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The Kitchen Diaries

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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. Also, the book is really only suitable for Britain as the recipes are very focussed on seasonal produce. I pepper and salt the four plump little partridge, smear them with butter inside and out, then put a sprig of thyme up them. I am not sure the thyme does a fat lot, but it makes them look the part. I had a very hard time convincing myself to “read” a cookbook. I usually skim. But when I skimmed I missed things!

Nigel Slater - The Kitchen Diaries volume ii Nigel Slater - The Kitchen Diaries volume ii

The symbiotic relationship he has with suppliers and purveyors and orientation towards fundamental quality fits me as a person.If you are using a freezer, remove the sorbet after two hours and beat it firmly, bringing the frozen edges into the middle. Now return it to the freezer for a further hour, repeat, then freeze again. At this point you might well wonder what on earth I am up to as the mixture will look somewhat dodgy, with a frozen layer of white on top and a liquid layer underneath. Trust me. It will all blend together at the final beating. Toast is the memoir of Nigel’s childhood. It has won five literary awards and been translated into six languages. Toast has been dramatised for radio, made into a filmand has recently been adapted for the stage. After itspremier at The Lowry and the Edinburgh Fringe it moved to London in the spring and summer of 2019 and then toured for six months until the end of the year.

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

Tip the mixture into a gratin dish. Avoid the temptation to smooth the top. Toss the breadcrumbs with the grated Pecorino and scatter over the top. Bake for about 35 to 40 minutes.

Oh, it's so sad to finish this book, because I know there's not another one waiting for me on my bookshelf. His take on onion soup using pan roasted onions instead of cut and pan browned made such a spectacular result I remain amazed to this day. Eating for England', his collection of essays, was dramatised for BBC Radio 4 starring Celia Imrie and Julian Rhind-Tutt. I think one of the things I really enjoyed and appreciated was his perspective on meals and portions. From the way he talks about food, it seems like his diet centers around very good food, but not a whole lot of it - so small, hearty, flavorful portions rather than a plate full of mediocre food. As I told Shane, this is something I struggle with in planning meals - I worry that whatever I make isn't going to be enough, or that there should be more protein, etc - when perhaps if I focused on healthy, hearty, and flavorful, the rest wouldn't be as big of a deal. 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."

Nigel Slater | The Guardian Nigel Slater | The Guardian

Cooking food slowly on a low heat, covered with a lid, gives time for the ingredients to come together, for the flavours to mellow and soften and become as one. This gentle style of cooking in liquid has an hour or more to draw the marrow from the bones, which, together with the fat, deeply enriches the cooking juices. You effortlessly create a softly burbling pot of succulence and savour.Published: 29 Oct 2023 Nigel Slater’s autumn recipes for baked sweet potatoes, and a fig and hazelnut cake 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'. I just love these books, and I can't tell you precisely why. They're beautiful, yes. The writing in them is peaceful and lovely, and they're about one of my favorite things ever (food). But that doesn't really explain my maniacal love for them; so maniacal that I have bought them.

Nigel Slater the Kitchen Diaries - AbeBooks Nigel Slater the Kitchen Diaries - AbeBooks

Nigel Slater is my kind of cook as his recipes are straight-forward, easy to understand, and generally use ingredients that are either already in our cupboards, fridges and freezers, or readily available to most of us. I suppose I fell in love with Nigel's cookery skills by watching his television programmes. He has such a relaxed way about him, such an ordinary way of speaking to the viewer, such a no-nonsense approach to cooking, that he convinced me absolutely that 'I can do that'. Which actually remains to be seen, of course. His Kitchen Diaries books are like that. They are far more than just recipe books. They are, as they state, diaries. The narrative from the author, Nigel Slater, is almost poetic with descriptions of his garden, the plants, the weather, the shops that he frequents, the produce that he so loves. You can sit and happily read these books as if they were simply delightful novels that paint vivid pictures with words. They are treasures to be cherished. Really. Slater's evocative prose gives the impression that you are already devouring that strawberry mascarpone tart"Financial Times, Books of the Year.Nigel’s recipes are often told as stories, as in his award-winning books Tender, the three-volume Kitchen Diariesand The Christmas Chronicles. Others are collections of simpler, more concise recipes to use as daily inspiration. These are published as Appetite, Eat and the recently published, vegetable-based GreenFeast. He has also written a best-selling memoir and a book of essays. Nigel's books have been translated into German, Russian*, Dutch, Portuguese, Korean, French and Taiwanese. His latest publication is A Cook's Book (2021).

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