OFM’s classic cookbook: Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat

Where it all began: Nigel Slater celebrates the 20th anniversary of Nigella Lawson’s first cookbook. Plus six brilliant recipes

How to Eat is easy to find on my bookshelf. It is the book in tatters. The one whose spine is torn, whose pages are smeared, smudged and scorched. The book that has clearly done service for 20 years.

You can tell from the title this is more than a recipe book. From the first entry for roast chicken (stick half a lemon up its bottom) to the last – Marmite sandwiches (cream the butter and Marmite together as if you were making a cake) – the book is clearly the work of a roll-your-sleeves-up cook. Someone deeply familiar with the appetites of food-loving friends and a growing family. This is not some pictures-of-plates coffee-table tome.