The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen
The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen: member book reviews
when i started reading this book, i had hoped it would provide me with some inspiration, especially for writing about my food, and as an added bonus might have a few pictures or a pleasant recipe. oh, how it was everything i hoped for and more. the writing was like food poetry. or porn, if one must be more graphic about it. every word conveyed this complete delight in food, even on those days where he was lazy or tired and just pulled a hunk of cheese and a slice of bread out of his refrigerator. i can only hope that with more concerted practice, i can express myself so eloquently about how much fun i have in my kitchen. and then there were the recipes! they were all of them simple, elegant, and making the most of whatever fruit or veg might be in season (although he did demonstrate a love for fish and fennel that i could never get on board with). one of the reasons it took me so long to read this book was because i didn't want to read it away from my computer, where i would forget about all the gems i was unearthing. i wanted my recipe collection right in front of me, so that i could add each morsel as it came. i've already played with one of the recipes--a marmalade cake--and even though it wasn't perfect, it was still exactly what i wanted from 'diaries'--simple, relatively fast, with easy ingredients. i must have pulled between 30-50 recipes from the book, and the only thing that stopped me from pulling more was the fish factor. i even started pulling his two-line paragraphs about his formula for miso soup, or frittatas, or a ham and mushroom sandwich, just because the prose was so lovely it seemed to express more inspiration for such simple fare than i could ever muster. and so, with this, i hope to step up my efforts to document my kitchen adventures, and my projects in general. i definitely need to work harder on my food photography (not just vis a vis slater, but after spending much of the week thus far browsing food blogs i am ashamed of my own efforts). and i hope to embrace the simplicity that nigel brought to his cooking. each day, he'd hunt for ingredients. he rarely planned ahead (although i don't fancy giving that up any time soon, as i get so much pleasure out of anticipating what i might cook) and took his time with everything. each day was a new challenge, even when he was just considering a salad for his own lunch. it was truly...delicious.
bunyip from Melbourne, VIC
Agreed, as an artefact, a beautiful book. Enjoyable reading, but I felt that the tone was slightly coy. Not as good as Appetite in which Slater's passion for food fairly jumps off the page.
(edited 11th February 2010) report
aj12754 from Montclair, NJ
I completely agree with the first reviewer. This is a beautiful book to settle down with on the couch on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Slater's ability to convey the pleasures and rewards of nourishing ourselves well is unparalleled. Slater and Laurie Colwin are kindred spirits although Slater writes at greater length and his books are enriched with beautiful photography.
friederike from Berlin,
A beautiful book. Because it takes the form of a journal, it’s not very practical, but then again, it’s not supposed to; it’s rather one of those books you will read on a lazy Sunday afternoon (preferably after you’ve had your lunch), and marvel at the pictures and the sphere it creates.
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