Nigella goes French

...with this delicious recipe. Celebrate Winter cooking with us and Nigella!

THE RECIPE:

I love the old French favorites, the sorts that evoke not the supercilious waiter and theatrically removed silvered dome of the big-name restaurants, but rather the small-town bistro, all warm wood and rough red wine. This is possibly the easiest route to a proper, filling, and yet strangely delicate dinner. The pork is cooked for just enough time to take away pinkness but ensure tenderness within, and gloriously scorched without. The mustard, cider, and cream add comfort and piquancy. To soak up the gorgeous juices, and to serve as a fantastically quick potato substitute, I serve up gnocchi alongside. You could always add a little lemony fennel, sliced thinly, or a green salad if you're in the mood. --Nigella Lawson

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Mustard Pork Chops
(Serves 2)
INGREDIENTS:
2 pork chops, about 1 lb total weight
1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
2 teaspoons garlic oil
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup hard cider

DIRECTIONS:
1. Cut the fat off the chops, and then bash them briefly but brutally with a rolling pin between two pieces of plastic wrap to make them thinner.

2. Heat the oil in a pan, and then cook the chops over a moderately high heat for about 5 minutes per side. Remove them to a warmed plate.

3. Pour the cider into the pan, still over the heat, to deglaze the pan. Let it bubble away for a minute or so, then add the mustard and stir in the cream.

4. Let the sauce continue cooking for a few minutes before pouring over each plated pork chop. If you’re having gnocchi with, make sure you turn them in the pan to absorb any spare juices before adding them to your plates.

© Nigella Lawson

NIGELLA'S COOK TOOLS:

Nigella Lawson's relaxed attitude to cooking and eating have made her a household name on both sides of the Atlantic. To her, cooking is not about slavishly following recipes, but about the simple desire to make something good to eat. Her engagingly-written bestselling cookbooks have a relaxed and comfortable style; as if Nigella herself were with you in the kitchen, chatting and gossiping as you cook. Likewise, her Living Kitchen range takes familiar kitchenware and refines and improves it to make cooking an easier and more pleasurable experience. Beautifully packaged, each item in Nigella's Living Kitchen collection makes an ideal gift – if you can bear to give it away. Why not treat yourself?


Limited edition Living Kitchen Measuring Cups in lavender. A special offer to raise money for the Lavender Trust at Breast Cancer Care (registered charity no. 1017658) a charity supporting younger women with breast cancer. All Nigella's royalties and an additional royalty from Bliss will be donated from this purchase.

This set of lavender measuring cups looks just like something you'd sip coffee or tea from, with a handle on the side and wide brim. By Nigella Lawson, each is made of ceramic to hold a multitude of baking ingredients. Measurements are printed on the inside of the rims and come with ounce and metric conversions.

Get Nigella Lawson 4-pc. Measuring Cup Set in Lavender from Cooking.com: link

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Show your culinary masterpiece off to its full potential with this contemporary cake stand.
Nigella Lawson 9-in. Cake Stand, Blue: link

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This beautiful Beech Board is designed to be used with the mezzaluna chopper. Oval indentation allows chopper to cut evenly and thoroughly.
Nigella Lawson 12.25-in. Mezzaluna Board, Beech: link

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Toss and serve elegantly with these beech serving hands by Nigella Lawson. Use these serving hands to serve a salad of tossed greens or a bowlful of warm pasta with vegetables. From Nigella Lawson's collection of kitchenwares, these charming "hands" have unique, cupped shapes that keep food contained while serving.
Nigella Lawson 2-pc. Serving Hands, Beech: link

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This egg shaped Parmesan Grater grates the hard cheese the way it should, giving you fine crumbly shavings. A small wooden hand held grater that fits neatly in the palm for perfect ergonomics. Made from beech wood.
Nigella Lawson 3.5-in. Parmesan Grater: link

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While most measuring spoons come in sets of four, Nigella Lawson has taken the task an extra step. This set of six spoons measure everything from a Tablespoon down to a pinch - it's those extra little measurements that sometimes make all the difference! Especially handy if you don't want to stop and dry hands for that extra dash of something. For added style, they're shaped like regular flatware spoons. Made of brushed stainless steel. Measurements include:1 tbsp. 1 dsp. (equal to 10ml - this is not 1/2 tbsp but rather 2 tsp -handy!) 1 tsp. 1/2 tsp.1/4 tsp. "a pinch" spoon
Nigella Lawson 6-pc. Measuring Spoons: link

MAY WE SUGGEST?

Nigella Express: 130 Recipes for Good Food, Fast

The Domestic Goddess is back, and this time it's instant. Nigella and her style of cooking have earned a special place in our lives, symbolizing all that is best, most pleasurable, most hands-on, and least fussy about good food. But that doesn't mean she wants us to spend hours in the kitchen, slaving over a hot stove.

Featuring fabulous fast foods, ingenious shortcuts, terrific time-saving ideas, effortless entertaining tips, and simple, scrumptious meals, Nigella Express is her solution to eating well when time is short. Here are mouthwatering meals, quick to prepare and easy to follow, that you can conjure up after a day in the office or on a busy weekend, for family or unexpected guests. This is food you can make as you hit the kitchen running, with vital advice on how to keep your pantry stocked, and your freezer and fridge stacked. When time is precious, you canít spend hours shopping, so you need to make life easier by being prepared. Not that these recipes are basic, though they are always simple, but it's important to make every ingredient earn its place, minimizing effort by maximizing taste.

Here too is great food that can be prepared quickly but cooked slowly in the oven, leaving you time to have a bath, a drink, talk to friends, or help the children with their homework, minimum stress for maximum enjoyment.

Nigella Express features a new generation of fast food, never basic, never dull, always doable, quick, and delicious.

Featuring recipes seen on Food Networkís Nigella Express series. Click here to buy

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Nigella Bites: From Family Meals to Elegant Dinners -- Easy, Delectable Recipes For Any Occasion

Nigella Bites--the title is taken from Nigella Lawson's Style Network cooking show of the same name--is the third book from British Vogue food editor and New York Times food columnist Nigella Lawson, a force of nature all her own. Her other books include How to Eat and How to Be a Domestic Goddess. Fans of the TV show will find all these easy-to-follow recipes familiar, and the book is even designed with pages for note taking at the end of each section.

Nigella Bites is divided into chapters that include "All-Day Breakfast," "Comfort Food," "TV Dinners," "Party Girl," "Rainy Days," "Trashy," "Legacy," "Suppertime," "Slow-Cooked Weekend," and "Templefood." "Templefood" refers to the "body as a temple," and Lawson shares what she calls "restorative" recipes, like the raw egg and brandy hangover cure called Prairie Oyster. Hot and Sour Soup and Gingery Hot Duck Salad are also present and accounted for.
It's all self-referential. Lawson (her chapter introductions are printed in 26-point type for the hard of seeing) holds nothing back about what she likes, how she overindulges, how she works her lifestyle into the kitchen and onto the table. It's encouragement by example, with a practical twist. You aren't going to spend hours in the kitchen midweek. That's a reward you save for the weekend. But there's plenty of deliciousness to be had midweek as well, and Lawson's there to help you along your way. --Schuyler Ingle Click here to buy

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How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food
"Cooking is not about just joining the dots, following one recipe slavishly and then moving on to the next," says British food writer Nigella Lawson. "It's about developing an understanding of food, a sense of assurance in the kitchen, about the simple desire to make yourself something to eat." Lawson is not a chef, but "an eater." She writes as if she's conversing with you while beating eggs or mincing garlic in your kitchen. She explains how to make the basics, such as roast chicken, soup stock, various sauces, cake, and ice cream. She teaches you to cook more esoteric dishes, such as grouse, white truffles (mushrooms, not chocolate), and "ham in Coca-Cola." She gives advice for entertaining over the holidays, quick cooking ("the real way to make life easier for yourself: cooking in advance"), cooking for yourself ("you don't have to belong to the drearily narcissistic learn-to-love-yourself school of thought to grasp that it might be a good thing to consider yourself worth cooking for"), and weekend lunches for six to eight people. Don't expect any concessions to health recommendations in the recipes here--Lawson makes liberal and unapologetic use of egg yolks, cream, and butter. There are plenty of recipes, but the best parts of How to Eat are the well-crafted tidbits of wisdom, such as the following:
* "Cook in advance and, if the worse comes to the worst, you can ditch it. No one but you will know that it tasted disgusting, or failed to set, or curdled or whatever."

* On the proper English trifle: "When I say proper I mean proper: lots of sponge, lots of jam, lots of custard and lots of cream. This is not a timid construction ... you don't want to end up with a trifle so upmarket it's inappropriately, posturingly elegant. A degree of vulgarity is requisite."
* "Too many people cook only when they're giving a dinner party. And it's very hard to go from zero to a hundred miles an hour. How can you learn to feel at ease around food, relaxed about cooking, if every time you go into the kitchen it's to cook at competition level?" --Joan Price Click here to buy

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Feast: Food to Celebrate Life
If you consider eating with friends and family a joyful, indulgent celebration chances are you love a good feast. And who better to carefully guide you through the daunting task of preparing that Feast than the domestic goddess herself Nigella Lawson. Written in the tradition of Nigella Bites and How to Eat, Feast is a cookbook for the sensualist that wants to eat very well, but also wants to spend time enjoying the company of their guests instead of struggling with the creation of the meal. What sets Lawson apart is not that she's a good cookbook writer, but a strong writer period. Similar to her other books, Nigella's Feast is presented as part personal memoir, part educational, and part recipe presentation. There is a nice blend of occasions including the obvious (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and Easter), a few culturally specific ones (Rosh Hashanah, Georgian Feast, and Venetian Feast), feasts for kids, for vegetarians, and an elegant cocktail party. Each chapter begins with an overview of that particular "Feast." Generally, there is a personal story and experience told, an overview of the cultural importance of the feast, and a description of foods that are associated with each occasion. Impressively, every recipe begins with a personal anecdote giving that impression Nigella didn't just throw it in the book, but is experienced with the recipe and has used it with success. Take her twist on the decadent Chocolate Guinness Cake for example: "I wanted to make a cream cheese frosting to echo the pale head that sits on top of a glass of stout. It's unconventional to add cream but it makes it frothier and lighter which I regard as aesthetically and gastronomically desirable." Who can argue? The cake is to die for. So next time you need to prepare a dinner party let the goddess be your guide, and remember: Keep the preparation simple, use easily available ingredients, and take time to enjoy your guests and your meal. Feast may not be the most advanced cookbook you will own, but if you want to create excellent food with relative ease in a short amount of time, you can not beat Nigella. --Rob Bracco Click here to buy

HUNGRY FOR MORE?

Feel free to browse our Recipes.it Great Chefs page for more Nigella recipes, such as:
- Fried Prawn Cakes
- Rice Paper Rolls
- Georgian Stuffed Chicken
- Cappuccino Cupcakes
- Chocolate Gingerbread
- Chocolate Mint Cookies
- Pistachio Macaroons
... and more!