A celebrity chef who can actually cook! (Real Cooking - Nigel Slater)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Real Cooking - Nigel Slater
Date:	17/09/09 (99 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: He writes recipes that can be followed by non-professionals, and that produce excellent results

Disadvantages: Not an absolutely exhaustive collection of recipes, but doesn't claim to be

Nigel Slater's 'Real Cooking' is that surprisingly elsuive gem amongst cookbooks - especially ones written by celebrity chefs - in that the all recipies given in it (or at least every one of the ones I've tried so far) actually work, and as an added benefit, produce absolutely excellent results.

With the assistance of this cookbook, you can for example prepare an absolutely ambrosial broth from such unpreposessing ingredients as a picked-over roast chicken carcass and a couple of handfuls of Puy lentils - although the roast chicken broth recipe is of course included as a coda for using up any remains of the preceeding 'crisp golden skin and buttery juices' recipe for a perfect roast. (And needless to say, roasting chickens the Nigel Slater way produces nigh-on perfect results.) The secret of the delicous broth lies of course in pre-frying the chicken carcass, in the stock vegetables that're added to the pan, and in adding all the wobbly jellied bits of roast chicken juice that'll have gathered on the carving dish under the bird....you see, his secrets for success are all in the exhaustively-described details, in which Nigel Slater proves again and again that he really knows how to write valuable cookery instructions for the general public.

'Real Cooking' is a really a collection of 'best' dishes - there are what appear to be several 'favourite recipes' listed each of the broad headings (which include subjects such as 'seafood,' 'chicken,' 'rice and pasta', 'something sweet', etc). So you won't find every basic ingredient that's available in the shops listed in the index; it is not a 'how to cook everything' manual in the style of one of Delia Smith's (also excellent, though of a slightly different genre) cooking encylopaedias, and it doesn't claim to be. From what we've cooked from it so far - and we've tried a lot of the recipes - the selection given has been excellent. There's nothing too fussy - in fact, a lot of the material uses fairly basic cooking techniques and I find this is a good thing: for example one of our family favourites from this book is simple roast lamb dish, where the seasoned meat is cooked directly on the wire oven shelf, with a tray of thin-sliced potatoes placed directly underneath which collect the melting fat and meaty drips. Aside from the washing of the oven shelf afterwards, this must be one of the easiest recipes in the world but it produces a wonderful end-product. The result - particularly of the potato-cooking technique - is quite different to a traditional roast, and absolutely excellent. Another benefit of this professionally pared-down approach is none of the ingredient lists for the recipes contain weird stuff that you're unlikely to already have in your storecupboard, or that if you buy specially for a particular recipe, you'll end up never using again.

The edition we've got is beautifully-illustrated too, with the advantage that the photos of the completed dishes actually look pretty much exactly like what you'll get if you try the recipes out. It's not a cookbook that gives you staged shots of artfully-arranged compositions on the plate as this is a more of a family cook-book, than recipes for haute cuisine.

If I had to save my moderately large collection of cookbooks from, say, a burning building, this would be one of the first ones I'd grab off the shelf. In fact if time and space were limited, this one and the Elizabeth David paperbacks would do (which I mention because I think the quality of Mr Slater's recipe-writing in 'Real Food' is so good it almost stands up alongside what you get in 'French Provincial Cooking' etc). And if I got that lot to safety, I don't think I'd even have any particularly lasting regrets.

Summary: An excellent range of recipes covering most basic food-types in the kitchen