Lawson believes that Christmas recipes shouldn’t be overly stressful, which is why she finds ways to simplify the festive dishes that she makes. — JAY BROOKS/BBC
Nigella Lawson is a lot like roti canai. Now, that might sound like an awfully strange thing to put in a sentence but if you think about it, both are intensely likeable, insanely addictive and possessed of a certain indefinable je ne sais quoi. For example, have you ever met someone who didn’t like roti canai? I didn’t think so.
And have you ever met someone who didn’t like Nigella Lawson? I would hope not. Because if you ever met a real-life, flesh-and-blood human who expressed a distaste for either – you can safely chuck the person out of your life (hello, red flag alert!).
To prove this point, all you need to do is tune in to Lawson’s most recent television programme, a one-hour yuletide-themed show titled Nigella’s Amsterdam Christmas where Lawson shows us exactly why she remains so beloved around the world.
Nigella's Amsterdam Christmas is an ode to the city that Lawson fell in love with in her twenties and continues to be enamored with, especially come Christmas time. — JAY BROOKS/BBC
Bursting onto the screen
For the uninitiated, Nigella Lawson is one of the biggest food personalities in the world; and the third most Googled chef globally.
While she initially started out as a journalist, her career took off in unexpected ways when she published her first cookbook How To Eat which established her position as a food maven extraordinaire. This was further cemented when her first cooking series Nigella Bites aired in 1999. Lawson’s charm, seductive appeal and ability to talk about food like a poet bowled over audiences, who were instantly smitten.
In many ways, Lawson has used her platform to elevate food narration to something of an art form. She could be talking about carbonara or brownies or a curry and yet, she’ll find something intelligent, articulate and utterly relatable to say about it. It’s what makes her so appealing and so human.
Banket bars are Dutch puff pastry filled with almond paste that are popular during Christmas. Lawson’s version also pays tribute to sausage rolls that are so popular in the UK. — BBC
“I came into what I do – I’m not a cook or chef, you know – I cook at home, but I’m not in any way trained. I was a journalist; I started off in literary journalism and book reviewing and things, but I feel that, for me, words are a vital ingredient, as vital an ingredient as the butter or flour you use in a recipe.
“Because you need to evoke the feeling of a dish. Someone’s not tasting it as you write it or as you make it on TV, so you need to evoke something beyond reliable information.
“The reliable information and practical help have to be part of it. But beyond that, you have to try and use language to convey the sharpness, the sweetness or a floral aroma that a certain spice might have.
“And you need to convey something of what it feels like to be making it. What does the dough feel like now, for example? Language is the only way that you get there,” she says, in an exclusive Zoom interview with The Star.Nigella’s Amsterdam Christmas
Christmas is upon us and in Lawson’s brand new show Nigella’s Amsterdam Christmas, the setting is – as the show’s name implies – Amsterdam.
Cast upon a dreamy backdrop of canals glowing in the horizon, fairy lights twinkling in the distance, old-fashioned bakeries and cheese shops and cold winter nights – this is Christmas, Hallmark cooking show edition.
Advocaat gingerbread cake is one of the many recipes that Lawson puts together on the show, which takes viewers through Amsterdam’s scenic culinary pit stops and Christmas treats. — BBC
So why make a food-themed Christmas show set in Amsterdam? What’s the Dutch connection to Lawson – a British food personality?
Lawson explains that as a teenager, she often travelled to Amsterdam and those memories continue to be etched in her mind. In many ways, those fond memories of wintertime in Amsterdam never left her and so all these decades later, she has finally found a way to pay homage to the beautiful city.
“I was in my twenties when I first went. And I think I just was rather bowled over by the beauty. And because I went to Amsterdam in late November, which you know for us is pretty cold, I’ve always associated Amsterdam with a sort of winteriness and getting towards Christmas and it being dark but the lights are glimmering.
“And so I really loved that. And I went quite a lot for work because my books are published there. And so I always went at that time of year.
“But I really felt always it would be just a really great place for a Christmas special because I felt – it seemed to me – the sort of food you have when you’re wrapped up against the cold, you know.
“I just thought there’s something about that amount of beauty and it’s got a lot of history behind it but I think there’s an enchantment about it that I thought really spoke to the time of year,” she says.
Recipes on the show allude to tradition, heritage and Holland’s ties to countries like Indonesia, like this Indonesian-influenced biryani. —BBC
Winter wonderland
Lawson says that picking the places in Amsterdam to visit for her show – from candy stores to cheese shops and restaurants - involved plenty of site visits, but ultimately she and the production crew went with places that they felt conveyed a sense of space, time and that ultimate piece of the puzzle: a little bit of the Christmas magic.
“I have the worst sense of direction of anyone in the world. I could turn the wrong way out of my own house. So I can’t ever be a helpful sort of tourist guide except to say ‘Look for that’ but don’t ever take directions from me!
“But we went to look at quite a few places because there were practical considerations as well. So often, we needed a place that you could film in that looked beautiful, that gave something of the nature of the city and also that we could fit in.
“We’re a very small crew, so we could fit in really anywhere, but also it had to be a place that wasn’t going to cause a huge snarl-up.
“And I knew I wanted to talk about licorice and we found this fantastic, old Dutch candy shop. I also knew I wanted to go to one of those fabulous cheese shops so it was about going to quite a few and seeing which one would be the best and which would work.
“There are lots of places that we went to that we didn’t use, like a lovely old cookbook shop – but you can’t do everything and sometime you have to lose it. But I think really it’s about finding places that I genuinely love,” she says.
In the show, Lawson walks through the streets of Amsterdam, stopping by local haunts from cheese shops to a restaurant specialising in French fries. Back at home, she cooks up a storm, whipping up everything from an Indonesian-inspired biryani (an ode to Holland’s ties with Indonesia), speculaas biscuits and banket bars, among others – sometimes for viewers and sometimes for friends and guests at a party she hosts.
“I felt it’s not helpful at Christmas to give people recipes that are stressful. For me, it’s about ‘How can I adapt that to make it easy?’ So for example with the speculaas (Dutch spiced shortcrust biscuit), I didn’t want to do the fiddly ones that were rolled up in a mould. So I just used cookie cutters and shaped them,” she says.
Lawson’s Indonesian biryani featured on the show meanwhile is inspired by renowned cookbook author and Indonesian food maven Sri Owen, a friend of Lawson’s who introduced her to the idea of the dish. The Dutch bankets meanwhile are essentially puff pastry with almond paste but because Lawson is more affined with the hugely popular sausage rolls in England, she subverted the concept and turned the long logs into shorter concoctions that look more like sausage rolls.
Nigella's Amsterdam Christmas is an ode to the city that Lawson fell in love with in her twenties and continues to be enamored with, especially come Christmas time. — JAY BROOKS/BBC
It is obvious that Lawson does her homework – on the show, she alludes to origins and roots, but also is clear that sometimes she takes a divergent path or has simply been inspired by an original dish; and that her creation is an off-shoot of that original work.
Because cultural appropriation has become such a hot topic over the years, Lawson says she is careful to point viewers in the direction of her source material and elaborate in instances where she is not following a well-worn path.
“You know, I understand if people fiddled around with the Christmas traditions we have, you feel like, ‘How could you do that?’ But I think that if you were always open and say, ‘This inspired me, but it’s not my own, this is what I’ve done to it’, it becomes in a way a bit more of a conversation. And I think that’s important.
“I think sometimes finding points of connection is a very good way to see how cooking unites us. But I think it’s not making claims of expertise or authenticity when they don’t exist. And I often will say in a recipe, ‘This isn’t authentic. This is what I’ve taken from it.’ And I think that’s quite important,” she says.
Nigella’s Amsterdam Christmas premieres on Tuesday, 3 December at 8:30pm on BBC Lifestyle (UnifiTV channel 512, Astro channel 717).
