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.’

‘A Cook’s Book, all 500 pages and nearly one and a half kilos of it, enters the world as if from the kitchen of someone fresh to the world of food writing, a-brim with ideas, vital and enthusiastic . . . He is king among food writers . . . There is not a cook or a reader in the land who wouldn’t gratefully hug this new volume of his to their chest’ Nigella Lawson

‘A magnificent volume of comfort. After all these years, no one describes the simple sensuous pleasures of food better than Slater’ Bee Wilson

‘This is a book for life . . . This, and it’s high praise, is Slater’s best book’ Diana Henry, Sunday Telegraph

‘It’s so good. I think it’s his best one, and I say that because every single recipe is something you’d make tonight, for supper, with no fuss or stress . . . It’s super-homey and a friendly, comfortable book for people who don’t view recipes as projects. Divinely written, as per’ India Knight, Sunday Times

‘I've got five Nigel Slaters – and in all honesty I don't need a single new recipe in my life . . . But that's absolutely nothing to do with it. Cookery books are like new clothes – you imagine a whole life to go with them’ Alexandra Schulman, Daily Mail

‘It is beautiful’ Grace Dent

‘This beautiful book has all you’ll ever need’ Graham Norton, Virgin Radio

‘Every time Nigel Slater announces a new book, I quickly make a spot next to all his other books that sit on my bookshelf. His latest book, A Cook’s Book is like your favourite chocolate cake, sweetened with fond memories and layered with Nigel’s wisdom to make us all better cooks in the kitchen’ Nik Sharma

‘It’s gorgeous’ Felicity Spector

‘It’s beautifully designed, spilling over with tempting ideas’ Express Books of the Year

‘The beauty of his prose is matched to the warmth of his recipes’ Tom Parker-Bowles, Daily Mail