Hello, boys!

There’s one celebrity cook the men will always tune in for, and it’s former It-Girl, now It-Woman Nigella Lawson. As famous for filling out her sweaters as she is for deep-frying Dove bars, she may be the Private Benjamin or Lisa Douglas of the kitchen, but she’s to be congratulated on bringing the sexy back to food. Martha Stewart, by comparison, is a prim Edna Mode prescribing sauteed zucchini blossoms not because they’re yummy, but because they’ll look good with the seared squab. Mario Batali is some kind of cross between Trimalchio and Mr. Creosote, swelling visibly on-camera till he threatens to burst his Crocs.

But Nigella, while she has an alarming tendency to take up with the wrong kind of fellow, does have an endearingly earthy style. In other words, she turns the men into testosterone-addled horndogs and reminds the women about all their appetites, which is a public service of a sort.

Here’s The Way of Nigella, a piece in The Morning News from a couple of years back, dropped in a comment on Gawker for which I will find the credit later (have I mentioned I’m lazy?). Nigella on raising your own shrimp, preparing soothing comfort food, and dining out at cheap Chinese counters:

I’ve found that it is hard to find good shrimp, and so I’ve started farming them myself. To the inexperienced onlooker, two-phased intensive shrimp farming might seem like a daunting task. While it is hard work, I always feel rewarded. How I just love the marine smell of raw feed on my hands. From hatchery to grow-out pond, I am responsible for keeping out disease, looking after salinity conditions, and making sure that there is enough circulation in the water. When I look into my special concrete larval tanks, I am looking at thousands, if not millions, of potential shrimp-kabobs. It is the perfect blend of embracing nature – my private bountiful sea – and expectantly knowing that I’ll be feasting on lemon-buttered scampi over linguini that results ultimately in blissful domestic satisfaction.