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{ 02 07 2010 }

A pleasant foodie surprise

By Gillian

Last weekend, while we were staying with my parents for some much-needed R&R, we visited a university friend of Christopher’s one day for lunch. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves chatting, and Gill cooked us all a delicious chicken risotto and an incredibly rich and gooey chocolate pudding.

The cookbook she was using was Nigel Slater’s Real Food, which Christopher and I happened to have given to my mother for her birthday just before Christmas. We’ve several of his other cookbooks and really like his style of cooking – good ingredients, cooked quite simply, but with lots of flavour. Real Food is not just a cookbook, it’s also a very interesting read. My mother loved it, and read it from cover to cover. My sister also fell for it, and since our mother wouldn’t allow her to “borrow” it (i.e. a semi-permanent loan), she and her boyfriend pooled their Christmas book tokens to buy a copy for themselves.

Earlier this week I’d just got home from work when the doorbell rang, and it was a delivery man with a parcel from Amazon. I thought of course that Christopher had been buying books again (I knew I hadn’t, at least not recently). But it was a gift from Gill of the Real Food book. A huge surprise, and a really thoughtful gift.

Christopher cooked from it tonight – parmesan crusted plaice. Absolutely delicious. Thanks Gill!

Posted by Gillian on Friday, July 2, 2010, at 9:35 pm. Filed under food. Follow any responses to this post with its comments RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

{ 3 } Comments

  1. David A | 3 July 2010 at 11:42 pm | Permalink

    I’m another fan of Nigel Slater; one thing I particularly like is that his recipes often include many variations, making it clear that you don’t have to follow them slavishly, and opening up a whole range of possibilities.

    Hope the radiotherapy helps; all the best,

    David & A & J

  2. Paul Ducksbury | 4 July 2010 at 7:40 am | Permalink

    Well if your in the CSMA, I can totally recommend this months (July) recipe for american style chocolate brownies, except they dont last long.

  3. Gillian | 4 July 2010 at 8:39 pm | Permalink

    We had some more recipes from the Nigel Slater over the weekend. Chicken with tarragon, vermouth and cream, followed by chocolate apple betty. Both absolutely delicious, but his portion sizes are way too big for us – I think Chris is going to be eating leftovers for lunch all week…..