Showing results by narrator "Nigel Slater" in All Categories

The Christmas Chronicles is the story of Nigel Slater's love for winter, for the scent of fir and spruce, for ghost stories read with a glass of sloe gin, and beeswax candles with shadows dancing on the ceiling. With recipes, decorations, fables and quick fireside suppers, Nigel guides you through the essential preparations for Christmas and the New Year, with everything you need to enjoy the winter months.

The British have a relationship with their food that is unlike that of any other country. Once something that was never discussed in polite company, it is now something with which the nation is obsessed. But are we at last developing a food culture or are we just going through the motions? Eating for England is an entertaining, detailed, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek observation of the British and their food, their cooking, their eating, and how they behave in restaurants.

For years, Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaked in a fisherman’s hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna Konditorei. These are the small moments, events and happenings that gave pleasure before they disappeared. Miso soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in plain sight.

The food in The Kitchen Diaries is simply what I eat at home. The stuff I make for myself, for friends and family, for Sunday lunch and for snacks. These are meals I make when I am having mates over or when I want to surprise, seduce or show off. This is what I cook when I’m feeling energetic, lazy, hungry or late. This is the food that makes up my life, both the Monday to Friday stuff and that for weekends and special occasions.

Slater writes about how his cooking has changed from discovering the best way to roast a chicken to the trick to smoky, smooth aubergine mash. He gives the tales behind the recipes and recalls the first time he ate a baguette in Paris, his love of jewel-bright Japanese pickled radishes and his initial slice of buttercream-topped chocolate cake. These are the favourite recipes Nigel Slater cooks at home every day; the heart and soul of his cooking. Chapters include: a slice of tart, a chicken in the pot, everyday greens, the solace of soup and the ritual of tea.

Britain's most popular cook describes his personal culinary odyssey, from dangerous encounters with his mother's weevil-seasoned cakes to being harangued by readers who think he deliberately styles Yorkshire puddings to look like a woman's private parts.