EMMA FREUD
Our columnist cooks seasonal dishes from the BBC presenter’s new cookbook, and chats to him about shyness and how to spark joy
Cooking for Nigel Slater
photographs DAVID COTSWORTH
Writer and art director of my favourite cookery books, columnist and author of the brilliant autobiography Toast, with several BBC cooking shows under his belt, actual Nigel Slater hung out in my kitchen where I had prepared some of his winter comfort food.
Emma I’ve never read anybody who describes food more beautifully or writes about it with more passion than you. What is it that comes alive when you put a beautiful dish in front of somebody?
Nigel It feels like I’m giving them a gift, but not like giving a book that someone will read and then put aside. It goes in; it’s like giving something that’s going to become part of someone. And I love feeding people. E You’re feeding people in every sense of the word, aren’t you – feeding the tummy, but your writing also feeds hearts and souls. You’re like a human version of comfort food.
N I suppose feeding has shaped what I do because there was a big void – a big patch in my life where I didn’t feel loved at all. I lost my mum when I was nine, and I didn’t feel loved by my dad. I don’t want anyone else to experience that and I know some people do. It’s just about making people feel loved I guess. E I can see how this filled a void for you when you were younger, but 50 years later you’re no longer that person with a hole in them, yet you still have a mission to feed. N It never fades. If everything fell apart and I couldn’t write about food any more, I think I might go back to being a waiter. That moment when you bring the food out and you put it down in front of someone, I’d go back to it in a heartbeat.
I think I’m now a bit more comfortable in my own skin than I was, but it’s taken me 60 bloody years Nigel
E I’ve noticed that on TV and in the way you write, you don’t tell people what to cook, you always ‘suggest’. N I hope so. But I’m also very shy and I think that shyness can sometimes come across as arrogance. E Has your shyness not lessened as you’ve become more successful?
N I still have it – I’ve gone to events in a cab, walked in and thought ‘I can’t do this’, walked back out and got the same cab home. I think I’m now a bit more comfortable in my skin than I was, but it’s taken me 60 bloody years. And it’s happened partly because of the amount of people who come up to me on the street and say hello. I think it’s lovely. It’s a very generous thing to do. E Have you ever done it to someone else? N I did it once to Alan Bennett. I saw him getting on his bike, and I thought, ‘I can’t do this.’ But people have always said we’re rather similar – we’re both shy and we both like diaries – and I thought there might be a kindred spirit there, so I did it. And he said, ‘I’m so pleased you said hello.’ E For a shy person, you’ve lived your life very much in the public eye. Did you have misgivings about the events you revealed in your autobiography? N Three-quarters of the way through writing Toast,
I really did wonder whether it would be far too much information about what I’d gone through in my childhood. I said to my editor, ‘I can’t finish this, it’s too personal, nobody’s going to be interested,’ and she told me that they’d already sold it into shops so I had to finish it. Then when the book came out, I was flooded with letters saying, ‘You wrote my story, this is what happened to me!’. E You’re very honest on Twitter and Instagram as well – are you happy to be that open?
N This is a really good question. I used to be very private and had no social media. When Twitter started, I wanted no part of it, but occasionally I would be shown something about me on social media which just wasn’t very nice. And I couldn’t understand why people were being a bit horrid – then I realised it was the privacy thing. People think there’s something sinister going on if you’re very private, they wonder what lurks beneath. So I joined Twitter and was a lot more open and the nastiness just dissolved. E To create recipes and write so prolifically, you must need to believe that what you’re doing is coming from a good place. Where do you get that confidence?
N I still struggle with that. I’m still not very confident, I just assume that everybody else is right. When I was little, I thought that everything my
Sweet potato puff pastry
The filling should be soft but not wet. Should you choose to boil the sweet potato instead of steaming, make sure to drain thoroughly, and leave uncovered for 10 minutes to allow the steam to escape. I have also made this with maincrop, floury-fleshed potatoes, adding a handful of grated cheese after mashing. A deeply satisfying pie for a cold day.
SERVES 4-6 PREP 10 mins COOK 1 hr EASY V 850g sweet potatoes 2 tsp harissa paste
1 tsp ras el hanout
325g puff pastry 1 egg couple of pinches of black sesame seeds
1 Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan/ gas 6. Put a baking sheet in the oven to warm – it will help the base of your pastry crisp. Put a pan of water on to boil and balance a steamer basket or colander over it.
2 Peel the sweet potatoes, cut them into large pieces and steam for 15-20 mins until tender. Remove from the steamer, then mash with a potato masher or using a food mixer until smooth. Season with sea salt, the harissa paste and the ras el hanout, and set aside to cool. 3 Roll the pastry out to a rectangle measuring 35 x 23cm (or unravel a ready rolled sheet), then transfer to a lined baking sheet, turning the pastry so the long side is facing you. Spoon the cooled sweet potato on the right-hand half, leaving a 2cm rim around the edge, uncovered, then smooth the surface flat. 4 Break the egg into a small bowl and beat lightly with a fork. Brush the bare edge generously with the beaten egg , then fold the left-hand side over the right, as if you were closing a book, and press firmly around the edges to seal. 5 Score a trellis pattern on top of the pastry, then brush with more of the beaten egg. Scatter over the black sesame seeds, then bake for 40 mins until golden brown.
GOOD TO KNOW fibre • 1 of 5-a-day
PER SERVING (6) 344 kcals • fat 16g • saturates 7g • carbs 42g • sugars 11g • fibre 6g • protein 6g • salt 0.6g
Good Food contributing editor Emma Freud is a journalist and broadcaster, director of Red Nose Day and a co-presenter of Radio Four’s
Loose Ends.