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Livecommenting:

Ice cream! This person knows puddings, clearly.

No scales! Argh! ;-) Nigella’s a big lazy pie… if this were Nigella Express she’d probably ask you to use premade pastry too.

Pasta tongs! Awesome! Gotta try that some time!

Animated graphics explanation of pastry was hilarious…

No food processor. It’s kind of like having no electric whisk and making two litres of ice cream. Jesus, the hands fall off. Ow ow ow.

Mmm, apples and butter.

I recommend Skyy vodka for rolling pastry because they have quite tall, smooth sides. Still, rolling pins are apparently even better!

Most important tool in the kitchen, according to Richard Bertinet at least, is a cup of coffee. Clearly he’s not been quite anglicised enough, else it really would be tea.

Food pr0n!

Re “adding water”, that’s just how it is with dough/pastry. The absorption of your mixture depends on the flour so much that it’s nearly impossible to say. Baking is an art, not a science. Which is what makes it fun, of course.

Thanks, guys! I’m glad you liked the pastry explanation – I was rather pleased with it.

To be honest, I approve of using pre-made pastry. Life, she is too short. Then again, one of my major cooking weaknesses is baking – don’t like it, can’t do it.

Dougal – interesting point on the water. I just don’t make dough often enough to comment. The description of what to do was a bit short (I’d have had The Fear about then), but hey, as demonstrated, it was good enough to get through it.

Hakuo – yeah, I agree, you need to know something about cooking. The trick is whether the sleb chefs can write so that someone who maybe cooks a few things from time to time can follow their recipe and produce something nice.

(Interestingly, so far, both sleb chefs have succeeded in writing a recipe that’s easy to follow. Where they’ve differed is that only one of those recipes also produced really nice food.)

OMG Hugh – you can’t be serious about pre-made pie dough! That is sacrilege!

There is a phrase called “easy as pie” and seriously, pie is easy- the only thing easier is cobbler which is reverse pie.

What about the seasonings in this nigella pie? I have heard a rumor that brits don’t use enough seasonings so I wonder what’s in that pie besides apples, dough and butter?

btw, the ads are only minimally annoying.

Interesting stuff – thanks!