Nigel Slater's Real Food

We are on real food today, people. Real Food. As written about by Nigel Gotta Love That Man Slater. Real Food. As cooked and eaten by Jill Loves To Feed Her Face Wherever and Whenever Humanly Possible Murphy. Real Food. Slater has divided the book into eight sections, all containing recipes based - sometimes loosely - around a particular ingredient. These are potatoes, chicken, sausages, garlic, bread, cheese, ice cream and chocolate. You will not find recipes you need to fuss over for hours. You will not find recipes with ingredients you ...  Read the complete review

Just before I started at university a girlfriend of mine, who was older and wiser than I, gave me one of those Penguin 60s books. You remember them, those small books that cost 60p released to mark 60 years of Penguin books. The book she gave me was Nigel Slater’s 30 Minute Suppers and contains about 30 or 40 different main course recipes. Inside was written “Don’t cook any of it now, just keep it and one day it will serve you well.” How right she was. Whilst I have always been a keen cook, I had never really heard of Nigel Slater and I didn’t tuck into the book until I moved out of halls and into a place of my own. The first ...  Read the complete review

Crash! Rattle! KerPling! Beep, Beep! Ouch! Thump! I cook in an onomatopoeic kitchen. As I cook, the baby chases the cat, the cat knocks over a pot plant. I turn to pick up the plant and end up stepping on the cat. The baby opens a cupboard...Crash!...The cat runs off with my mint. Baby chases the cat........ Nigel Slater also cooks in an onomatopoeic kitchen. But it is nothing like mine. Nigel makes food that ‘steams’ and is ‘sticky’, ‘aromatic’ , ‘delectable’. Nigel ‘oozes’ and ‘goo’s’, he ‘bubbles’ and ‘froths’. But we make, pretty much, the same ...  Read the complete review

I am by no means an elite cook. I hate washing up. My job/social life means that I am usually short on time when it comes to cooking meals and thanks to the credit crunch I am more likely to purchase Asda Smartprice than Sainsbury's Taste The Difference produce. That said, as I've got older I've found that I'm not satisfied by the studenty concoctions I used to live off - pasta and a can of chopped tomatoes, beans, beans and more beans (apart from Heinz baked beans snap-pots, there are a work of genius. I must review them). I find myself wanting to cook more exciting meals with exotic/authentic produce, not only for myself but also to wow my ...  Read the complete review

I'm on a bit of a cookbook roll - have just Gordon and Delia the once-over, so now for Nige! So how does he compare? Now the thing about Nigel Slater is, he writes beautifully, but he doesn't come across terribly well on TV - possibly why he's not on it much! I love his weekly contribution to the Observer magazine, often cutting out recipes. But even when he writes about something I hate the tast of, I love to read the article! This quality translates into this book too. Everything just sounds so delicious in his recipes! Of course, some of this may be to do with the notoriously waist-expanding amounts of butter, cheese and cream that seem to ...  Read the complete review