Everyone's talking about... Nigella’s aisle
I secretly want to be Nigella Lawson. Is that wrong?
Not at all – she knows you do. And she’s going to help you make that happen.
Is she bringing out a new cookbook?
No. Better than that. She’d like to take you up the N-aisle.
Excuse me?
It’s a new, virtual shopping aisle called ‘Nigella Loves’ on ocado.com where you can buy an ever-changing array of her favourite products.
Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, 62, (pictured) has collaborated with online grocery giant Ocado to launch her own Nigella Loves aisle on Ocado.com
So what’s up the N-aisle?
Red chicory and cavolo nero have bagged a spot because Nigella eats one or other of them every day.
So red chicory is edible, then? I think of it more as something bitter to stab with toothpicks when the conversation flags.
Dinner conversation never flags when you’re with Nigella.
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You’re right. I’d forgotten about her ability to make cooking sound like porn.
A talent she amply demonstrated in the exclusive recipes she has created for Ocado, with more to come over the winter months (designed to feed a family of four for no more than £1.25 per portion). Take the spaghetti with peanut butter sauce.
Surely you can’t make peanuts sounds porn-y.
I think you will find that the whole point about this sauce is ‘not its peanutiness but its voluptuous creaminess’.
OK, I was wrong, you can.
Nigella can even make a tea towel sound naughty. Apparently you need to ‘clamp’ it down hard (pause and smoulder) over your spaghetti pan, making sure your burner is off (significant eyebrow raise) lest your ‘water rise up fizzingly’ (knowing smile).
Is she still into making ordinary stuff sound French?
Mais, oui. Try it for yourself – when a kitchen appliance goes wrong, how do you describe it?
Knackered?
Non. It has ‘mal-funk-she-owned’
Genius. But back to the pasta, how do the Italians feel about peanut butter sauce?
The praise hasn’t been universal. ‘Italians will love this! Not’ tweeted @newsfromitaly.
But, on the whole, we’re still a nation of Nigella-philes, right?
Very much so. Just think: without Nigella we would never have thought of the frozen chopped shallot.
What has been Britain’s response to the frozen chopped shallot, a bag of which will set you back £4.10 from Ocado?
As one online commentator put it: ‘Why have l not discovered frozen chopped shallots before? Skinning them using boiling water is a thankless task.’
All those wasted man hours!
Well, quite. As Nigella told the Times, ‘knowing you’ve got some chopped shallots in the freezer can make life very different’.
From…
Not knowing that you’ve got some chopped shallots in the freezer.
Moving swiftly on, what should I be looking out for as I ‘wander’ along the N-aisle?
Nigella spends many mornings in contemplation of her oven bottom muffins.
Red chicory and cavolo nero have bagged a spot because Nigella eats one or other of them every day. Nigella has also created four recipes for Ocado including a peanut butter pasta
I know, menopause is brutal. I think she looks great for 62.
Well that might be down to the under-a-tenner, spray-on moisturiser she’s picked out (the Neutrogena Deep Moisture Body Mist, before you ask).
Is this getting porn-y again?
‘It will help through the winter months when we’re all getting chapped,’ apparently.
I can’t imagine Nigella ever getting chapped. She’s an unshrivel-able woman.
That might be on account of the cold-pressed rapeseed oil (£5), which you’ll find up her aisle and, says Nigella, ‘brings its wonderful uplighting golden colour to everything. I rather love how in winter it glows at you.'
I’ll get some – once I’ve finished all the coconut oil I bought to make her chocolate cake. The pot’s huge and it’s rock hard.
You’re still not thinking like Nigella! Come on, what would she do?
Take a hammer to it?
No, she’d don her pyjamas and a pout and gently warm it up.
How?
In the ‘mee-cro-wah-vay’
