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The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater
by
?Right food, right place, right time. It is my belief?and the point of this book?that this is the best recipe of all. A crab sandwich by the sea on a June afternoon; a slice of roast goose with apple sauce and roast potatoes on Christmas Day; hot sausages and a chunk of roast pumpkin on a frost-sparkling night in November. These are meals whose success relies not on the ex
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Hardcover, 416 pages
Published
October 19th 2006
by Gotham
(first published 2005)
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Start your review of The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater

Beware: this is possibly the longest review I've ever written of a book I have only skimmed.
Three things I disliked about this book:
1. I had a very hard time convincing myself to “read” a cookbook. I usually skim. But when I skimmed I missed things!
2.I hate it when authors live in much more advanced, metropolitan areas and think that it’s easy to find 10 farmer’s markets “on the way home.” This just makes me jealous.
3. I find it suspect that someone would keep an ingredient such as rhubarb “ ...more
Three things I disliked about this book:
1. I had a very hard time convincing myself to “read” a cookbook. I usually skim. But when I skimmed I missed things!
2.I hate it when authors live in much more advanced, metropolitan areas and think that it’s easy to find 10 farmer’s markets “on the way home.” This just makes me jealous.
3. I find it suspect that someone would keep an ingredient such as rhubarb “ ...more

The title does not lie: this really is a culinary diary and not a cookbook. There is an entry for every day of the year: always food-related but sometimes merely about shopping for food, or what's growing in his garden, or what he bought and ate. Only occasionally are actual recipes spelled out in a way that can be reproduced. More often, a dish is described sufficiently that a reasonably experienced cook could figure out how to make something similar -- if she could find the ingredients.
Fresh, ...more

Beautifully written and illustrated, this was a joy to read. This is much more than ‘just’ a cookery book; Slater writes about food and cooking with such enthusiasm, authenticity, and clear and vivid detail that it stimulates the senses and fires up your imagination. The recipes are beautiful in their simplicity and easy to follow. My only niggle, through no fault of Slater’s, is that some of the ingredients are not easy to come by in Holland. 4.5 stars.

I read this slowly and surely over 2007 and it has been such a life-altering experience. We live without television, so I couldn't tell you the first thing about Slater being a TV chef. We received Appetite as a gift a few years ago and fell in love with the simplicity of his recipes. Our favourite dish is from that book and it requires three ingredients, yet I guarantee it wouldn't be out of place with a high price tag at a good restaurant. So last year I picked up The Kitchen Diaries as a Chri
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Another great book by Nigel Slater. This time he cooks his way through the calendar year. As with APPETITE (his other book I own) this book reads as well as any novel, and introduces its recipes like anecdotes. I love being able to refer to the date (or month anyway) I am myself cooking in to see what might be a suitable recipe/shopping list for the day's dinner.
My one gripe with the format of the book, is that Nigel comes across as a little annoying insofar as all he seems to spend his day doin ...more
My one gripe with the format of the book, is that Nigel comes across as a little annoying insofar as all he seems to spend his day doin ...more

Seriously one of the best books about food I have ever read. This was a birthday gift - and it was written by someone I'd never heard of. But he eats like I want to eat, and thinks about food the way I think about food.
There are recipes. Some that I will be trying. However, there is a lot of ideas in here. Attitudes towards food, eating, and cooking. A happy relationship.
There are some well planed meals in her but it is a food diary for a year so somedays there is nothing in the fridge, and som ...more
There are recipes. Some that I will be trying. However, there is a lot of ideas in here. Attitudes towards food, eating, and cooking. A happy relationship.
There are some well planed meals in her but it is a food diary for a year so somedays there is nothing in the fridge, and som ...more

So many of my foodie friends talked about this book and now I know why. It is quite possibly the best cookbook I've ever read. Inviting, sumptuous, but never prentious, Nigel Slater talks us through a year of meals he cooks and eats, tantalising with delicious details. He eats seasonally, so each month reflects the best of what is naturally available at that time of year, which is the ideal way to cook and enjoy food. As well as recipes, there are just loads of great ideas - things to pull toget
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A lively read. Nigel Simpson writes "recipes" in the style of Elizabeth David. He does not number every little step and he is not always super precise in his measurements - "a good handful," "a glass of," and the like appearing more often than, say, "one and a half teaspoons" -- and employing lively, evocative descriptors like "enthusiastic boil" over traditional cookbookspeak. What is most interesting are the days when he confronts leftovers or seeks inspiration from what is on hand in his hous
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Nigel proves (not for the first time) that he is as great a storyteller as he is a cook. I could hear his voice and accent in my head, when reading it, as it was probably designed - each day of the diary on it's corresponding day during the year, my year. It allowed me to experience this book in it's fullest potential, and provided some great recipes throughout the year!
I truly enjoyed this sneak peak into Nigel's everyday life. His (almost) everyday account and thoughts about changing seasons, ...more
I truly enjoyed this sneak peak into Nigel's everyday life. His (almost) everyday account and thoughts about changing seasons, ...more

I've got a confession to make. I'm in love with Nigel Slater's cooking and his recipes and he could come to my home and be my kitchen slave forever. Needless to say, despite ogling his dishes on the television, I bought his books. Well, I bought two: The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen (2005) and The Kitchen Diaries 2 (2012). Not only are they filled with great recipes but, importantly to me, the text in between the recipes is engagingly descriptive and effortlessly witty.
Nigel Slater is ...more
Nigel Slater is ...more

Warning: this book will fill you with longing for Nigel or his boyfriend's life. Every single day is documented. After a day spent making homemade flatbread and taramasalata, he writes "In my smug haze of good house-keeping from yesterday's baking session, not to mention my arch disdain for factory produced foods, I fail to notice there is bugger all to eat in the house. At seven-thirty I dash to the corner shop, returning with a can of baked beans, a bag of frozen fries, and some beers." See, n
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Very interesting read.
Didn't find any recipes that inspired me, but I very much enjoyed what was, essentially, Nigel's food diary.
Lusciously illustrated and a superb way to while away a few hours. ...more
Didn't find any recipes that inspired me, but I very much enjoyed what was, essentially, Nigel's food diary.
Lusciously illustrated and a superb way to while away a few hours. ...more

Let me reiterate that I just love Slater's cooking writing. This one particularly yields itself to being read as a book, as it is literally a diary. And even though it is 15 years old now, it's still a very current cookbook - doesn't feel outdated at all. I love having it on my shelf.
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Dec 23, 2009
Elizabeth
rated it
it was amazing
Recommends it for:
Sarah
Recommended to Elizabeth by:
Shana
Shelves:
food-writing,
cookbooks
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 p
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This is such a lovely, atmospheric read- makes you want to run into the kitchen and start cooking ;)
Edit Aug '12- The wonderful news that a second Kitchen Diaries is coming out made me revisit this one, and how I love it. It is such a practical cookbook; there are recipes that you can plan for and impress with, but it is also very useful when you have something 'lying around' (like Nigel often does).... an on the spot decision to make plum crisp, p288, turned out beautifully just last week. ...more
Edit Aug '12- The wonderful news that a second Kitchen Diaries is coming out made me revisit this one, and how I love it. It is such a practical cookbook; there are recipes that you can plan for and impress with, but it is also very useful when you have something 'lying around' (like Nigel often does).... an on the spot decision to make plum crisp, p288, turned out beautifully just last week. ...more

It's quite self indulgent to record your eating habits over a year and to then publish it all, but if you're Nigel Slater such an exercise just seems genuine. The man knows how to balance a passion for food with the need for practicality. It's not diner party stuff, it's cooking for the everyday, without compromising variety, taste or nourishment.
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OK, so this is essentially a cookery book, but it's so beautifully written as a series of diaries it is much more than this! Fabulous seasonal recipes with delightful notes and commentaries. I know not everyone is a Nigel fan, but I just love his passion for good simple seasonal food, and his evocative style of writing.
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I adore Nigel Slater - simple as. I loved the conversational, humourous way this was written: example, describing rice cakes as "polystyrene ceiling tiles!" I have the second volume, but will take a break and read a few other things first. Hugely enjoyable.
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Feels like cheating to mark this or any cookbook as 'read,' because they are books you pick at, enjoying chapters out of order and then hopping to another section perhaps related, perhaps at random and suddenly an hour or more has slipped away. This will go on forever as it is used, remembered, marked.
Confession - I break my strictest reader rule with cookbooks. I write in them. In my family they are borrowed, passed down and nurtured. Recipes may be marked 'Grandma's Fav Piccalilli', or notes ...more
Confession - I break my strictest reader rule with cookbooks. I write in them. In my family they are borrowed, passed down and nurtured. Recipes may be marked 'Grandma's Fav Piccalilli', or notes ...more

I picked this up because I thought it might have a favorite quick curry recipe, posted by Luisa Weiss on The Wednesday Chef a while ago. It has that recipe and 1000 others that are quite intriguing. Slater's cooking is generally easy, although going around to the butcher for some lamb is a little bit more difficult in the US. But it's also a little bit unfamiliar, in part due to his creativity perhaps, or pairings and traditions that are British/European. The flavors and use of vegetables from h
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My much-anticipated Nigel Slater book has come. So excited by it's arrival, I have wanted to read this book for a long time. Bought online, second-hand, it’s thick as a doorstop and twice as heavy; how can bookshops do these things for a penny plus £2.80 postage? I’m very happy with it, of course, Nigel Slater’s food prose is second-to-none, though it is now impossible for me to read anything by him now without hearing the voice of Damien Trench. Sadly, the illustrations are extremely disappoint
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I loved this volume of the Kitchen Diaries just as much as the first one I read. Slater's perspective on food is one I aspire to, though I doubt I'll ever quite get there since I don't live in one of the largest cities in the world with all the markets, butchers, and cheese shops I could need, along with a productive home garden right out back. But, that's part of the charm of reading his kitchen diaries. They transport you to an idyllic food life, a calm, British, delicious food life that is an
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This was a fun book, lots of things I want to try. Also a bit of a mystery. I lived in the UK for several years and loved it. Anything will grow there. My favorite food writers all seem to come from there. I can, however, with great enthusiasm, go on about some of the worst meals I have ever had and they were all in the UK. There are great photos of food. And yet, the folksy writing, nonchalant use of ingredients that are early "readily available" (I live in Asia and before that on a mountain in
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It's become more popular recently to write memoirs and recipes woven into a year of a cook-chef, so you are getting seasonal foods (and often local to the author,) along with stories tied into the recipes. I have a friend who always uses Nigel Slater for his evenings at home or celebrations and swears by his recipes. I haven't tested any of them yet. Many are what you would consider "European" in sensibilities (quail, kumquats). The book is beautifully published. It's worth a read if for no othe
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Absolutely beautiful book that belongs on a shelf in my kitchen. This is one that I want to be able to sit down and read whenever I feel like it, especially for inspiration. The recipes were mouthwatering and I often have the majority of those ingredients on hand. I loved that it had bits of personality sprinkled throughout and that there were entries for almost the entirety of his year as well as the recipes mostly follow seasonal ingredients. My only real aggravation was that the gorgeous phot
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I read this book slowly for a very long time savouring the pace, the information, the recipes, and the humanity that permeates the entire book.
The recipes I took on worked but what struck me was how ahead of his time he is, determined to eat according to the seasons.
The symbiotic relationship he has with suppliers and purveyors and orientation towards fundamental quality fits me as a person.
His take on onion soup using pan roasted onions instead of cut and pan browned made such a spectacular re ...more
The recipes I took on worked but what struck me was how ahead of his time he is, determined to eat according to the seasons.
The symbiotic relationship he has with suppliers and purveyors and orientation towards fundamental quality fits me as a person.
His take on onion soup using pan roasted onions instead of cut and pan browned made such a spectacular re ...more

I love watching Nigel Slater on TV. Like my other two favourite TV cooks he is not a professional chef. I have Kitchen Diaries 2 and 3 and am part way through the second one. I have received The Christmas Chronicles as a present and have made a start on that too. I have loved this book. The reading is what makes it, the recipes are the icing on the cake. These are books I will go back to many times.
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Nigel Slater is a British food writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has written a column for The Observer Magazine for seventeen years and is the principal writer for the Observer Food Monthly supplement. Prior to this, Slater was food writer for Marie Claire for five years. He also serves as art director for his books.
Although best known for uncomplicated, comfort food recipes presented in earl ...more
Although best known for uncomplicated, comfort food recipes presented in earl ...more
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