Real Food by Nigel Slater

Nigel Slater is one of Britain's best-loved food writers. To read one of his books is a culinary experience; the flavours and aromas almost come tumbling out of every page. These books are not for those embarking on a diet. The recipes are full of bubbling butter and the darkest, most seductive chocolate sauce slithering over the purest of vanilla ice cream.

Slater is a straight talking man, not a chef chasing a Michelin star, but someone who cares about the food he eats and even better, wants to help others improve their cooking. He believes that if you can make a cup of coffee, you can roast a chicken, which is a good starting point. It is always sensible to give the most hopeless of cooks some confidence. He exhorts flexibility and wants readers to trust their own instincts, not just to religiously follow the exact measurements and ingredients for each recipe.

In all his books, he imparts sound advice. He is not a gadget man, preferring instead to have a few high quality bits of equipment and then culinary perfection follows. His writing is eminently readable and opening up one of his books is like a trip to the psychotherapist. All your troubles just float away as you are cocooned in his comfort zone. The thought of toad with browned onion and Madeira gravy is a powerful image.

Real Food is built around eight of his favourite ingredients. His love of potatoes is consuming. He talks of the perfect mash as ‘the sort you want to bury your face in', which is thought provoking. He has also invited some of his friends to contribute their favourite recipes and these are just as good as his.

One criticism is that his books and their accompanying photographs (in Real Food and Real Cooking) are so sublime that it is almost unnecessary to try out the recipes. You feel feasted after reading them and it is quite extraordinary that a book can have that effect. Real Fast Food and Real Fast Puddings, although without photographs, are just as good.

His recipes evoke everything that modern cooking should represent. His cookbooks are the only ones that would be replaced, if I lost all the others. Praise indeed.

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*****

Publication Details:
Real Food
320 pages. Photographs by Jonathan Lovekin. £18.99
ISBN 1857029712. Published by 4th Estate.
1998

Real Cooking
287 pages. Photographs by Georgia Glynn Smith. £12.99
ISBN 01402522770. Published by Michael Joseph.
1997

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Other books by Nigel Slater
Real Good Food
Real Fast Food
Marie Claire Cookbook
Real Fast Puddings
The 30-Minute Cook
Appetite (4th Estate, October, 2000)