Nigel Slater’s Simple Suppers
I love Nigel Slater, it’s as simple as that. I watched his Simple Suppers tonight, at the slightly odd time of 7.30pm, 7.30 means that the kids are still up and about (getting ready for bed) and they both managed to catch segments of Nigel preparing his hot chicken cakes. Girl Lacer was curled up next to me as Boy Lacer was off having stories read to him, she was very curious to see a ‘grown up cooking programme’* and when Nigel started adding parmesan cheese to the chicken cakes, she pretty much started drooling, she loves parmesan cheese (or ‘parma’ cheese as she calls it, as she can’t pronounce it) and will happily eat it neat, so when the parmesan started going into the chicken cakes, she pipes up “Ooh I’d eat that!”. Cue her turn for stories, off she goes (reluctantly), Boy Lacer wanders in and settles down next to me, as Nigel starts to fry the chicken cakes “Yummy” goes Boy Lacer. So, that’s one recipe I’ll be making.
I think if the kids had still been up they’d have been drooling over his freeform trifle to and they’d have quite liked the look of the sausage pan fry to, even with cabbage in it. I just love his whole philosophy, basically trying to grow your own veg (I loved how he admitted though that the snails probably got more of it than he did, that’s my veg patch!), using what you’ve got and not slavishly following a recipe. Nigel Slater’s recipes have been favourites of mine for years, just because they are just so adaptable. I loved the format of a week’s worth of suppers and you know what, I reckon if you stuck to those recipes and cooked / ate sensibly for the other two meals a day, you would save more money than the other current cookery show on TV, that is meant to be specifically about saving money, Economy Gastronomy. Far less meat, no week of eating the same great big hunk of meat in whatever guise and not so rigid,yet still simple, quick to cook food, that has to be cheaper (and as a bonus, my kids seem to like it to).
* In fact Simple Suppers is not the first ‘grown up cooking programme’ Girl Lacer has watched, as a baby she was very demanding and sometimes the only way I’d have a chance to get something done was to stick her in her baby chair, stick her in front of the TV and . . . put Jamie Oliver Naked Chef DVDs on, she loved them (and honestly I didn’t do it that often)! I think I used my Naked Chef DVDs once or twice on Boy Lacer to. As the kids have grown older, they’ve moved away from my (limited) cookery DVD collection and onto my far more extensive cook book collection, they both love Annabel Karmel cook books (I think it’s all those teddy bear cupcakes) but will happily examine any cookbook that joins my collection.
I can’t remember him doing chicken cakes – he did those carrot and coriandar ones with parmesan to help hold it together. On another note – do you know where i can get the recipes online.
Hi Maggie
The chicken cakes were in the first episode and looked delicious! As did the carrot fritter things last night! All his recipes can be found here http://www.bbc.co.uk/digin/nigelslater.shtml