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NIGER SLATER

Nigel Slater (born 9 April 1958 is an English food writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has written a column for The Observer Magazine for over a decade and is the principal writer for the Observer Food Monthly supplement. Prior to this, Slater was food writer for Marie Claire for five years. He also serves as art director for his books.

Early life

Food is, for me, for everybody, a very sexual thing and I think I realised that quite early on. I still cannot exaggerate how just putting a meal in front of somebody is really more of a buzz for me than anything. And I mean anything. Maybe that goes back to trying to please my dad, I don't know. It's like parenting in a way I suppose.

Nigel Slater was born on 9 April 1958, in Wolverhampton, West Midlands. He was the youngest of three sons born to factory owner Tony Slater and housewife Kathleen. His mother died of asthma in 1967. In 1971, his father married Dorothy Perrens but died three years later. Slater attended Woodfield Avenue School, Penn, West Midlands. He moved to Worcestershire as a teenager and attended Chantry High School where he enjoyed writing essays and was one of only two boys to take cookery as an O-Level subject.

According to the BBC article Competitive cooking: Why do we bother?, Slater claims in his autobiography Toast that he used food to compete with his stepmother Dorothy for his father's attention.Their biggest battle was over lemon meringue pie – his father's favourite. She refused to divulge her recipe, so Slater resorted to subterfuge to turn out his own version. "I'd count the egg-shells in the bin, to see how many eggs she'd used and write them down. 

I'd come in at different times, when I knew she was making it. I'd just catch her when she was doing some meringue, building up that recipe slowly over a matter of months, if not years." An alternative account of this episode is given by Ann, his step-sister, who claims that she made the pie, not her mother, and that the recipe was from a cookbook.

Slater gained an OND in catering at Worcester Technical College in 1976, and worked in restaurants and hotels across the UK before becoming a food writer for Marie Claire magazine in 1988.He became known for uncomplicated, comfort food recipes which he presented in early books such as The 30-Minute Cook (1994) and Real Cooking, as well as his memoir-like columns for The Observer which he began in 1993.

Television and radio

In 1998, Slater hosted the Channel 4 series Nigel Slater's Real Food Show. He returned to TV in 2006 to host the chat/food show A Taste of My Life for BBC One and BBC Two. In 2009, he presented the six-part series Simple Suppers on BBC One, and a second series the following year. He appeared as a guest "castaway" on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in June 2005. In November 2013 he appeared alongside farmer Adam Henson on BBC's 'Nigel and Adam's Farm Kitchen', which was set on a working farm in the Cotswolds and covered various aspects of food production and preparation.

Writing

Slater's book, Eating for England: The Delights & Eccentricities of the British at Table (Fourth Estate), is devoted to British food and cookery. It was published in October 2007 and was described in The Sunday Times as "the sort of ragbag of choice culinary morsels that would pass the time nicely on a train journey". His book Tender is the story of his vegetable garden, how it came to be and what grows in it. The book was published in two volumes; the first is on vegetables, which was released late in 2009 and the second is on fruit, which was released in 2010. Tender is described as a memoir, a study of fifty of our favourite vegetables, fruits and nuts and a collection of over five hundred recipes.

Slater became known to a wider audience with the publication of Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger, a moving and award-winning autobiography focused on his love of food, his childhood, his family relationships (his mother died of asthma when he was nine) and his burgeoning sexuality. Slater has called it "the most intimate memoir that any food person has ever written". Toast was published in Britain in October 2004 and became a best-seller after it was featured on the Richard & Judy Book Club.

As he told The Observer, "The last bit of the book is very foody. But that is how it was. Towards the end I finally get rid of these two people in my life I did not like [his father and stepmother, who had been the family's cleaning lady]—and to be honest I was really very jubilant—and thereafter all I wanted to do was cook." Slater's negative portrayal of his stepmother is challenged, however, by his stepsisters