Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger - Nigel Slater

“You can’t smell a hug. You can`t hear a cuddle. But if you could, I reckon it would smell and sound of warm bread-and-butter pudding.” Toast is a journey through Nigel Slater’s early life via food. From early childhood through adolescence to sexual awakening, each episode from boy to man has an item of food or culinary experience inexorably linked to it. Whether it be Nigel’s Mum scraping a piece of burnt toast, an act that Nigel says “happens as surely as the sun rises each morning”, or the yearly ritual of baking the never to rise and always to sink Christmas cake. Nigel so eloquently describes his Mothers inability to make good toast by stating that “It is ...  Read the complete review

Nigel Slater trained as a chef and then became a food writer. He's one of my heroes: he taught me to cook, you see. I have to credit Delia Smith with teaching me to prepare food, but Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson and Nigel Slater taught me about loving good food, adapting recipes and using quality ingredients. I read him each week in The Observer and I've got a file full of cuttings as well as most of his books. I've got one of those cuttings on the desk in front of me now. Actually it's more than a cutting – it's five pages torn from The Observer Magazine in May 1997 and it's entitled "I am what I ate". In ten excellent recipes and some ...  Read the complete review

Having read some reviews on this book on ‘the other’ site, I thought it would make a very good companion for my summer hols. A light-hearted look at society in the 1960’s through the eyes of a young boy, and sprinkled liberally with anecdotes about food. It all sounded very promising, and so I popped into Waterstones and picked up my copy from the ‘buy two, get third free’ table. I am sorry to say that the book disappointed me. Last year, I read ’Where Did It All Go Right?’ which was also based on a young man’s memories of early childhood and which used food as a backdrop for his reminiscing. ‘Where Did it…….’ was a funny read, and I ...  Read the complete review

Why on earth did I buy this book, I don’t really know. It could have been because in the back of my mind I had read an excellent review or two about the author in general, and combined with the fact that it was under offer as part of Ottaker’s 3 for 2 deal, it seemed too tempting by half NOT to pick up. So another misspent lunchtime, a purse a few £££ lighter once again; and I began to read Nigel Slater’s TOAST. It was with considerable delight that I started to read this book, and chuckle out loud at some of the similarities regarding upbringing and food between the author and my own upbringing. In fact, even flicking to the front page “Mother was not much of ...  Read the complete review

I am a huge fan of autobiography, having read dozens and dozens over the last couple of years, but never have I read the autobiography of someone I've never heard of: until now. Yes, I read 'Toast' simply because I had heard about how it was written, and I loved the idea. Nigel Slater is a chef - in fact, he's Gordon Ramsay's favourite 'accessible chef'. Characterised as a 'non fussy, working man's foody', Slater has an array of cookery books out in the shops, but I must admit I've never picked them up - it's Toast I want. Toast is his autobiography, but it's an autobiography with a difference. You see, Slater defines his life through food ...  Read the complete review