Nigel has had a terrible morning. “Me too,” I say, explaining that electricians arrived at 7am. “But I had flashing lights and the emergency services!” he exclaims. He’d burnt his toast, setting off the alarm in his kitchen. This is strangely comforting: Nigel Slater burns toast, and he’s not hiding it.
Because he has such a gentle manner and is wearing the softest grey hoodie (I’m guessing cashmere), you want to hug him, to make the burnt toast disappear. So I’m glad I’ve made a coffee and walnut cake, his favourite, though the baking of it was stressful. I was so nervous that the first bowlful of batter ended up on the floor. Coffee cake two – I’ve made it as my mum used to and it looks worthy of a WI sale – is sitting before us. I also spent days sorting out my books and paperwork (they usually cover a third of the kitchen table) and tidied the sea of bottles beside the cooker for Nigel’s visit. My children are familiar with the interior of Nigel’s home as, every so often – in a magazine or in one of his books – you get glimpses. It’s uncluttered, almost monastic, filled with carefully chosen colours and objects. They tell me that Nigel would find my house so untidy it would be traumatic for him. (They’re only half joking.)
“I was so ner vous making a cake for Nigel that the first bowlful of batter ended up on the f loor”
DIANA
Why all this effort? Because though food writers can become important in your life – their recipes form part of your home’s rhythm – few actually change the way you look at food. For me, Nigel Slater did. I remember the first time I saw his work in Marie Claire magazine (the piece is still somewhere in my two enormous boxes of Nigel cuttings). At the time – the mid 1980s – food was either shot in a graphic way (dots of purée on huge white plates) in ‘foodie’ magazines such as A La Carte, or in a dull, over-propped fashion for women’s magazines.
The piece I tore out from Marie Claire was about picnics and, instead of the usual sandwiches, it featured radishes with creamywhite French butter and baguette and berries with ricotta. You could see the beauty in every element: the crimson of the radishes