I first saw Nigel Slater on telly in about 1995 – the year my brother was born. I realised I already had one of his cookbooks, The 30-Minute Cook – I just didn’t know who he was.
He had a recipe – his cooking has definitely evolved since then – for French toast using melted ice-cream. And I thought: “That’s AMAZING.” It was exactly the kind of cooking I wanted to do. Clever, waste-conscious, always useful … I’ve been following him ever since. On my shelf I now have Eat: The Little Book of Fast Food, Real Fast Food, Real Fast Puddings and last year’s The Christmas Chronicles. The latter is my favourite. I particularly love his fruit cake recipe – it is perfectly rich and fruity, and the only one I ever make now. Why use a different recipe when the one in his book works so well?
Nigel’s cooking feels nostalgic. His recipes vary from super-simple and delicious to fancy and decadent. And I love that he can do it all. He uses ingredients he grows in his own garden, too, which has encouraged me to do the same.
Apart from Delia Smith, Nigel Slater is the ultimate TV cook. There’s something about the way he comes across – he makes being at home look so effortless. I love to think I glide through my house the way he does through his.
Of course, the reality is that it’s nothing like that in my home. We’ve got three kids (11, 10 and seven) and four chickens; there’s always someone who’s sick, always something that needs doing – a plant you’ve forgotten to water, laundry to fold. It’s mayhem. I look at Nigel and think: “That’s what I want my life to be like.” And sometimes it is: there are moments when everything at home is where it should be, and I’ll think: “I totally did a Nigel Slater just then.” It doesn’t happen often, though.
What is special about Nigel’s voice is his ability to evoke emotion. Even if he’s just writing about a baked potato, he can tell stories and make it personal. Whether or not the food is relevant to me, his writing makes me understand how it is relevant to him, which in turn makes me feel I know him that bit better. I can identify with him. I think it’s really important to feel some sort of connection to whomever you’re watching or reading. To my mind, no other food writer can do that.
I don’t know how much Nigel still melts his ice-cream and makes French toast any more, but I do, all the time – I have three kids, so of course I do! You know when there’s a little bit of ice-cream at the bottom of the tub and it’s too hard to scrape out? I just leave it out to melt, then dip the bread in that (it already has cream and eggs in it, which is what you need) and fry it in butter. Any flavour of ice-cream goes. And my kids load it up with all sorts of other things on top.
