The Kitchen Diaries

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Nigel Slater and James Thompson are co-founders of the independent television production company Sloe Films. Their first series, Eating Together, premiered in Spring 2015 on BBC1. Their latest, Nigel Slater's MiddleEast was shown on BBC2 in Spring 2018 and they are currently working on a new series for 2021. I really can't recall the last time I enjoyed reading a book as much as I enjoyed The Kitchen Diaries. I spent most the weekend curled up with it on the couch under a warm blanket, drinking a hot mug of coffee. It's basically the perfect format for me - a combination of diary and cookbook, reflecting on seasonal eating, cooking experiments (both good and bad), and the pleasures (and sometimes shames) of food. After reading through half the year on Saturday, I woke up Sunday morning dreaming of perfect breakfasts. A cold, wet autumn begs for game birds, roasted and served up with mash (potato, celeriac and potato, pumpkin, parsnip), if for no other reason than they feel right. Imagine a roast partridge, its skin crisp, its flesh the rose side of bloody, with a mound of nutty-tasting celeriac and potato mash; a grouse with a pool of hot bread sauce and a couple of roast parsnips; or pigeon, as bloody as you like, with a mash of buttered, peppered swede.

The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater

Nigel'swriting has won the National Book Awards, the Glenfiddich Trophy, the James Beard Award, The Fortnum and Mason Award,the British Biography of the Year and the André Simon Memorial Prize. Television awards include a Guild of Food Writers’ Award for his BBC1 series Simple Suppers and the BBC Food Personality of the Year. The stage adaptation of Toast by Henry Filloux-Bennett, was itself recipient of a Cameo Award. Nigel is an honorary Master of Letters(MLitt). Hewasawarded an OBE in theNew YearHonours 2020 'for services to cookery and to literature'. Heat the olive oil in a large shallow pan, then brown the lamb steaks on both sides. Remove to a plate. Chop the onion, celery and carrots into roughly 1cm cubes and add to the pan in which you browned the meat. Cook over a moderate heat for at least 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, till they are nicely coloured and approaching softness. Return the lamb to the pan, add the Marsala, season and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and continue cooking, covered with a lid, for 30-40 minutes, till the lamb is tender. Lastly, a note about the photography. It is again by Jonathan Lovekin, whose work I mentioned liking very much in my review of Plenty. I didn't love it quite as much here, but I don't think that's Lovekin's fault. One, the paper quality was softer and the images didn't come out as sharply. Two, Slater's food is not as colorful as Ottolenghi's. I was impressed at how Lovekin suited his style to the simpler and homier kitchen-garden feel of this book -- many excellent photographers (or writers or artists) and not so flexible. Nigelis published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate, in the United States by Ten Speed Press at Random House, by DuMont Buchverlagin Germany, Eskmo in Russia andby Fontaine Uitgevers in the Netherlands. Cover tightly with cling film, then freeze for a good hour (it can stay frozen for several days if tightly wrapped). Bring the cake out of the freezer a good 30 minutes before you need it, to let the sponge soften.Once again there are small green lentils bubbling in a pot of water on the stove that need nothing more than draining, then tossing immediately with red wine vinegar, olive oil and lots of parsley, to be eaten with slices cut from a log of chalky, ash-rolled goat's cheese. This is the supper I make when we really don't know what to have; a supper of nubbly, fudgy textures and milky, nutty flavours that works on every level. It's cheap, too. Love it.

Nigel Slater | The Guardian Nigel Slater | The Guardian

Also, the book is really only suitable for Britain as the recipes are very focussed on seasonal produce. Roughly chop 6 anchovy fillets and add to the lamb. Tip 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds into a dry frying pan and toast over a moderate heat till pale gold. Tip the seeds into the lamb, then season generously with salt and pepper. To make the dressing, put the mustard, lemon juice, mint leaves and egg yolks in a blender and whiz for a few seconds. Pour in the oil slowly, stopping when you have a dressing the consistency of double cream. The title does not lie: this really is a culinary diary and not a cookbook. There is an entry for every day of the year: always food-related but sometimes merely about shopping for food, or what's growing in his garden, or what he bought and ate. Only occasionally are actual recipes spelled out in a way that can be reproduced. More often, a dish is described sufficiently that a reasonably experienced cook could figure out how to make something similar -- if she could find the ingredients. I have been slowly coming round to the Brussels sprout. Not a Damascene conversion, more a slow warming (I have still to work out the allure of cooked carrots). Fried rather than boiled, partnered with the meat of the pig and slathered in cream, these are the sprouts for me. They never see water in this recipe – only hot butter, cream and bacon. There are almonds too, an inspiration. They were cooked for the last show of my third cookery series, a programme set in Scotland, where they appeared with roast wild venison and potatoes cooked with onions. The recipe is not mine but one of my assistant James's. I used purple Brussels sprouts but use whatever you have.The title of this book must be taken completely literally. It is so much of a diary that about 40% of the text in the book is more like the material in a memoir than in a cookbook. It is not unrelated to `cooking', as it describes the circumstances under which certain dishes come about. The primary circumstance is the season, or more exactly the month or time in the season. So, the book is organized by month rather than by quarterly season. Christmas Chronicles was named Cookbook of the Year in the Fortnum and Mason Awards and hasbeentranslated into German, Dutch and Russian. I especially liked Nigel's innovative recipes for left-overs, which made me more experimental too- more prepared to have a go combining bits of this and that to make a unique supper dish, a la Nigel!

Nigel Slater - THE KITCHEN DIARIES, US Nigel Slater - THE KITCHEN DIARIES, US

Peel 4 banana shallots, then slice them in half from root to tip. Warm 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a shallow heavy-based ovenproof pan and lightly brown the shallots on both sides. Keep the heat moderate. Het juiste eten, op de juiste plaats en in de juiste tijd. Ik ben ervan overtuigd – en daar gaat dit boek ook over – dat dat het allerbeste recept is. Een broodje krab op een junimiddag aan zee, een plak gebraden gans met appelmoes en geroosterde aardappelen op Eerste Kerstdag, warme saucijzen en een stuk geroosterde pompoen op een van vorst fonkelende novemberavond. Dat zijn maaltijden waarvan het succes niet leunt op de deskundigheid van de kok, maar op het meer fundamentele uitgangspunt dat dit voedsel is dat bij dat moment hoort: iets dat gegeten wordt op de meest geëigende tijd, wanneer de ingrediënten op het toppunt van perfectie zijn, wanneer eten, kok en tijd van het jaar met elkaar in overeenstemming zijn.’Nigel has appeared at the Berlin Literary Festivalin conversation with Priya Basil, in Birmingham with Ravinder Bhogal (2018)and in Dublin (2019) with Marian Keyes. Extract: "April 17 ... "Could there ever be the perfect day? Maybe not, but today is as close as it gets. Bright sunshine and cool breeze, the scent of wallflowers and narcissus on the air; a farmers' market with sorrel, young pigeons and good rhubarb, and an afternoon so hot and sunny you could fry eggs on the pavement. I gave in and bought my first tomatoes too, a vine or two of the early Campari..." (Slater, N. 2005, 'The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen', London, Fourth Estate, p.123

Nigel Slater - The Kitchen Diaries volume ii

I think the really interesting bits of my story was growing up with this terribly dominating dad and a mum who I loved to bits but obviously I lost very early on; and then having to fight with the woman who replaced her ... I kind of think that in a way that that was partly what attracted me to working in the food service industry, was that I finally had a family." As he told The Observer, "The last bit of the book is very foody. But that is how it was. Towards the end I finally get rid of these two people in my life I did not like [his father and stepmother, who had been the family's cleaning lady] - and to be honest I was really very jubilant - and thereafter all I wanted to do was cook." As he explains in his excellent book, `Appetite', he is all about a minimalist approach to recipe writing, to advance the greatest culinary pleasure of being able to cook without a cookbook, or, at the very least, with only the barest suggestions from the author on how to go about doing things with some ingredients at hand. This is the most attractive aspect of several current popular culinary writers, not the least of whom is Slater's compatriot, Jamie Oliver, who seems to worship the ground on which Slater walks. Cut the tomatoes in half and add them to the soup with the nam pla and lemon juice. They will take 7-10 minutes to cook. Add the chunks of pumpkin and continue cooking for a minute or two. Place a swirl of cooked noodles in each of four bowls, pour over the laksa and add the mint and the remaining coriander leaves.I once described to culinary journalist and writing teacher, Dianne Jacob, the author of `Will Write for Food', that I thought there were three major styles of recipe writing. The first and most common these days is the model created by Julia Child in `Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. Everyone from James Beard on down rewrote his or her stuff in this style soon after this book came out. The second style is the `haute cuisine' / celebrity chef style epitomized by Joel Robuchon, with the assistance of Patricia Wells. These recipes are read less to prepare these dishes than to garnish insights on new cooking techniques and unusual ingredients. The third is what I described as the Elizabeth David style of recipe writing as this great writer did in her earliest books on Mediterranean, French, and Italian cooking. Ms. Jacob said she didn't think anyone wrote recipes like Elizabeth David (except, perhaps, Elizabeth David). I submit that if in no other way, then certainly in this style of culinary writing, Nigel Slater is the truest incarnation of Elizabeth David's style of recipe writing. Nigel has appeared on Desert Island Discs, Gardeners’ World, Gardener’s Question Time and Front Row. He is a regular contributor to Woman’s Hour and The Food Programme.