Real Cooking

I have a lovely group of online friends who I met on a forum board for women having babies due the same month. We’ve all since escaped from that particularly, heavily advertised upon and controlled board, but we all still keep in touch six years later by a forum board we set up ourselves.

One of the things we do is Secret Santa and Nigel Slater’s Real Cooking

is what I got sent this year and it’s lovely, as all Nigel Slater books are.  It’s interesting catching up on Nigel Slater’s back catalogue, I’ve fairly recently brought some of his earliest books, after being more familiar with some of his later books and Real Cooking sort of falls in between, similar in style to his completely picture free books but with photos, yet not quite like his later books (and his style has changed again recently with the books published over the last few years, which have yet to make my collection, Slater is nothing but prolific). Looking at his back catalogue is like watching his style evolve, although he’s always had and has never changed, his utter ability to make something simple, like a baked potato, sound like the most decadent food on this planet.

One of the best things to get on Christmas Day is a good cook book to flick through and the recipes that have caught my eye include;

• His left over roast chicken recipes like roast chicken with cream and mustard makes me want to go and roast a chicken just for the left overs.
• Roast chicken thighs with lime juice and ginger.
• Grilled chicken with butter and balsamic vinegar.
• Grilled chicken with thyme leaves, salt and garlic butter.
• Hot and sour grilled chicken broth

Oh I so want some grilled chicken now!

• Pan fried potatoes with pancetta and parsley (looks delicious and incredibly simple).
• Pasta with prosciutto and cream sauce.
• Noodles with chicken, red chilli and basil.
• Chicken noodle soup with coconut and lime.
• Pilaf
• Frisee and bacon (very similar to my favourite Nigella Lawson salad).
• Slow cooked courgettes with lemon and basil.
• Roast aubergines (both plain and spiced).
• Grilled parmesan aubergines
• Pesto aubergines

I love aubergines!

• Grilled leeks with a gutsy dressing
• Mashed potato cakes with bacon and thyme

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