Customer Reviews

The Kitchen Diaries

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This is a fantastic book. Not many people could write down a years worth of eating and transform it into a highly entertaining and addictive book. Nigel Slater's writing wants you to start cooking -- and the best thing about it is that many of the recipes are very approachable and highly successful. Within a week of finishing the book I had made his Pumpkin Soup twice for very appreciative eaters. The best thing about this book, and his other books is that Nigel takes a few ingredients or some left overs and transforms them into something that you wish you'd been invited over to share with him. Nigel Slater is a great voice in today's food writing.

A large cookbook of 390+ pages, organized in a month-by-month way, containing over 300 new recipes and speckled with wonderful food photography emphasising the use of seasonally available ingredients.


However, because of the way each month highlights the availability of particular produce within the month itself, this cookbook shows that the current attitude of "supply and demand" is perhaps not the best way to cook. Nigel says it best:


"Our culinary seasons have been blurred by commerce, and in particular by the supermarkets' much vaunted idea that consumers want all things to be available all year round...I worry that today it is all too easy to lose sight of food's natural timing and, worse, to miss it when it is at its sublime best...Right food, right place, right time - it is my belief - and the point of this book - that this is the best recipe of all."


That is not to say that 'The Kitchen Diaries' is merely a seasonal cookbook, far from it. The month by month approach makes full use of available in seasonal ingredients, while Nigel's at-home-baking knowledge guides you easily through the recipes.


Pork loin cooked with grapes, wine and seasoned with salt, pepper and juniper berries, bruised potatoes, and Nigel's simply wonderful apple cake makes for a simple, yet wonderful dinner. Easy to make and seasonal to boot.


These are meals whose success relies on the ingredients of the moment rather than the experience of the cook.


Nigel's style of cookbook writing is something you either love or hate. I like the style and find it enjoyable to just read even if I am not cooking.



The Kitchen Diaries is an excellent addition to any Nigel Slater fan and a book worth getting if you love good food you can make at home.

Nigel Slater has done an amazing job with The Kitchen Diaries. Writing down everything eaten for dinner for an entire year must have been a daunting task, but it makes a wonderful read - as his stories are both funny and inspiring - and it was reassuring to see that even well known cooks are not above takeout and beer every once in a while!

So far I have made probably 15 recipes ...all have been wonderful, and the hot chocolate puddings alone are worth the price of book...oh, and so is the ham with chorizo, and the Thai curry, and his fabulous bolongese, and..well you get the idea, right?

A definite 'must-have'.

If you know of Nigel Slaters other books you will no doubt just buy this regardless of any review as you will know what an entertaining writer he is.

If you are new to Nigel Slater then here is what I would say about this book;

If you are looking for a straight out 'recipe book' this isn't the book for you (I'd start with the excellent 'Appetite' - also by Nigel Slater). However, if you are a foodie that is inspired by reading about others inspiration and seasonal eating, then you will find this book hugely entertaining.

More a book on enjoying simple culinery pleasures than technique or presentation.

Forget such lifestyle books as 'Under the Tuscan sun' or 'A year in Provence', what you'll get out of this is a sense of place, mood, season and good living which is obtainable by all of us (in the western world) through the simple but elegant satisfaction good food can bring.

Nigel Slater is definitely one of the best food writers around today, his enjoyment of food - its textures, colours, tastes and aromas is inspiring and even now just thinking about the book I find my mouth watering.

He is a British writer and if you have not heard about him or his work then I strongly suggest you have a go - if you like Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver you will probably enjoy Slater.

In this hardback illustrated book he discusses his eating and cooking over a year. Each chapter is a month of writing and cooking - talking about food what is available and what he does with it. The start of the chapter has the month and a list of recipes he has made through the month. So you can flick through on a month by month basis, tasting the season's fruits etc, (there is also a helpful index by the way) Or you can just read it as a series of recipes in a diary like way.

The recipes are based on fresh and simple principles rather than trying to make complicated concoctions. And some of the simplest foods make the nicest things - I love his broad bean recipes (the American readers will probably know them as fava beans)and rhubarb deserts are great.

My only real issue with this book is that it is printed on a laid crean paper - which is fine for text but they also have printed the pictures in colour on it which loses a lot of the gloss and richness of the illustrations. I really enjoy good food photography - even if I never can present it to the same standard it is lovely to look at. While it is all nicely presented and printed I find it difficult to get the whole "Readers-Digest-Condensed-book" picture out of my head because that is what it looks like to me.

It is in hardback with decorated boards as covers, not easy to hold open to make any of the recipes. My suggestion is that you do what I did - read it though once and really enjoy it as a diary/book. It is a wonderful literary indulgence - then pick out the recipes you like, put them on paper in your own recipe book, and keep this lovely volume safely on the shelf to browse through at leisure (and without sticky fingers).

Over the years I've bought every one of Nigel Slater's books. This latest one I had sent to me from Amazon.UK because I couldn't wait until it was published in the States. I'm not alone in my claim about Slater's superiority; that fierce critic Gordon Ramsay, in his autobiography, recommends Slater as the best too. Slater empahsizes the finest, freshest ingredients, and his recipes (often with many variations on a theme) are foolproof and usually very simple yet nonetheless subtle. This book is no exception. Every recipe I've tried has been a great success. Slater communicates his deep love of food and inspires the reader to focus on the essentials of pure taste, rather than on pretentious presentation or showing off, as so many other chefs do. This book is a delight.

Every time I put this up on the shelf it manages to make it's way back to my bedside table. "The Kitchen Diaries" is such a fun read, and the recipes are so inspiring, that I just can't seem to get enough. I've read it through once and now I'm on to reading it one month at a time, depending upon which month I'm experiencing at the moment.

I bought this book to help me on the way to truly seasonal cooking. As a really seasonal cookbook it isn't quite perfect though. A lot of what Mr. Slater cooks has to do with what is in his fridge and what he's in the mood for. For instance, he suggests recipes for eggplant in the middle of winter. Since recently I have a problem cooking bell peppers outside of the summer months, I have issues with eggplant in the winter as well. But perhaps in England eggplant is a winter vegetable? Regardless, the book will put you in a seasonal place of mind.

What I love about this book is Nigel Slater's writting style. He manages to do what so many cookbook writers try to do buy can't quite manage; he makes you feel like you're in the kitchen with him. Throughout the book you will find yourself looking at the snow through his kitchen windows or watching the rose petals fall in his garden in the spring. You will smell the chops sizzle on his stove. (It helps that the photographs are superb.) Reading this book is living his culiary home life. It's fascinating. I love being taken to a different place by reading, and this book does that in a charming and often funny way. And I enjoy learning that not everyone cooks the way I do. It seems silly, of course not everyone cooks like me, but reading about someone else's kitchen eccentricities is a lot of fun.

I've tried three of the recipes so far; the pumpkin soup, the grilled lamb chops with feta cheese and mint, and, one of four asian-esque bean sprout salads. I can't say I made any of them exactly according to the recipe, but that's not really the author's point. I think this book is meant to inspire, not dictate.

If you like reading cookbooks as much as you like cooking, you will probably love this one.

`the kitchen diaries' by `Britain's best-loved food writer' (according to the clear stickie on the book cover), Nigel Slater is truly one of the most unusual culinary books I have seen since I began reviewing all sorts of different cookbooks, cooking science books, culinary memoirs, and culinary history books. The one similarly unusual book that comes to mind is the great `Honey from a Weed' by Patience Gray in that both are culinary diaries. The salient difference between the two is that Gray's book covers the cuisines of four important culinary locations, while Slater's guiding light is the food available through the various months of the year. Oddly, in spite of the great quality of both books, neither is a very good guide to the food from their inspiration. Both are meant less as a reference for looking up recipes and more for the kind of book you simply sit down and read from cover to cover.

I once described to culinary journalist and writing teacher, Dianne Jacob, the author of `Will Write for Food', that I thought there were three major styles of recipe writing. The first and most common these days is the model created by Julia Child in `Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. Everyone from James Beard on down rewrote his or her stuff in this style soon after this book came out. The second style is the `haute cuisine' / celebrity chef style epitomized by Joel Robuchon, with the assistance of Patricia Wells. These recipes are read less to prepare these dishes than to garnish insights on new cooking techniques and unusual ingredients. The third is what I described as the Elizabeth David style of recipe writing as this great writer did in her earliest books on Mediterranean, French, and Italian cooking. Ms. Jacob said she didn't think anyone wrote recipes like Elizabeth David (except, perhaps, Elizabeth David). I submit that if in no other way, then certainly in this style of culinary writing, Nigel Slater is the truest incarnation of Elizabeth David's style of recipe writing.

As he explains in his excellent book, `Appetite', he is all about a minimalist approach to recipe writing, to advance the greatest culinary pleasure of being able to cook without a cookbook, or, at the very least, with only the barest suggestions from the author on how to go about doing things with some ingredients at hand. This is the most attractive aspect of several current popular culinary writers, not the least of whom is Slater's compatriot, Jamie Oliver, who seems to worship the ground on which Slater walks.

This book is also a great study in the cardinal precept of Tom Colicchio's `How to Think Like a Chef' which states that recipes do not develop from an interest to make a tart or a roast or a ceviche or whatever. They arise from what the chef has on hand. This book is an essay on that principle in a way which makes the principle real for the average amateur cook who works exclusively at home.

One of the greatest revelations you will find in this book is the surprising truth that even distinguished culinary writers will often eat through the day by simply picking out of the fridge and that Slater often goes for two or three days without actually cooking a `sit down' meal. This rings so true that those of us who routinely watch Rachael Ray saying that she cooks full two and three dish meals every day, or almost every day at home in the Adirondacks seriously believe she is exaggerating just a bit.

The title of this book must be taken completely literally. It is so much of a diary that about 40% of the text in the book is more like the material in a memoir than in a cookbook. It is not unrelated to `cooking', as it describes the circumstances under which certain dishes come about. The primary circumstance is the season, or more exactly the month or time in the season. So, the book is organized by month rather than by quarterly season.

Another very important sense in which this is a `diary' is that it has very much a sense of being an unfinished work in progress. Slater is nothing if not eloquent in his writing in his other books. That is why I am so surprised to find plainly awkward, unpolished writing in this book. This leads me to believe that unlike much of his other work, this book has not seen the pages of a newspaper with its platoon of copy editors poring over the text to clean up awkward writing.

This awkwardness may make one stop and reread passages here and there, but it will clearly not detract from the pleasure of reading this book for dyed in the wool foodies. Another thing which may limit the interest of the book to food fanatics is that like `Appetite' and unlike some of his more popular books such as `real fast food' and `real cooking', all measurements are done in metric units.

In the end, if you enjoy writing about food, this book is simply a great find. It is one of those rare books which puts you into the cook's head and lets you see work in progress in a way I simply have never seen anywhere else, even in Colicchio's important book or in better writer / chef collaborations such as Bittman / Von Gerichten and Welles / Robuchon.

Very highly recommended for foodies.

I knew nothing about Nigel Slater except from some references from some foodie friends. I bought the book because I liked the premise and the reviews I saw on Amazon. "The Kitchen Diaries" is a combination recipe book and slice-of-life biography covering one year's time. Unlike Ruth Reichl's books, Nigel shares the eating and dining practices of anonymous friends and family. His seasonal food and recipes are the stars of this year-long story. The book has some beautiful, yet stark, photographs. They look plain and simple, almost rustic, not artfully arranged or made up. They look genuine and attainable and delicious.And he follows faithfully the idea of having the cuisine follow what is available for the season. This is a wonderful book with simple yet creative recipes.

Great for those evenings when you need a suggestion of what to have for dinner. Easy recipes, beautiful photos and all we've tried have been delicious.