Culture

Nigella Lawson is the only deity I worship.

This being the food issue, I felt a reasonable amount of pressure to write something awesome. I ended up deciding that the most awesome thing/person of all is Nigella Lawson. Thus in the food column this week I pay homage to Nigella Lawson, a true domestic goddess.

 
Nigella really is fabulous. I imagine that in real life she is constantly surrounded by a haze of nutmeggy deliciousness and the lingering smell of freshly-baked cake. She manages to make cooking variously poetic, philosophical and sexual all at once. She makes us want to eat things we’ve never wanted to eat before. She is mesmerising and seductive. She is busty and voluptuous in an amazing Joan Holloway kind of way. If you have yet to experience the delightfulness that is Nigella go to your computer immediately and google “Nigella+Lawson+youtube+chocolate+cheesecake”. Now.  Clearly, I’m quite obsessed.
 

A cynical person could be right in saying that her domestic goddess-ness and the sexualisation of the kitchen is detrimental to the feminist cause and I guess they have a point. But at the same time, feminism preaches that a woman can be whatever she wants to be and fuck it! some of us want to make delicious food.
 

Speaking of delicious food, here is my favourite Nigella recipe from her seminal text, incidentally the best Christmas gift I have ever received, How to be a Domestic Goddess.
 

Coca-Cola Cake

 
For the cake:
200 g plain flour
250g caster sugar
Half tsp baking soda
Quarter tsp salt
1 large egg
125ml buttermilk (can be substituted with 30g yoghurt mixed with 100ml milk)
1 tsp vanilla extract
125 g unsalted butter
2 tbsp cocoa
175ml Coca-Cola
 

For the icing:
225 g icing sugar
2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp Coca-Cola
1 tbsp cocoa
Half tsp vanilla essence

 
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Beat the egg, buttermilk (or yoghurt and milk) and vanilla in a measuring jug. In a saucepan melt the butter cocoa and Coca-Cola, heating it gently. Pour in the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, then add liquid ingredients and beat until well blended. Pour into a greased 20cm cake tin and bake for 40 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.
 

Leave to stand for 15 mins. Then turn out cake onto a wire rack and leave while you make the icing. Sieve the icing sugar and set aside. Melt the butter, cocoa and Coca-Cola in a saucepan. Remove from heat, add vanilla and then the icing sugar until you have a good spreadable but runny icing. Transfer cake onto a plate and pour icing over.

 
One final piece of truly brilliant universally applicable Nigella advice quoted from aforementioned seminal text: “When in doubt, or in need, phone the Chocolate Society (01 423 322 230)”. In an attempt to make this advice more antipodean-centric I googled “New Zealand Chocolate Society” but unfortunately so such organisation exists. A damn shame.