I wonder if like us you have been watching Nigella Lawson's new series Nigellissima?

In case you haven't, the Domestic Goddess has been presenting dishes that are not quite Italian but are in the spirit of Italian cooking with Nigella's trademark touches.

There is also an accompanying book so you can try one of her 120 dishes out for yourself.  We were lucky enough to be sent a copy for review and have been trying some of them out for ourselves.   Before I go on to let you know if the recipes 'worked', a previous criticism of Nigella's recipes, I first wanted to tell you a bit more about the book itself.  It certainly looks nice with large, delicious, looking pictures that are enough to make your tummy rumble, but I have to say in this publication Nigella's writing has been kept to the bare minimum. This is really disappointing, if like me, you read recipe books for entertainment as well as for cooking from.  This book is all about the recipes and less about Nigella herself. It also doesn't offer anything earth shatteringly different.  As previously mentioned this is NOT an Italian cookbook in the traditional sense and neither, sadly, is it that adventurous either.

There are good variety of recipes though, the book is divided into five main chapters Pasta, Flesh (a bit too frank perhaps?) Fish and Fowl, Vegetables and Sides, Sweet Things and an Italian inspired Christmas.

Back to the recipe we tried, we selected at random Shortcut Sausage Meatballs.  Well I have to say that these were a rip roaring success. We are incredibly lucky that our little butcher's shop is quite experimental and makes and sells Italian sausages. In the spirit of Nigella we made a few adjustments to the recipe, we used red wine rather than white wine and added a clove of garlic because we were clean out of garlic oil, and used onions rather than spring onions.  We started off by squeezing out the sausages and rolling them into little balls.

We fried them in a large pan with a splash of olive oil.


We then added chopped onions.

We added the wine and cooked off the alcohol l added two cans of tomatoes and a crushed clove of garlic and mixed herbs.



We allowed this to bubble away for around twenty minutes.

We cooked lots of spaghetti and served.

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They were absolutely delicious

In conclusion there are definitely better Italian cookbooks out there, but this is a solid if a bit safe offering from Nigella.  One for fans.

Nigellissima  by Nigella Lawson is published by Chatto & Windus RRP £26

Recipe adapted from Nigellisima by Nigella Lawson.  We received a copy of the book free of charge for review. All opinions are our own.