The Kitchen Diaries
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Following the success of ‘Real Food’ and ‘Appetite’, this is the tenth book from Nigel Slater, the award-winning food writer and author of the bestselling autobiography, ‘Toast’.
‘The food in “The Kitchen Diaries” is simply what I eat at home. The stuff I make for myself, for friends and family, for visitors and for parties, for Sunday lunch and for snacks. These are meals I make when I stop work, or 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. It is what I eat when I’m not phoning out for pizza or going for a curry. This is the food that makes up my life, both the Monday to Friday stuff and that for weekends and special occasions.’
‘Much of it is what you might call fast food, because I still believe that life is too short to spend all day at the stove, but some of it is unapologetically long, slow cooking. But without exception every single recipe in this book is a doddle to cook. A walk in the park. A piece of p***.’
‘Fast food, slow food, big eats, little eats, quick pasta suppers, family roasts and even Christmas lunch. It is simply my stuff, what I cook and eat, every day. Nigel’s food – for you.’
Reviews
'Nigel is a bloody genius' Jamie Oliver
'The greatest cookery writer of them all' Guardian
‘The best food writers combine beauty with practicality, and no one does it more elegantly than Nigel Slater’ Jane Shilling, Daily Mail – BOOKS OF THE YEAR
'The pick of the bunch…bubbling with ideas, suggestions, hints and personal opinions that genuinely help you to make your own mind up about how and what to cook' The Times
'He's a genius' Matthew Fort, Guardian
‘Slater remains the reigning champion, a writer incapable of uninspiring sentences' Daily Express
‘No one writes more temptingly about food' Independent
About the author
Nigel Slater is one of Britain’s most highly regarded food writers. His beautifully written prose, warm personality and unpretentious, easy-to-follow recipes have won him a huge following. He writes an award winning weekly column in the ‘Observer’ and edits their ‘Food Monthly’ supplement, and he is a regular contributor to Sainsbury’s ‘The Magazine’.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Few writers could get away with what London Observer columnist Slater does here: jotting down what he eats and recording recipes for the homemade items over the course of a year. Slater, though, has the writing chops to make it work as proven in his memoir Toast. His style is lazily thoughtful, but also honest and unfussy: January 9 sees a "gray, endless drizzle" that makes it "the sort of day on which to light the fire, turn on the radio and bake a cake." The recipe for Double Ginger Cake that follows, however, highlights this book's sometimes problematic Britishness when it calls for both golden syrup and stem ginger in syrup, available, a footnote claims, "in some supermarkets and specialty shops." Slater's food isn't British in the stodgy sense. Indeed, he smoothly incorporates the flavors of other cultures into his cooking to make Indian-influenced Spiced Roast Potatoes with Yogurt and Mint, for example. Yet local references and recommendations, such as a tip that the best hummus may be purchased "at the Green Valley, just off the Edgware Road," will frustrate readers in the U.S. As George Bernard Shaw once said, the British and the Americans are two peoples divided by a common language. Sadly, much of this wonderful book is lost in translation, or lack thereof.
