the kitchen diaries ii

Nigel Slater is my favourite food writer. I could barely wait for his latest book, The Kitchen Diaries II, to be released, and when I finally got around to picking up a copy this week, I couldn't have been more pleased. His beautiful volumes are inviting and a delight to behold; his way of writing gentle, warm and poetic. The design of his latest book is just jaw-dropping. From the yellow gold of the bookmark and the marbled end pages to the richly coloured photographs and elegant type; Slater has most certainly done it again. I absolutely love this Guardian review by William Leith, which seems to sum up the book quite perfectly:

'Sometimes with Slater, you'll be reading about some amazing dish he's making, and you'll imagine the kitchen, and the people sitting in the garden, through the French windows, and you'll feel like you're almost tasting the food. And then you realise it's something simple, like bacon and avocado salad. Slater's trick here is to "scrape up the pan-stickings with a wooden spatula and tip it over the avocados". In other words, it's not rocket science. Slater loves cooking because it's about people. And that might be the best thing about this book. It tells you that good cooking is about enjoyment. "I cannot pretend I don't enjoy putting something I have made for someone on the table," says Slater. "To this day, it still sends tingles down my spine."'