Nigel Slater's Real Food

Observer columnist Nigel Slater has chosen his eight favourite foods and sculpted a sensational cookbook around them. And what are they? Potatoes, chicken, sausages, garlic, bread, cheese, ice-cream and chocolate.

For each of the eight he offers a selection of recipes, some from friends and colleagues, including Alastair Little, Rowley Leigh, Peter Gordon and Nigella Lawson. As he explains in the introduction, "By Real Food I mean big-flavoured, unpretentious cooking. Good ingredients made into something worth eating. Nothing fancy. Nothing extravagant. Nothing careless or slapdash. Just nice, uncomplicated food--be it chicken roasted with olive oil, lemon and basil or simply a big, fat mushroom baked in garlic butter and stuffed inside a soft bap." And that's pretty much what he's achieved, though he does let himself go on occasion with recipes like Deep-fried Ice Cream and Mincemeat Parcels.

The book is peppered with short essays on ingredients that bear Slater's trademark dry wit. He is definitely one of Britain's best food writers and his collaboration with photographer Jonathan Lovekin marks this book out from the crowd.

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Slater Shmater - Rated
I used to really like Nigel Slater's food page in the Observer when I was a student in the 90's, so I decided to pick up a book of his. I must say I was pretty disappointed - Nigel still writes with an undiminished passion about ingredients and flavours, but the recipies in here are frankly lame. If you cook everything in butter and double cream of course it's going to taste good! And thanks for the recipe for a baked potato. What really turned me off was the recipe for a rump steak sandwich in which Mr Slater admits that he "loathes brown beef". What cook in their right mind "loathes" brown beef for god's sake? Doesn't that discount half of the classic French and Italian dishes amongst others? You're a fake Nigel, go back to journalism.

I Love It - Rated
I love the fact that once again Nigel Slater has delivered a book easy to read, entertaining and useful! (I already own his "30 minute Cook" book - though I prefer "Real Food" layout and content!)
My boyfriend bought me this book this week and I have already been into it twice! I love the way Nigel Slater divides up his book...not the usual Starters, Fish, Meat, etc courses, but into subject headings such as Bread, Garlic, Cheese, etc! Wonderful! Buy this book if you want to create good dishes that will wow your guests without breaking the bank or turning yourself into sweating maniac! :-)

Great book let down by poor quality manufacture - Rated
The book contents is excellent. I can cook a bit but decided to start cooking more and bought a load of new books, this is my favorite. It is nicely laid out into sections on chicken, potatoes, sausage, garlic, bread etc and some good pictures in places to let you see what it should come out like. There is a clear nicely written intro to each section to get you enthused and very easy to follow recipes. I jumped straight in with the Thai green curry that turned out really nice.
The only down side of this book for me was that after cooking with it once the cover started coming away from the spine. Maybe I got a duff one? Either way it is going back and I will order the hardback version or another copy of this one as I do want a copy!

An inspirational cookbook - Rated
Nigel Slater was writing about how to make basic family food taste wonderful long before it was fashionable. Luckily, good food cooked well does not go out of style. This book is as useful to me now as when I bought it nine years ago.

One thing I love about this book is that the ingredients are completely normal things I can buy reliably at the supermarket. The directions are very simple and generally very short. For instance, the "Parsley and Mustard Mash" has five ingredients, of which three are implied by the title (the other two being butter and creme fraiche). There is a paragraph about his views on the dish, and another one describing how to make the dish - that's it. Oh - and a sort of arty photo.

The photos are good - arty of course, but in a way made to entice you to try the recipe. Just having a look at the photo of roast potatoes makes you want to cook a proper sunday dinner.

The recipes are organised by ingredient. Once you get used to this, it becomes a useful way to browse and consider different ways of dealing with those ingredients. However, it does mean that if you're looking for a standard cookbook approach where starters, mains and puds are all in separate chapters (useful for menu planning), this book won't be so helpful.

There are a few strange recipes - for instance "Peter Gordon's Muffaletta", a sort of squashed sandwich which is surprisingly good. However the vast majority will be his take on a familiar british dish.

The recipes clearly reflect his taste - there's lots of garlic (I always leave it out), cream, dark chocolate, and other rich ingredients. Nevertheless, most of the recipes work with substitutions that fit your diet and taste. They are simple enough to stand up without going to the extremes that he sometimes does.

For people who cook for pleasure, and who enjoy good basic food made to taste utterly indulgent, I would definitely recommend this book.

The Con Mans Cook Book - Rated
There is a lot to be said for any cook whose idea of creating the perfect dish revolves around phrases like "just throw in a bit of that" and "chuck in a bit of this". It all sounds so easy. It isn't. This type of imprecise language might sound a bit cool, but the fact is, given the "who cares how much approach" of Slater's ingredients the inexperienced cook is guaranteed to fail. His "traditional" fish cakes turn to mush - primarily because he fails to see the need for a binding agent like egg or milk. His baked fish is rubbish - tasting of little more than melted butter and his salads, well, actually they're great. But, hey, only a complete idiot could mess up a salad, right?

Don't buy this nonesense, buy a proper cook book by a proper chef. Slater is nothing more than an imposter in the world of real cooking.