I have a new food-crush on Nigel Slater. I’d read a couple columns of his in Gourmet. I read his book Toast, which I very much enjoyed and recommend. But then I stumbled onto his web-column in the Guardian’s website, and I am smitten. I love his casual but unmistakably British tone, in which he can be offhand about leftovers, be elegantly particular about a technique, and talk about farting all in the same sentence.
But more than anything I love the recipes. They’re clearly the result of a fellow foodnerd who reads a lot of cookbooks and spends a lot of time just making shit up in his kitchen, and they are so very English somehow. How is it that no one in the States, myself included, has ever thought to put a goat-cheese mixed with pickles and pickle juice from the jar into a beet soup? (Maybe they have, but I’ve not found them yet.) There’s always a bit of marmalade or a bit of curry involved, in places I might not think to put them. Every single thing I’ve read on his column sounds absolutely gorgeous to eat. And it’s become a must-read site for me, at least of late… swoon.
You would absolutely adore his Kitchen Diaries – it’s a whole year of his recorded eatings – with recipes!