Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This, I tell you, is the trifle to end all trifles.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Enjoy Nigella Lawson's famous Arabian Pancakes with Orange-Flower Syrup from her Nigella Summer cookbook. A perfect, light dessert to follow a Middle-Eastern-style dinner.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

It might sound odd to introduce this as a baked pasta for summer, but that’s how I’ve always thought of it. Actually, I’d all but forgotten about it, but it popped into my mind recently, and I have returned to it happily. I’ve cooked it a few times in quick succession recently, and I feel it will be a mainstay of the summer which I hope is to come. True, I wouldn’t necessarily want to make this during a heatwave, but it’s perfect for an al fresco supper or weekend lunch when the air is balmy and the mood mellow. It is a simpler recipe than you might presume, in the sense that no part of it is difficult, though I admit it’s fairly process-heavy: you need to make the tomato sauce; mix up the filling; boil the pasta shells for 5 minutes; stuff them and cover them with the sauce before it all goes into the oven to bake. It feels like less of an undertaking, I find, if you’ve made the tomato sauce ahead of time and also if you use frozen rather than fresh spinach. (Indeed, I’ve decided to specify just the frozen in the ingredients list, as it

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

If you want to forgo the grilled radicchio alongside, then do and just make a tomato salad to go with it, but the combination, as it stands, is perfect: the heat-wilted radicchio loses some of its bitterness, but keeps just enough perfectly to offset the delicate, not-quite-blandness of the ricotta. The summer-scentedness of thyme deliciously permeates both.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

While I think of this as a salad, you might consider it simply a vegetable dish served at room temperature. No matter: it’s a glorious summer dish whichever way you look at it: green and yellow courgettes/zucchini, cut into batons, oil-dressed and oven-roasted; jade-glowing broad beans/fava beans and deep emerald fine beans, both lightly boiled then refreshed in a bowl of icy water to keep their verdant intensity. It

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This bulgur wheat salad is loosely based on tabbouleh, only using coriander in place of the parsley, lime in place of the lemon and omitting the tomatoes and adding the chilli and some raw, diced courgettes. Coriander is so much more headily aromatic than parsley that I

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

These skewer-threaded chunks of pineapple are sprinkled with sugar and blitzed on the barbecue or under the grill.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This started off as something of a culinary conceit: I wanted to recreate the flavour of cheesecake in ice-cream form. I don

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This came about the way most of my favourite food has come about, by greedy opportunism. I had some cold chicken in the fridge, a huge bunch of parsley in a jug by the stove and had recently opened a packet of flaked almonds and I was just too hungry to think further. The important thing is to leave the parsley whole and unchopped — just tear the leaves off the stalks and heap them on the plate in a rough jumble — and to toast the almonds, which just means tossing them about over medium heat in an oil-less pan until they take on colour, at the last minute. I want the heat from them as well as the crunch.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This started off life as a reworking of Coronation Chicken, that mixture of cold chicken, mayo, mango chutney, curry powder and apricot puree (or that

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

There is a hint of the days-gone-by sweet trolley about this: it

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

You just cannot beat a pav in my book, and I glory in particular this dark beauty. The crisp and chewy chocolate meringue base, rich in cocoa and beaded nuggets of chopped plain chocolate, provides a sombre, almost purple-brown layer beneath the fat whiteness of the cream and matt, glowering crimson raspberries on top: it is a killer combination.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Bear with me — as telephonists like to say — while I gush for a bit. This has to be the world

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

I know the word fritter conjures up a complex world of deep-frying and dense-eating, but these are light, simple babies — just grated courgettes, mixed with feta, herbs and spring onions, stirred up with flour and eggs and dolloped into a frying pan to make little vegetable pancakes which, unlike most fried food, are best eaten not straight out of the pan, but left to cool to room temperature. This takes any slaving over a hot stove element out of the equation: you just spoon serenely away over your pan before anyone

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

The joy of these, particularly, is that they are wonderful eaten cold as well, their pink juiciness trapped within their eggy parmesan coating. If you don

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson's Elderflower and Passionfruit Cooler is the perfect refreshing addition to any hot summer day.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This is so simple — scarcely a recipe really — but so good. Unless you get figs straight from the tree they sometimes need the blistering heat of an oven or grill to bring out all their honeyed sweetness. This is the pudding to end a slow-grazing, long-picking dinner eaten outside on a warm, balmy night. If you haven

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Think Bellini — that Venetian cocktail of prosecco and white peach purée — only with liquidised strawberries in place of the peaches. It’s the taste of lyrical, wide-skied, blossom-scented summer, hence my naming of it. In actual fact, it’s more properly known as a Rossini, but I choose the artist over the composer here! When strawberries are in season, ripe and juicy, you shouldn

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

A fresh reworking of traditional Coronation Chicken from Nigella Lawson, this golden jubilee chicken makes an ideal light summer lunch recipe.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

A Greek Salad in the summertime is one of those classic dishes that needs no tinkering. And yet, I confess tinkering is just what I have done here. The only substantial alteration I’ve made to the traditional recipe is to substitute the cucumber with fennel. I find the cucumbers one gets here are all too often tasteless and watery and end up contributing little, making the lettuce soggy to boot. But I also do my usual trick of steeping the onion (here, in vinegar and a little dried oregano) to lessen its rasp. Please bear in mind that this should be done at least two hours in advance, though you could easily set them a-steeping in the morning for lunch or dinner that day, or even the night before. And I add oil at the same time, which really means your dressing is done and ready. But otherwise, it’s a Greek Salad as you might expect and desire: full of crunch and flavour and punctured by salinity, which is provided generously by both the feta and the olives. If you can get hold of a good cucumber, by all means go for it, although I know I’d miss the gently aniseed crispness of the fennel. But then, I’ve been making it my way for so long, it’s hardly surprising I feel like this. And please read the Additional Information section at the end of the recipe before proceeding.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

You can griddle these aubergines, grill them or just blitz them in the heat of the barbecue: it

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

There is something about fresh, really fresh, grilled sardines that reminds me instantly of those long holiday lunches in rented summer houses abroad. But if neither sardines, nor a fishmonger to fillet them, are available, know that this lemon salsa is terrific with any fish — and indeed most meats.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Forgive the tweeness of the title, but this is a soup of such sunny, mood-enhancing yellowness that it overcomes even the most pervasively innate cynicism. To eat this is to feel cheered; even cooking it gives me a lift. It

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

I think of these Swedish roast potatoes as being rather like sauteed potatoes on the stem: each one is cut into thin slices across almost right through, but not quite, and then roasted in buttery oil; as they cook, the potatoes fan out, like slightly fleshy crisps with their bottoms still attached. Traditionally, maincrop potatoes are used, but I love these made with new potatoes, too; in which case, Charlotte or Ratte, which are waxy-fleshed and taperingly oval in shape, are best. If you

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

I love these sweet and meaty quail, conker-shiny in their vaguely Chinesey marinade. As often as not, I grill them rather than barbecue them; even a blitz in a very hot oven will do. The thing is to marinate them for a good long time — at least 24 hours — so that they keep fleshy and juicy and meltingly tender no matter how brutally you cook them.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

A semifreddo is not quite an ice cream, as the name — semi-cold, in translation — suggests. There

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This tamarind-tangy curry makes for a perfect dinner on a hot night; light enough not to knock you out, but spiced enough to prompt a heat-drowsy appetite. And it is such gloriously easy food to make. And please read the Additional Information section at the end of the recipe before proceeding.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Think hamburger, Middle-Eastern style. And if this isn

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

You know, I

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

You might label this shiny black musselled variation of linguine alle vongole, linguine alle cozze, but to be frank, this version is not very Italian-flavoured. It owes something to the French taste for moules mariniere, and reaches Spainwards for a slug of sherry, in place of the usual white wine, to add oomph to the molluscs

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This is wonderful: light and refreshing and very, very easy to put together. It does, however, need to be cooked, if that

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This is a sprightly curry, fierily orange and warm with cinnamon and nutmeg. Make some plain basmati rice to go with it and you’re done.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

There is something intensely summery - leafy, fresh, spicily aromatic - about these peaches.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This tomato salad is all you need for a summer starter. What I do is sit the tomatoes in the sun, uncut, on a flat plate or two, for an hour before I want to make the salad: it takes any chill off them and makes them taste somehow more tomatoey. Any leftover salad cream can be stored in the fridge in an old jam jar; indeed you may find you want to make double the amount below, so well will it go down.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Those of my vintage may remember this dish from the eighties fondly as Tataki of Tuna: a log of ludicrously rubied fish, rolled in pepper, briefly seared and eaten finely sliced with shredded spring onions and twiggy strips of cucumber. Dunk in soy as you eat or make up a few blobs of sinus-clearing wasabi. If you do have some wasabi to hand, you can use this for smearing over the tuna, before coating it with peppercorns, in place of the English mustard stipulated below. And please read the Additional Information section at the end of the recipe before proceeding.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This is a domestic take on the Italian marketplace staple of roast suckling pig, and quite my favourite thing to eat in Italy. I’ve specified pork shoulder, but really you can get any cut of pork you want: the important thing is that it’s opened out to form a roughly oblong slab or sheet, which you then smear with onion, fennel seeds, rosemary, bay leaves, ground cloves and garlic, then you roll it up so that the flavourings snake their way through the whole of the joint. Tie it with string, roast it for a good long time then, once it’s out of the oven, leave it till it’s still just warm then slice it thickly and wodge it into buns. Of course you can just carve it and eat it more sedately with knife and fork, but for the echt experience, pretty well unbeatable, you need to taste this aromatic, slow-cooked pork in sandwich form at least once. I tend to keep within the authentic register and get small, individual ciabatta rolls, but even in thick slices of white English bread it’s dreamy. But don’t use a plastic sliced loaf, which will go too pappy, and avoid baguettes: that robust crunch is not what we’re going for here.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

I am convinced that it is when raw that beetroot is at its best, and this recipe offers the most persuasive evidence; I promise you that it is loved even by those who were traumatised by putridly sweet and vinegary school beetroot. The dill and mustard seed here resonate with Scandinavian flavours, but if you can

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

We are in rose-tinted heaven here: the pink glint of the red mullet

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

When the two great Australian food writers, Stephanie Alexander and Maggie Beer, came to London some 30 years back, I went to a dinner cooked by them; this was the pudding and I remain, all this time later, transfixed by it. It used to be that you could never lay your hands on a quince unless you had a tree, and so it was that the first thing I did when I bought a house with a garden was plant one, though now you can come across them much more easily when they are in season in October, November and December, though you can often get lucky beyond these months. Nothing matches their almost fantastically perfumed fragrance; and after this long, slow way of cooking them, their acid flesh turns to grainy, intense honeyedness, set to coral jelly at their centre, around the shiny black pips, the whole as darkly sticky as toffee apples. Serve these warm-to-room temperature, with a dollop of cold mascarpone on the side. Do note the long cooking time and make sure you factor that in when you plan to cook them.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Just as with ice cream, the glorious thing about home-made sorbet is that you can make flavours you could never buy in a shop. And the texture is so much better, too: smoother, richer, without all that icy brittleness. This sorbet is intentionally slushier still: a sluicing with Cointreau adds an orangey depth and keeps it all from freezing solid. If you

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

These are breakfast pancakes summer-style, ridiculously light, and lemony somehow even without the addition of lemon. If you imagine the flavour of cheesecake combined with a texture that

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This recipe has had a slight name change, but is the same dessert of dreams: the wine-soused raspberries take on a stained glass, lucent red, their very raspberriness enhanced; the soft, translucently pale coral just-set jelly in which they sit has a heady, floral fragrance that could make a grateful eater weep. This recipe was urgently emailed to me over two decades ago from Australia from my erstwhile editor, Eugenie Boyd. I

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Call me Scheherazade, but I

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Consider this simply a guide: use other fish fillets if you like, or indeed substitute chicken breasts; just remember they

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This is one of those recipes you just can

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This beautiful lemon chicken recipe from Nigella Lawson is perfect paired with root vegetables or a simple side salad. Enjoy as part of a weekend feast.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

I love the Japanese way of eating cold noodles: I just lift a bowl to my face, fork furiously and slurp. If you want to make these part of a meal, then know that they go wonderfully well with salmon: just get some fillets, sear them in a hot pan, leaving the interior fleshily coral. But I love eating these as they are, in huge quantities and — preferably — alone. Because they

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This makes a wonderful starter to a full-blown summer dinner party, but I love it, with nothing before or after.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

There is just something about home-made strawberry ice cream: it

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This is an Oz-emanating recipe from ages ago, long before I

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

You can often find the rice pancakes, or rice sheets in the supermarket. If you

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

One of the joys of this is how easy and quick it is to make. You may need to be rather brutal with the lettuce as you tear the leaves off to provide the edible wrappers for the beef, which is why I specify one to two icebergs. If you want to perk the leaves up a little, making sure they curve into appropriate respositories for later, leave them in a big bowlful of very cold water (throw in ice cubes too) while you cook the minced beef, then make sure you drain them well before piling them up on their plate.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This is not the place for in-depth social history, unless you take the view — as I do — that all food is social history, but I do need to provide a bit of provenance. Once upon a time there was Biba, an ill-lit but fabulous boutique, shoplifters

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

You can take the girl out of the eighties, but you can

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Even if you have never baked anything in your life, you will be able to make these with untroubled ease. And I hate to say this — as someone with a once-serious Bahlsen habit — but they are so much better than anything out of a packet.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

One of the loveliest puddings, if it quite counts as that, to order in restaurants in Tuscany, is a glass of vin santo, that resinous, intense, amber-coloured holy wine, with a few almond-studded biscuits to dunk in. The idea for this comes purely from that: the ice cream is further deepened by the addition of treacly muscovado sugar, and the wine in it keeps it voluptuously velvety, even after being frozen. You don

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

As improbable as it might sound, this combination is utterly fantastic, both savoury and refreshing at the same time. You can pare it down to the essential contrast, and serve no more than a plate of chunked watermelon, sprinkled with feta and mint and spritzed with lime, but this full-length version is hardly troublesome to make and once made will, I assure you, become a regular feature of your table. And please read the Additional Information section at the end of the recipe before proceeding.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

So much in cooking, as in the rest of life I suppose, is about contrast, about balance. Here the acerbic fragrance of the passionfruit undercuts the otherwise over-egged richness of the white chocolate: this gives you flavour, intensity, sweetness and light. On standing, the clear, sour-sweet juices of the fruit collect under the mousse: place raspberries in the glass first (again contrast, this time of colour, too) and let them become plumply infused and almost headily soused beneath. And please read the Additional Information section at the end of the recipe before proceeding.

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

Nigella Lawson · Nigella Summer

This is just wonderful when you have friends over in summer, though not to be discounted for the rest of the year, either. There was a time I cooked it just about every two weeks, and it