Combining reminiscences from a lifetime spent working with and enjoying food, along with cultivation tips for the growing season and a brief history of each classic vegetable dish, learn how you can use vegetables to their best potential in simple salads to indulgent suppers.

Organised alphabetically, with a separate section dedicated to seasonal fruits, each garden vegetable is carefully considered in Slater′s inimitable, unhurried warm prose, to give you an instinctive understanding of the unique flavours, textures and tastes of our heritage vegetables.
Encouraged to use your own initiative, there are suggestions for the best complementary flavours and seasonings to guide you to spices, herbs, meats, nuts and cheese that work in unison with each vegetable to bring out its best qualities, creating imaginative, perfectly balanced dishes for the modern day.

From a pumpkin laksa for a frosty night, to simple pea dishes to celebrate the spring and ancient vegetable ′peasant′ dishes born straight from the land, Slater reworks and reignites the beauty and forgotten flavours of vegetable dishes to showcase vegetables at their very best.

From reviews for The Kitchen Diaries: 'Vivid and touchingly personal, it is the kind of book you will dip into again and again.' Casilda Grigg, Daily Telegraph -- Books of the Year 'Slater is a master recipe-writer.' Guardian -- Books of the Year '[Slater's] evocative prose gives the impression you're already devouring that strawberry mascarpone tart.' Financial Times -- Books of the Year 'Sensuous, evocative!So much more than just a recipe book.' The Observer -- OFM Best Book Award. 'Slater has become the foodie Pepys.' Elfreda Pownall, The Spectator 'Superb!The Kitchen Diaries succeeds brilliantly!A year of highly flavoured food.' William Leith, Guardian 'Strikingly readable!You could cook from this book for a year and still be salivating like mad when you open the pages.' Chris Hirst, Independent 'Every kitchen needs a copy.' Tom Parker Bowles, Tatler 'A very personal collection of mouthfuls, lunches, suppers and feasts that reflects the weather, the harvest, hunger and greed over a year!A comfort book par excellence, to cook from and read at the kitchen table or curled up in bed.' Philippa Davenport, Financial Times 'Tinged with an exquisite (read precious) melancholia, this is part memoir, part recipe book, charting Slater's adventures with fruit and veg.' Daily Telegraph

Author Biography

Nigel Slater is the author of a collection of bestselling books, including the classics 'Real Fast Food' and 'Real Cooking', and the award-winning 'Appetite'. He has written a much-loved column for 'The Observer' for over a decade. His autobiography, 'Toast -- the story of a boy's hunger', won six major awards, including the British Biography of the Year, the Glenfiddich Award and the Andre Simon Memorial Award. 'The Kitchen Diaries' won the Design and Production Award at the 2006 British Book Trade Awards.