Friday 8 February 2013

Nigellisms

Nigella. I absolutely love her. Who else could make cooking look so saucy (no pun intended). While I have always felt sorry for the ingredients that have given their lives so that I can enjoy my fillet pasta, I picture that same cow mooing with happiness at the privilege of being masterfully massaged with olive oil by Nigella's skilled hands.

There are some parts of her cooking technique that worry me, however. The constant tossing of those glossy locks - should she not put a hair net over that mane? That's just an accident waiting to happen. No matter how luscious a tart, no one likes sinking their teeth into a pastry and finding a stringy hair attached to their lips. I know this, because back in my childhood, I bit into a romany cream baked by my granny, and as I pulled the biscuit away from my mouth I felt the sensation of a hair dragging across my tongue; a feeling so repulsive it has become indelibly burned on my memory and has given me a phobia that makes me check every meal for hair ever since (sadly, this proves the dictum that if you seek, you shall find, as I almost inevitably find some keratin strands in whatever I'm eating). I can't even tell you how nervous the batting of her eyelids makes me feel. No one wants to crunch down on someone else's mascara-coated lashes.

The heaving chest, too, is a tad worrisome - at least for Nigella's domestic. We all know that a jutting bosom makes for the perfect drip tray, and I can only imagine that Nigella's cleaning staff have had some battles removing the tougher stains resulting from her boobs catching bits of falling ingredients.

But it is her way with words that captivates me most. Here, then, are some of my favourite Nigellisms:
- "Look at their chocolatey little bodies" - You'd think she's tooking about gorgeously fat black babies here, but no - it's dessert
- "Hessian woven strands" - that's spaghetti to you and me
- "I find that gooseberries are far more proud" - Yes, I probably do have a dirty mind, but for some reason this makes me think of the panting breasts of Mills & Boon heroines
- "Look at them reclining on their duvet of cream" - Actually, perhaps it is not me who has the dirty mind
- "I just love this art deco colour scheme, jet and gold" - For heaven's sake, it's only a pavlova!

No comments:

Post a Comment