Forget buying that instant pancake mix. It's just as easy to make your own!

What do you think would happen if Regis and Kelly put Gordon Ramsay, Paula Deen, Nigella Lawson, Mario Batali, and Emeril Lagasse in the same room? If you guessed a flurry of BAM!s, f-bombs, butter, and Crocs, you guessed right.

For Halloween this year, Live with Regis and Kelly got cooking with a little help from Guy Fieri (the real one), and you can check it out over at eatmedaily.com. Good ol' Regis is basically Philbin in chef's outfits, not bothering to try an accent to play Ramsay, and saying nothing but "BAM!" for Lagasse. But Kelly -- she steals the show getting accented to play Deen and Lawson, and revelling in butter kebabs on one end, and sultry, chocolate-covered spoons on the other.

Seeing that mess of craziness, methinks I want to throw a chef-themed costume party pot luck. Make a dish from one of their books, and come in costume and character. Anyone in?

We've talked before about meals that require minimal cooking to go from kitchen to table. How about a couple of dishes that only require a bit of chopping and a single pot of boiling water for the pasta? The first recipe comes from Nigella Lawson. She appeared on NPR's morning edition last week, and offered up a no-cook pasta sauce that marinates sliced mushrooms in a vinaigrette of lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and thyme until they wilt. Then she tosses them with just-cooked linguine, some grated parmesan cheese and chopped parsley for an easy meal. You can get the recipe on the NPR website, but I recommend listening to the segment as well, as Nigella is always so nice to listen to.

The second no-cook recipe is my take on a recipe I've seen all over this summer. It's so easy that there's hardly even an actual recipe to share at all. Chop up two big summer tomatoes (it's really gorgeous if you use a combination of red and yellow tomatoes). Drizzle the tomatoes with olive oil and add a pinch of salt and a couple of grinds of black pepper. Stir it up and push it to the back of the counter for half an hour. In the mean time, put a large pot of water on to boil. When the water is boiling, add some salt and pasta (any kind you like, I'm a fan of cappellini). While the pasta cooks, chop some basil and pull a ball of mozzarella cheese apart into shreds. Add the cheese and basil to the tomatoes. When the pasta is done, loosely drain it and add it to the tomato bowl. Toss and eat. The heat of the pasta melts the cheese a bit and gives the sauce a creamy, blushing color. It is so delicious.

This time of year, I much prefer eating fruit-based desserts to ones involving chocolate or lots of cake. Give me a nice crisp or cobbler and I'm a happy girl. Despite those seasonal preferences, I saw this cake and immediately started salivating. There's no recipe link along with the picture, but I believe that it's the one from Nigella Lawson's gorgeous, slightly tongue-in-cheek cookbook, How to be a Domestic Goddess. It's a cake I've always intended to make, but have never gotten around to it. I think it's moving to the top of the list now, having seen this tasty reminder.

Thanks to Jonathan for adding this picture to the Slashfood Flickr pool!

I first discovered Nigella Lawson when her show, Nigella Bites, aired during the late night hour on Style, sometime in the early months of 2002. I instantly fell in love with her approach to food, as well as the gorgeousness with which the show was filmed. I also made a point of getting my hands on a copy of the accompanying book, also called, Nigella Bites, as soon as I could.

I have to admit that I don't cook from this book all that often, although when I have the recipes have always fairly easy and very reliable. However, I love to sit on the floor in front of my bookcase with it and flip through. Her descriptions of the dishes that come before the actual recipe are akin to reading some of the best fiction out there, and the pictures are so very drool-worthy. If you don't want to invest in this book, I recommend checking it out of the library and bringing it home, just to page through it. A warning though: it is best to read this book when your kitchen is fairly empty, otherwise you may want to leap up and start preparing whatever dish you happen to be reading about at that moment.

A while back I wrote about how I have most all Nigella Lawson's cookbooks, but that I rarely cook from them (save the one recipe I posted). I always thought that the reason I didn't use more of her recipes had something to do with laziness on my part, but apparently her recipes have been deemed more difficult to follow than some of the male chefs out there. Who knew there was something else I could blame it on!

In light of this study, England's Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts tried out several of Nigella's recipes for a dinner party recently and shared his hits and misses with his readers. It's an interesting read and a good warning to stay away from the Instant Chocolate Mousse recipe in her newest cookbook.

I have every one of Nigella Lawson's cookbooks, but I hardly ever actually cook out of them. They have beautiful pictures and the narratives she writes prior to each recipe are always really fun to read, but something always prevents me from actually making the recipes. However, for every rule there is also an exception. I make "her" cold Soba Noodles with Sesame Seeds all the time (obviously Nigella didn't actually invent this dish, but she gives nice measurements for the accompanying sauce).

The recipe is in Forever Summer (on page 48 to be exact) and that page in my book is splattered and marked due to repeated use. I should probably just write down the measurements for the dressing on a notecard and leave the book on the shelf, but time after time I turn to it just to ensure that I'm using the correct proportions. This is an especially great party or potluck dish, because it's a little different from your standard pasta salad. People always think it was much more complicated than it actually was. Oh, and the leftovers are out of this world good. Because I like you guys, the recipe is after the jump.

Photo by Marisa McClellan

We have heard that formal dining rooms are back in vogue on the restaurant scene this year, which means that the combination restaurant dining room/kitchens, where everyone had a clear view of their food from start to finish, will gradually be phased out. Patrons are now more interested in eating the food and appreciating the subtleties of a well-prepared meal than they are in watching it be prepared. With the massive number of cooking shows on TV, can you blame them? Everywhere you turn, you can see great pictures of food and videos of how its made, but the restaurant is where you can taste every delicious looking item that you wouldn't ordinarily get at home.

The UK Guardian is saying that the "Nigella Effect" is responsible for this change, as the sultry chef's recommendation is enough to make people try anything. She sold the public on 250,000 tins of goose fat over Christmas, so the end of open-air kitchens was easy by comparison. But although she may have helped to speed up the trend, it is far more widespread than Britain already - and like it or not, it seems as though this trend could be here to stay.

Talking of egg cups, good ol' Nigella has added one to her range of kitchen ware. It costs just £4.50 and incorporates a plate for soldiers too! Available in two colours - Duck Egg Blue (ho ho) and Cream.

On her website she writes "Sometimes things just seem right: I wanted an egg cup with a quiet organic design as simple as an egg’s. A small, plain cup sits in an ovoid saucer, with space for a small mound of salt and a few buttered fingers. I feel it’s important to be made happy at the start of the day, and this does it for me."

Also new to the range are a Hug Mug (£14.50) and a cake stand (£15). In a similar vein to the egg cup the hug mug it incorporates a saucer for holding biscuits, cake or bread. The cake stand is not going to be available until May though.

Lots of noise about Nigella this week... I wonder if she has a book coming out?

Anyway, following the revelation that Nigella's husband hates like her cooking comes even more scandal to dash those domestic goddess views - she has OUT OF DATE SPICES in her cupboard. Yep, tiz true.

In an interview in the Sunday Times she goes to make the interviewer lunch, prawn and sweet potato curry, and finds a jar of chillies with 'best before December 2004'. She jokes that "the fact it's not best before 1984 is quite something".

All is not lost however as she apparently cooks a proper lunch every day; which is great except that "Charles doesn't really like proper food - her prefers a bowl of cereal".

The Times interview is extracted from an article in the April issue of Red magazine, pictured.

Nigella Lawson, the doyen of the British culinary scene and whose books and recipes you see quoted across the food blogs, appears to be married to a food Philistine.  Charles Saatchi can't stand what she serves up!

Lots of newspapers have picked up the 'revelation' this weekend (it must be a quiet news day), but apparently last week she made a prawn dansak, one of her favourite dishes. He ate it all and then said, 'That was horrible.' 'Why did you eat it all?' she asked, 'I was being polite but then I panicked that you'd cook it again'."

 

 

 

What to do with that big box of clementines that you just had to buy on sale at the local supermarket? Well, Clementine Cake, of course, from Nigella Lawson's recipe. It's super easy and - if photos are any indication - mouthwatering. That smudge on the computer screen is where I tried to filch a few crumbs... just for a taste... As baked, photographed and uploaded by Sarahparah.