A peek inside...
When I first started writing about food professionally in 2003 I turned to Nigel Slater and his writing in The Observer and I loved his voice. A lot of food writing can wax poetic and favor form over the content but Nigel Slater's writing never does. It's honest and I've really enjoyed reading him over the years. If you haven't read his memoir Toast I recommend it. It's a wonderful book and I had fun reviewing it for Culinate way back when. (While putting this post together I learned that a film based on it starring Freddie Highmore and Helena Bonham Carter aired this past Christmas on BBC1 and at the Berlin, Taipei and Warsaw Film Festivals. Can't wait to see it!)
I purchased one of Nigel Slater's newest cookbooks -- Tender -- pretty soon after it hit shelves last spring in America and I've enjoyed cooking from it ever since. (It was published in two volumes in the UK in 2009; in the US by Ten Speed Press in 2011, the second US volume Ripe comes out this April.) The book is part recipe and part narrative -- giving you background into Slater's London home garden that he broke ground for in early 2000 and maintains with his partner.
Chapters are based on ingredients sourced from Slater's garden and cooked in his kitchen so it's homespun and inspiring and feeds right into my Yard Fresh ways. I love this book and I hope that you will too. Here are some of the tasty foods that I've cooked from it lately...
Thinly sliced roasted potatoes with butter and thyme.
Beer braised beef stew with homemade applesauce and roasted potatoes.
Stew and potato leftovers with one over-easy for breakfast.
This cauliflour cheese mustard soup is so good that I got a few friends to make it in the same week. Really.
Cabbage sausage soup with a few other bites on the side.
Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch by Nigel Slater pub. date April, 2011 620 pages $40, Ten Speed Press www.nigelslater.com