Nigella's cooking kosher!

By Lauren Krotosky - Thursday 11th 2010f March 2010


Top chef joins an array of stars dishing up their own recipes for charity

Getting your hands on Nigella Lawson's favourite recipe must be a bit tricky, right? Wrong. The queen of cuisine, whose recipes are famous the world over, was asked to contribute one of her favourites to a new charity cook book and couldn't resist sharing her butternut squash with pecans and blue cheese recipe for us all to sample for ourselves.

Nigella, along with a host of other personalities including Maureen Lipman, Michael Grade and Michael Winner, have all donated their prized concoctions so that we can try our hand at them too. You could make Jo Ankier's pumpkin bread, Lesley Joseph's chocolate almond torte with strawberry sauce or Robert Winston's chicken soup with matzo dumplings.

The book, Looks Good Tastes Great, has been compiled by Abbie and Mark Silverman, whose five-year-old son Thomas has the muscle-wasting disease Duchenne, which is the most serious form of muscular dystrophy. Funds raised from the book’s sales will go to Action Duchenne, the charity which promotes new research for a cure for the disease.

Helena Bonham Carter, patron of Action Duchenne, was more than happy to show her support for the book. "So many celebrities from within the Jewish community have donated recipes for Looks Good, Tastes Great, but the book will appeal to anyone with a love of cooking," she says. "Jewish and British cooking are closely linked and a dish celebrating its 150th anniversary this year - fish and chips - is known to have been a Jewish invention from the East End of London. So forget the calories and enjoy the recipes! At the same time, you'll be supporting Action Duchenne and its vital work in bringing forward treatments for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy."

Looks Good, Tastes Great is available for £10 (plus £1.50 p&p) at www.actionduchenne.org/shop or by contacting Mark Silverman at mark@actionduchenne.org

Nigella Lawson

Butternut Squash with Pecans and Blue Cheese

Ingredients
Serves 6-8
2kg butternut squash
3 x 15ml tablespoons olive oil
6 stalks fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
100g pecans
125g Roquefort or other blue cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
Preheat the oven to 220°C. Halve the squash, leaving the skin on, and scoop out the seeds, then cut into 2.5cm cubes; you don’t need to be precise, just keep the pieces uniformly small.

Put the squash into a roasting tin with the oil. Strip the leaves from 4 stalks of thyme, and sprinkle over the butternut squash. (If you can’t get fresh thyme, use dried.) Roast in the oven for about 30–45 minutes or until tender.

Once out of the oven, remove the squash to a bowl and scatter the pecans and crumble the cheese over it, then toss everything together gently. Check seasoning and add the last of the thyme, torn into small sprigs to decorate.

Nigella Lawson is a food writer, journalist and broadcaster

Maureen Lipman CBE

Zelma’s Stuffed Monkeys

Ingredients
Pastry
2 heaped cups of flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 tablespoons of sugar
100g butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 large tablespoon cream
Filling
225g dates
100g sultanas
100g currants
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
100g chopped nuts
2 tablespoons cinnamon and sugar

Method
I can strongly recommend my mother’s recipe for a good fruity, chewy biscuit.

Place flour, baking powder, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and rub in butter to fine 'breadcrumb' texture. Add eggs and mix into a soft dough for rolling out.

Chop all filling ingredients and mix together. Roll out dough into 10cm strips. Place filling in one half, wet edge and fold other half over. Brush with milk and sugar and cinnamon mixture and bake in moderate oven. When cooled cut into squares.

Maureen Lipman is an actress, columnist and author

Howard Jacobson

Max's Tuna Supreme

Ingredients
1 250g tin of tuna in olive oil
1 medium sized onion, finely chopped
White wine vinegar
Pepper
(In no circumstances add sweetcorn)

Method
Drain the olive oil. That’s your conscience salved, now put the olive oil back. In a bowl, fork the chopped onion into the tuna. Don’t mash; this is not one of those sopping wet tuna melts sold in high street sandwich shops.

Grind in black pepper. Enough to give the tuna a speckled, ashen appearance. (Extra pepper was my father’s advice, though extra to what was never clear. Just extra.)

Pour in the wine vinegar - sufficient to make you feel a little shikker (about a capful and a half for most Ashkenazi Jews) but not enough to drown the tuna. It is essential not to associate it with water or otherwise remind your guests that tuna is a fish. Taste freely and then make another batch.

Serve on white country bread, challa, a bagel, matzoh. These are not alternatives, they are distinct experiences. Miss out on none of them.

Howard Jacobson is an author and journalist

Gina Bellman

Bubelah

Ingredients
Serves 4
2 x eggs
1 x teaspoon salt
1 x teaspoon caster sugar
140ml warm water
90g fine and medium (mixed) matzo meal
Method
Beat the eggs and add the water to thicken.
Add the matzo meal and salt; stir to make a thick but fluffy batter. Fry in small rounds about 1/4 inch deep. Turn over and fry until golden on both sides.
Serve warm and sprinkle with sugar or cinnamon.

When we were little, my mother and nana’s pet name for us was ‘bubelah’. These delicious donuts were a childhood favourite and made us leap out of bed on Sunday mornings. Just hearing the word ‘bubelah’ conjures the excitement of sitting with my brothers with a spoon of sugar in one hand and a spoon of cinnamon in the other waiting with bated breath for a freshly fried donut to be dropped onto our plate.

Gina Bellman is an actress

Michael Grade CBE

Chopped Liver Plus

Ingredients
1 carton of chopped liver
1 carton of egg and onion
1 carton of mixed pickled cucumber
Method
Take one wallet, one car key, change for parking meter.
First, drive to Golders Green. Park (slowly).
Walk into Blooms.
Order chopped liver, egg and onion and mixed pickled cucumber to go.
Use wallet to pay. Return to car, remove parking ticket (you forgot change, see above), drive home and unwrap and “fress”.

Michael Grade is a broadcast executive, former chairman of the BBC and chief executive of ITV and Ch4