Foodie celeb Nigella Lawson loves American steakhouses, Tony Bourdain and live audiences

Nigella Lawson laughed in a bright, disarming manner when asked about her title of "domestic goddess" in England's culinary scene.

Admitting that she brought the nickname on herself with her second book, the 2000 release, "How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking," Lawson said the term doesn't actually apply in practice.

Acknowledging her penchant for kitsch and camp, the 62-year-old English food writer and television cook quipped: "I think that slightly got the best of me with that title."

During a breezy, conversational phone interview, the London resident sounded most in her element when chatting about family-friendly recipes in contrast to upscale dinners meant to impress. And she quickly balked at the notion of guilty food pleasures, noting that a chapter in one of her books rails against the idea.

"I feel that all pleasure should be received joyfully and gratefully," Lawson said. "So I don't have a notion of that, and if I want a hot dog and fries, I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm very fond of potato chips."

Lawson was talking food to promote her book tour stop Nov. 29 at Canton Palace Theatre as part of the Stark County Library's Dr. Audrey Lavin Speaking of Books Author Series. To register for the free event, visit https://starklibrary.org/home/events/speaking-of-books/ or call the library at 330-452-0665.

Doors open at 5:45 p.m., and the presentation starts at 6:30 p.m.

Pre-signed copies of Lawson's 2021 book, "Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes, and Stories" will be available for purchase. The Palace Theatre is at 605 Market Ave. N.

The celebrity foodie is promoting the book as part of her "An Evening with Nigella Lawson" North American theater tour, which starts Nov. 7 in Boston, and includes appearances this month in Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, Salt Lake, Dallas, Minneapolis and Toronto, Canada.

Earlier this fall, during a 20-minute interview, Lawson touched on late celebrity television personality Anthony Bourdain and food and cooking as a way for people to connect and express emotion while learning new things. She also shared insight on how she finds good places to eat while touring the country.

"I don't go to the fancy restaurants, either," she said. "I try to do as much research as I can and get people from the area to say what they like."

And "I like to go to a real good bakery," she added.

"If there is time, I love to go to a market to see the produce," Lawson continued. "And I like often to go to the small places that are lovely to sit in and get a feel of the mood of the place you're in. Character, I suppose, is what I like.

"And I eat pretty much everything," she said. "... It really depends on the area, but I go to steakhouses a bit, too, because every now and then ... I'm quite low in iron, so I load up, and American steakhouses are just the best in the world. I mean, I've never been to Japan. I'm sure they're good there as well, (but) a good steakhouse for me is a particularly American experience."

Making cooking accessible to everyday people

Lawson first discovered cooking as a child who helped out in the kitchen when she was around age 6.

"I'm a home cook," she quickly admitted. "I have never cooked professionally."

Being passionate about food and cooking would intersect with her work as a journalist. She went on to become deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times at age 26, followed by a career as a critic and columnist, writing for various newspapers, including The Times and The Guardian.

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Motivating her to write a book was a desire to make cooking accessible to the general public beyond the world of professional kitchens and chefs.

She broke through commercially with her smash literary debut in 1998, "How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food."

Selling more than 12 million books overall, including a dozen bestsellers, Lawson's first television series, "Nigella Bites" aired in 2000, followed by a string of successful series broadcast in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. She also has made several appearances on "MasterChef Australia."

"I love restaurants and I admire chefs, and it really isn't applicable to a person at home whose got a job as well and maybe kids and all sorts of other obligations," Lawson said of her general approach to food and cooking while citing her own background as a mother and spouse. "... It's a full-time job in a restaurant, and you can't really do that at home."

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Each speaking event has 'its own magic'

This is also a theme she will carry to her presentation in Canton.

"The modern world particularly wants to make everyone into experts, and this great sort of idea that experts know everything," Lawson said. "Cooking isn't about experts. You learn enough as you do it."

"I love answering questions, and I like swapping stories with fellow cooks," she said. "And generally I think food is so much about connecting with other people, whether you're sitting around a table eating with them or whether you're discussing food together.

That premise holds true at her speaking engagements, with the individual character and flow of the events dictating the discussion points.

"You bring so much of your own emotional background and leanings and your own particular memories, culture, background and tastes, and so it's such an immediate thing that whoever you're talking to, it will be a different conversation."

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"We largely live our lives on screen, and therefore it allows a live event even more so to have something a bit unplanned or just unfurling in the space and in the moment, because everything else comes at you, and there it is," Lawson said. "So I think it's very much a group event − it will be mostly (decided by) the audience."

"What happens that particular night is its own magic," she elaborated. "And that is something that you can't get from reading, a lecture or just being on television, because it's all our different energies ... (and) it really is about how we are as people and what we think, and what the mood is in the air that night. It can be so many different things, and that feels quite special."

Anthony Bourdain: 'He's such a great loss to the world.'

Lawson's voice perked when the conversation turned to Bourdain, whom she appeared with on the reality cooking competition show, "The Taste," which was broadcast in both the United Kingdom and America.

Bourdain and Lawson were judges on the show for three seasons in 2013 and 2014.

Lawson said she had known Bourdain before working with him on the television series, calling the program "such a wonderful adventure."

"It's not that he's a great loss to the food world," she said. "He's a great loss to the world."

"He had his own voice, and it was so particularly his," Lawson said. "And his way of looking at things, and I think he had a great gift of articulating his thoughts in a way that was very direct and very highly charged, yet with a calmness as well.

"He was so extraordinarily articulate," Lawson continued. "Just when he talks ... every sentence was beautifully weighted ... and his every thought was so ably transmitted that one got the idea behind it, the wit in it that made you smile as he said something."

Nigella's process for writing a book

Lawson doesn't have a specific follow-up book planned at the moment.

"I hope that the TV series of cooking for people comes stateside soon," she said. "I normally would be writing a new book by now, but I think that maybe there was something about writing during the pandemic, and I think we all felt we were a bit running on empty after that. You need more contact with humans, (and to be traveling) again, all the sort of things that feeds your imagination and your curiosity.

"There's two or three books I'm toying with … the ideas for them anyway," Lawson added. "They're a bit on the backburner, and I let them percolate, and there's always one book ... that insistently nudges the others away, because I return to it more and more in my mind (and) find myself cooking recipes that seem to be going in a particular direction.

"... It's a big deal writing a book. It takes a long time, but you really have to feel it's something you're longing to do and impatient to start, so that's how I do it. By waiting to see the one that just says ... 'Can you leave everything else and just concentrate on this book.'"

Reach Ed at 330-580-8315 and ebalint@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Food star Nigella Lawson bringing passion for cooking to Canton event