C O N T E M P O R A R Y C O O K I N G F O R E V E R Y D A Y. A chubby, fabric bound collection of 600 easy recipes and ideas for midweek dinners. The recipes are short, precise and easy to use. Each recipe is just 5-12 lines long, has a quickly referenced shopping list under the title, and a photograph of the finished dish. Most are accompanied by ideas and inspirations and room for your own notes.
An immediate best seller, and designed to become a go-to book for everyday cooking, Eat is soft bound, and once it has been used a few times, will open flat for easy use. Written with James Thompson, the short, concise style of the recipes came from the Twitter postings @NigelSlater. They do not `spoon-feed` the reader and are unlikely to please those who need their recipes written in plodding, step-by-step detail. These are spirited, modern recipes for contemporary cooks.
There are over 400 recipes including over 100 without meat or fish. Some of the favourites: Chorizo burgers, Carrot, Black Beans and Coriander, Rice Cakes wirth Gruyère, Basil Prawns, Crab Balls, Aubergine Paneer, Sausage Balls with Mustard Cream Sauce, Chicken Skin Popcorn and Sweetcorn Crumb-Crust Pie.
From the Introduction:
'Sometimes we cook for the pleasure of it, understanding the provenance of our ingredients, choosing them with care, thoughtfully taking them on the journey from shop to plate. We seek out the perfect recipe and take our time, lovingly preparing our dinner from scratch. There are times when we might want to take the whole business more seriously, meeting those who produced the ingredients, or if we have space, growing some of it for ourselves. We want to consider it, discuss it, perhaps even write about it or photograph it.
But sometimes, we just want to eat...... This little book is for those times. The recipes here are straightforward and with the grasp of most of us. I would like to think that that many of them will work for those who have never cooked anything in their lives. It is not a book of detailed, obsessively honed directions. Sometimes cooking is about the classics, but it should also, surely, be a light-hearted, spirited affair, alive with invention, experimentation, appetite and a sense of adventure.'
Eat is published as a heavweight flexible softback, it has 425 pages and is fully bound in pumpkin coloured linen. Photographed by Jonathan Lovekin, designed by David Pearson and set in Nexus Mix, a new sans serif, it is printed by LEGO in Italy.
Published by Fourth Estate (London 2013) Dumont Buchverlag (Germany 2014) Semolina Editions (Brazil 2016) Fontaine Uitgevers (Amsterdam 2015, as Aan Tafel) Ten Speed Press Random House (New York 2014)
‘Nothing was ever going to come close to Nigel Slater’s “Eat”. An instant classic’ Cookbook of the Year, The Times
‘ Eat is the most beautiful yet … You could cook from this book for years, needing no other, and the dishes are so delicious you might not even want another’ Elfreda Pownell, Spectator
‘There’s nobody better than Nigel Slater at making cooking seem a relaxed, modest and wholly enjoyable affair … This chunky, easy-going book continues that approach in 400-plus pages which never run out of inspiration’ Daily Mail
‘This isn’t a book about practicality, or a new concept, or seasonal eating, even though it embraces all these things. As with his wonderful “Kitchen Diaries”, this book is about what we love to eat – whether it’s ‘thickly cut salmon, generously-spread cream cheese, a golden chewy bagel’ or a salad of apple, ginger and endive. Buy this if not as a present for yourself, at least for your kitchen’ Harper’s Bazaar
‘A stout little stocking-filler enticingly bound in saffron cloth … dense with Slater’s signature, hearty-modern recipes, suggestions for variations and appetising photographs. A book to keep in a drawer at work, for mid-week meal inspiration, or for a guilty afternoon exercising your appetite when the boss isn’t looking’ The Sunday Times
‘He remains the UK cookery writer who breaks new ground as regularly as a mole’ Rose Prince, Daily Telegraph, ‘Books of the Year’
