A Cook's Book

Breaking bread
'It started with a baguette. That first loaf, bought at dawn from a boulangerie on my way home after a night out in Paris, still warm, its crust crackling. The floury, craggy point of the bread - more crust than crumb, more air than loaf -wrenched off as I walked, and eaten (sans beurre, sans confiture, sans jambon) in the street will never leave me.' So, back to simple
'Dinner is rarely more than a single dish in this house. A bowl of chilli and greens; plump, garlicky beans slowly cooked in the oven, a boned chicken leg on the grill brushed with thyme and lemon. Sometimes we feast: a vast dish of pasta with mussels and prawns; a steaming pie of sweet potatoes and lentils; baked fatty pork with butter beans and broth. Even then, this is straightforward eating. The nearest you will get to a 'starter' is a bowl of olives.' Four chocolate cakes
'One afternoon, late in 2017, I made what was to become my favourite chocolate cake of all. Shallow, fudge-like and spiked with sherry-soaked golden sultanas and shards of chocolate, its surface gritty with caster sugar scented with rosemary. A cake for an autumn afternoon, perhaps with coffee or smoky roasted tea. A fire, several gardens away, had sent a long, lazy curl of smoke into the darkening sky. My fancy turned to the thought of dabbing sweet crumbs, roasted nuts and dark chocolate from a plate with my finger and thumb.'

Nigel Slater is an award-winning author, journalist and television presenter. He has been the food columnist for the Observer for over twenty-five years. His collection
of bestselling books includes the classics Appetite and The Kitchen Diaries and the two-volume Tender. He has made cookery programmes and documentaries for BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4. His memoir Toast - the story of a boy's hunger won six major awards and became a film and stage production. His writing has won the James Beard Award, the National Book Award, the Glenfiddich Trophy, the Andre Simon Memorial Prize, the British Biography of the Year and the Fortnum & Mason Best Food Book. He lives in London. He was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours in 2020 for services to cookery and literature.