Nigel Slater gives the lowdown on sausages, chicken, garlic, bread, cheese, chocolate... mmmmm! (Nigel Slater's Real Food)

Member Name: Neenawneenaw

Product:	Nigel Slater's Real Food
Date:	01/05/09 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lovely recipes, well-written, with the emphasis on the food not the ego.

Disadvantages: No low-fat/GI etc recipes here!

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 make their way into his recipes!

Real Food is by not intended as a comprehensive cook book. Nor is it organised conventionally - there are no chapters on Starters, Soups, Desserts, Fish, Meat etc here. Instead, the chapters are organised around a select few of Nige's favourite foods - such as Cheese, Chocolate, Sausages, Bread, Potatoes (see what I mean about the un-health factor?). The Cheese chapter is a particularly interesting mix of sweet and savoury recipes. And each section is prefaced by a little essay of love to the featured ingredient.

The recipes themselves - well, in general they're easy to follow (Nige is a big one for taste rather than fancy presentation) and taste fantastic. They range from quick little snacks to efforts worthy of a dinner party. I've tried quite a few and haven't found a dud yet.

Any downside? Well, don't expect to be able to fiind a recipe for all the standards in here - but the book never promised that! It might be nice to have a few less heart-attack-inducing recipes, but then again they can be found, and I feel like I'm nit-picking! My one genuine complaint might be that Nige can be a bit excessively 'foodie' sometimes, which can make him sound a bit prescriptive - particularly in the introduction where he insist (something like) 'When I say butter, I mean unsalted, best-butter you can find; and when I say eggs, I mean organic eggs that you collected yourself this morning from a hen running free across the meadows with Mozart playing in the background....' [Before I get complaints, I'm not implying a deep love for battery farming!] - you know what I mean!

However, Nige seems free from the huge ego and determination for world domination that taints some of our other celeb-chefs, or even seems to be their raison-d'etre (step forward Mr Ramsay!). He's clearly driven by a deep love of making, and eating great food - and this book is all about spreading the love.

Summary: Seriously good recipes from a seriously good food writer who seriously loves his food