"I make your coat-on almond biscuits most weeks, a woman told me in the homeware department of John Lewis on Oxford Street, London, a few months ago. She went on to say that she also attaches the coat-on expression to any dish she gets going as soon as she walks through the door (and before she takes off her coat and has a pee), so thinks of me when she makes coat-on lentils, coat-on rice and leeks, coat-on tomato sauce, coat-on couscous with roast vegetables."
"As much as I wanted to keep the compliment to myself and not share it, I did remind her that I had borrowed the expression from Nigella Lawson and her book How to Eat, to which the woman replied: What a generous food writer you are. I thanked her back, complimented her on her blue jacket, then bounced all the way to the cash desk to pay for the dishcloths and potato peeler, and then all along Oxford Street."
Coat-on almond biscuits are made most weeks. Coat-on becomes a label for dishes started immediately on entering home, applied to lentils, rice and leeks, tomato sauce and couscous with roast vegetables. The expression was borrowed from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat. A chance encounter in a store coincides with twenty years spent in Rome and a long-running disagreement with Vincenzo about pasta water, salt and timing. A medium-sized repertoire of coat-on spaghettis has developed. The first favourite is spaghetti with a quick tomato, garlic and chilli sauce. A Neapolitan describes that preparation as between sciue sciue and aglio, olio e peperoncino, a light, hurried dressing rather than a heavy sauce.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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