Nigella Lawson talks about the meditative qualities of cooking

Virgin Radio

2 Nov 2020, 15:32

Throughout 2020, many of us have turned to cooking and baking. From sourdough to banana bread, we've revived our love affair with the kitchen.

The queen of home cooking, Nigella Lawson, joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show With Sky to talk about her new book,

Nigella talked about lessons that she's learned over the years: "It's taken me a long time to focus on the present because I think I'm naturally a worrier. I'm always stressing over the past or worrying about the future, even in small ways, then you think, who knows what the future holds."

Chris said: "Cooking really helps. I know it sounds like sort of sort of tenuous link, but cooking really does help because it's so meditative!"

Nigella agreed: "Exactly! You are really in the present because you have to respond to what the ingredients are doing in the pan at the time they're there. You can't be thinking "Oh, later on, oh, you know, this will all do this." The focus on what's happening in front of you, and I rather love that."

She enthused: "I love the fact I feel so immersed in the physicalness of this, the smell, the sounds, the feeling of the ingredients in my hands, and I find that very liberating."

Cook, Eat, Repeat

is Nigella's twelfth book, and she recalled the incident that inspired her to write the first years ago: It must have been the early 90s.... it was when people wanted to have dinner parties" she explained.

It wasn't going well for the host. "We heard her crying from the kitchen. She was attempting all these elaborate restaurant things and I just thought, this is so wrong. You know, cooking shouldn't be like this. And I wanted to write a book from the perspective of a home cook, not a chef, and someone who can't do everything, and how you make things manageable and you don't really need to do fancy things to make food taste good."

is out now and the TV show of the same name starts next Monday on BBC 2.