delectable squelching (Nigel Slater's Real Food)

Member Name: Celandine

Product:	Nigel Slater's Real Food
Date:	24/04/01 (95 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: the recipes are interesting

Disadvantages: smug

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 things.

I like cooking. And I’m not a bad cook. I’m one of those who never sticks to a recipe, but adds a snippet of this, and a dollop(another Nigel word) of that. Mostly it works...sometimes not, but I love food, and I love cooking it. And Nigel Slater, darn his little cotton socks, irritates me. He is Smug...(ahem)...excuse me....he oozes a delectable aroma of sticky smugness.

That isn’t to say that the actual recipes are bad. ‘Real Food’ is divided into 8 sections, devoted in turn to Potatoes,
Chicken, sausages, Garlic, Bread, Cheese, Ice-cream and Chocolate. Each contains between 13 and 21 recipes, which isn’t bad value for money in terms of recipes per item. Most of the recipes are useful, if some are a bit obvious ( which cook hasn’t, at some point in their life, bunged a bit of chicken in the oven with some lemons and white wine anyway, without having to read how to do it). He doesn’t encourage messing around with them. If Nigel says ‘herbs de provence’, he means ‘herbs de provence’, and woe betide you if you’ve only got a bit of manky thyme left in the garden. His culinary basics are helpful. His ‘toad’ has a decent batter mixture. But you’ve still got to de-skin the sausages a
nd wrap them in prosciutto. We are allowed an alternative here.......pancetta, serrano ham ....or...even....streaky bacon. Thanks, Nigel. We can all make toad now without having to spend 2 hours on the bus to visit
the local deli.

I’ll say this for him, too. The recipes are clear, and the instructions are easy to follow. They are tasty, and easy to
make. If you aren’t counting the calories, then you could live with this book for quite a while. I like that about it.
This man uses cream, butter, cheese and milk like he’s supposed to be single handedly supporting the UK dairy industry.
Good for Nigel.

At the start of each chapter he delivers a homily on what sort of potato, or what have you, you should be eating. I like this not. Some of the information included is useful; but I don’t like being told time and time over, what Nigel likes. And, I’m sorry, a raw chicken is not ‘majestic’. It’s a raw chicken.

I do agree with some of the principles behind it , though. Eat good food, think of texture, and buy good quality. It is
just that the man is so, well... smug about the whole thing.

I would say that the recipes are worth a read ( especially the puddings); but I am not so sure about the book as a
whole. I’m not sure who it is aimed at...maybe the man who wants to cook easy dishes, with good ingredients; or
those who aren’t sure what sort of sausage to buy. I’ve used this book quite a bit, but each time I do, I keep seeing
the little face of Nigel appearing just above the cooker : ’Delectable...’, he murmurs, as I fish haphazardly in the pan
for the teaspoon I’ve just dropped. As the baby starts to eat the plant and I chase the cat for the mint(Bang....Whoosh.....Screech) Nigel watches me, aghast. I’m not sure he’d survive a week in my kitchen.

Summary: