Nigella Lawson, television personality and cookbook author, is photographed in Toronto on April 17, 2018.Fred Lum
Nigella Lawson pushes an orange shopping cart through the supermarket, glancing around for cherry tomatoes.
We’re in the Independent City Market on Peter Street in downtown Toronto, a smallish urban franchise of Loblaws, Canada’s largest supermarket chain. So the aisles are narrow with limited turning space.
Lawson is in Canada to promote her latest book, At My Table: A Celebration of Home Cooking (Appetite by Random House). When you ask people what they love about her cookbooks and television shows, they say it’s that she embraces imperfection and makes home cooks feel okay about making mistakes. True to that spirit, the beloved English home-cooking guru is a good sport about accepting my premise that we shop for groceries (using the home shopping list for Cliff Lee, the Globe and Mail’s books editor).
Five minutes in, she asks, “Do you want me to do the shopping or do you want me to answer your questions?” So we just stroll, Lawson sufficiently intrigued by the supermarket and its shelves stocked with foreign packages.
Here is our conversation as we navigate the grocery store, its treasures and choices, as well as our attempt to interpret Cliff’s shopping list.
Lawson's latest book is At My Table: A Celebration of Home Cooking.Fred Lum
Lawson: [Having found scallions, carrots and celery, Lawson sifts through a stack of avocadoes, looking for three ripe ones] These are rock hard.
Mintz: There’s the deli counter. Let’s see if we can get the pork chops here.
[The display counter features a row of “pork loin centre chops” and various marinated chicken breasts – chipotle/mayo, smoked jalapeno/tequila, spicy buffalo]
Lawson: That’s not a proper pork chop. That looks like a pork chop without a bone.
Mintz: Can we ring for service?
Lawson: I don’t know that you can. You see [Lawson points to the marinated chicken], that’s for people that don’t want to cook. Is that so terrible? No.
Mintz: I think you’ve got to meet people halfway.
Lawson: Yeah, but I feel that what someone would do is get that, and it’s more expensive. And later on they realize that actually it’s just as easy to get something out of a jar.
Mintz: But it’s the confidence of just cooking a chicken breast that they need.
Lawson: That’s right. I think that’s important. And I think that’s the most important thing, of building up a relationship with work.
Mintz: I find that people are afraid to buy meat and fish.
Lawson: Fish particularly. I think there are certain ingredients that will make people feel more comfortable. Pasta, which is familiar, and this may be a British thing, if there’s any curry in it. If you’re chopping it up, or putting it in the curry, people feel that there’s something they can latch onto. The thing about fish is that it’s very easy to overcook.
Mintz: Yes, but it’s also not the end of the world.
Lawson: It’s not the end of the world. But it’s also very expensive …
Mintz: What about the fish? Let’s try the fish counter.
[We head to the fish counter and Lawson looks about for a staff member]
Lawson: No one is interested in helping you. [Lawson looks at the list, which simply reads “4 fillets white fish”] “White fish”? What kind of a person just puts “white fish”?
Mintz: He also just wrote down “bag of chips.” Who doesn’t have a chip preference?
Lawson: Who doesn’t care about the flavour?
Mintz: You have a preference, right?
Lawson: Salt and vinegar.
Mintz: People love ketchup chips here.
Lawson: That’s just sugar and vinegar flavour. Well [Looking left and right], I don’t think we’re getting any fish here. This is a good supermarket. Let’s just subvert it and get him what we think he should have.
[We stroll to the bakery section and Lawson pauses, transfixed by a sign for schmoo cake, a sponge cake layered with whipped cream, topped with pecans and butterscotch]
Lawson: What is “schmoo cake”?
Mintz: Do you want to get some schmoo cake for Cliff?
Lawson: No, I really don’t. Good name, though. [As we pass, Lawson looks excitedly at freezers filled with sweets] A Toblerone torte? What land is this? It’s great.
Mintz: I heard you say in an interview that, “Unquenchable desire for novelty can really not make for the supper you want to eat.” I’m a former cook. I’ve been writing about food for 10 years. And in recent years I’ve seen a diverging axis of restaurants embracing family-style presentation and home cooks getting obsessed with restaurant presentation.
Lawson: Yes! I know. That is Newton’s second theorem.
Mintz: So is it the pendulum swing of trends?
Lawson: I think it’s Newton’s second theory, which is for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I think it used to be more that home cooks thought that in order to entertain that they had to pretend that they were a restaurant. But I think that’s happening less. Perhaps a lot of them are learning to do family-style meals, because they now know that’s trendy in restaurants.
Mintz: Do people invite you over to dinner?
Lawson: Yes of course. I’ve got friends, you know.
Mintz: I don’t have friends.
Lawson: I have friends. They invite me to dinner.
Mintz: And are your friends anxious about cooking for you?
Lawson: No. I have friends who I’ve known for 30 years. I get anxious if anyone has a new boyfriend or girlfriend because they expect my food to be more elaborate than it is. I generally like things in big plates at the centre of the table. I don’t think you plate up individually at home. But the whole thing shouldn’t be an exercise in how can we make people feel bad about themselves.
Mintz: What then is the distinction between restaurant food and home cooking?
Lawson: I think there is the simple thing of welcoming someone at home and sitting around the table and sharing food. It’s really more about an act of communion than it is about having a self-conscious gastronomic experience. Now the food can be wonderful. But that isn’t the reason why you go to someone’s house and eat with them.
Mintz: We’d be obnoxious if we just did it for the food and didn’t enjoy each other’s company at all.
Lawson: It would be hell. That would be the worst of both worlds. [We’ve circled back to the produce aisle, where Lawson spies purple kale, which is not on the list] Can we give them some of that?
Mintz: I would love to stick them with some real vegetables.
Lawson: [Tossing kale into the cart] That looks delicious.
Mintz: I wrote a column for years where I’d host people in my home for dinner. And I wrote a book about it. But a friend pointed out, it’s a book about how to host when you don’t have kids and don’t have any friends who have kids. I’ve been to dinner parties where everyone gets a sitter. And I’ve been to dinner parties where they put all the kids in the basement. How do you have a dinner party with kids?
Lawson: I don’t think you do very much. When you have children the focus is Saturday lunch. Because you’ve got to do something with them and by the evening you’re too tired and you’ve got to go to bed.
Mintz: So you can’t make a big production of hosting dinner when you’ve got kids?
Lawson: No. You really can’t. But you do at other times of day. And you tend to gravitate towards other people who’ve got children the same age. And so you have them there and they play on the floor and you can be sitting at the table. And that’s how you do it. But it tends to be in the middle of the day then.
Mintz: And get a sitter for your kids if you ever want to actually see friends?
Lawson: Yeah, but you don’t get a sitter when you do your own cooking. So you can go out. But it’s hard to have people in. You can’t have a sitter and be in. Because your child wants you.
Mintz: At this point in your life and career, how often do you have people over for dinner?
Lawson: Not that much. On a good month I might do once a week. But I cook quite a lot because I have my office at home and we sit down for lunch every day. And no phones at lunchtime. I quite often have just one person for supper. Because I feel – talk about stage in my life and career – that I don’t want to be in a hinged position for too long. So when I’m at home, I can cook dinner, eat it and then be lying on a sofa talking for the second half of the evening. Going to a noisy restaurant and sitting up for a night isn’t my idea of fun. I have much less tolerance for restaurants now. I like it when I’m away. But when I’m at home I would rather be lying down with a fire flickering, smelling of thyme.
Mintz: When did that switch happen?
Lawson: I’ve never been a huge restaurant person.
Mintz: But you were a restaurant critic.
Lawson: Being a restaurant critic can put you off. And I did that for 12 years. I generally prefer to be at home. Maybe in the last two years, I feel, give me my kitchen, the table and the sofa to lie down afterwards.
Mintz: You can’t lie down in a restaurant.
Lawson: Not yet.
This interview has been condensed and edited.