Toast: The Story of a Young Boy's Hunger by Nigel Slater

This is the autobiographical account of a boy growing up in 60s and 70s suburban Britain, centred around the contents of the family larder.  I really like Nigel Slater's TV programs so this was a really interesting insight into where he came from.  

It sounds like he had a pretty malnourished childhood, both emotionally and nutritionally.  It makes for pretty awful reading in some aspects when you look at what he went through as a kid, but I think you need to look at the context of his life.  Just looking at Slater's age and the age he says his parents were when he was born, they would both have been through WW2 - his dad probably would have fought in the war - and this generation were notoriously emotionally cold.  Also, the 60s and 70s were famously bad culinary-wise - it was a whole period between everything being meat-and-two-veg with cabbage boiled to slime and the discovery that mainland Europe actually had some really lovely recipes and ingredients.  The maraschino cherries!  On everything!

Each chapter is only a couple of pages and this, coupled with the very easy writing style, made this book a quick read.  I now kind of want to find out what happened after Nigel started working at the Savoy.

4 stars