Nigel Slater’s books lead the field in cookery book design, but his latest, Eat: The
Little Book of Fast Food (Fourth Estate, £26, Spectator Bookshop, £20), is the most beautiful yet. The size of a large paperback and twice as thick, the single word Eat is embossed in black on a mustard-yellow cloth cover. The book is very easy to use. In the front is a list of recipes, organised by main ingredient; in the back a good index.
The chapters are grouped by cooking method, and the recipes written in shortened form, with ingredients in bold type in the body of the text. Beside many of the recipes a section entitled ‘A Few Thoughts’ gives alternative ways of cooking, or adding to, the dish in question — which expands the recipes until you can no longer count them. You could cook from this book for years, needing no other, and the dishes are so delicious you might not even want another.
Though Slater rhapsodises about a chunky sandwich of roast vegetables and garlic mayonnaise, eaten in the hand, Eat also contains more sophisticated offerings, suitable for dinner parties (remember them?).
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