with that. Because I work from home, the table is where I sit and work.

This is your 11th book. Do you finally see yourself as a professional cook?

I am not a trained chef in that way. I am a professional writer, but I still don’t have knives. I feel quite nervous if I have to do a demo. There are a lot of chefs who do incredible, complicated things and I go on and I am very clumsy. I chop something, I stir it, I pour it and it’s ready. What can I do to fill the time? Tap dance? We live in a world where there is so much, so glossily done. If I am given a cake, I like to see that it has been made by someone and that it’s not even. That is what cooking is. Things can’t look like they come from a factory. You know on Bake Off where they say you have to make 18 biscuits and they have to be identical? I have never had two biscuits that look identical!

‘I carry food in my handbag, I am frightened of being hungry and not being able to eat’