The hits and misses of a culinary hero

I've mentioned several times before on this blog that I'm a big fan of the writings and recipes of Nigel Slater. While I've enjoyed cooking for as long as I can remember (I even had a toy kitchen in my formative years, subjecting my family to having to pretend to eat and enjoy plates of plastic food from whatever restaurant, cafe or hotel I imagined myself to be proprietor of at the time), it was only when I was into my 20s that I started getting really interested in trying out recipes, collecting cookbooks and reading about food. Nigel Slater's columns in the Observer, with their elegant yet conversational prose, describing simple but satisfying dishes, were a huge influence, and I'm fairly sure his work makes up more of my cookbook collection than any other single writer. 

After more than 25 years writing for the same paper, his articles are still very much the backbone of the Guardian and Observer's renowned food content, all of which I follow fairly religiously. It was a great delight therefore to see Nigel featured in an article earlier this year as part of a series by critic Jay Rayner, when lockdown had imposed a hiatus on his usual restaurant column. In each article, he looked at an influential cookbook and its writer, examining the influence they have had on how we cook and eat in the UK today. 

Alongside such classics as Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food, Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating and Yotam Ottolenghi's eponymous first book, Jay gave equally high praise to one of Nigel's earliest books, Real Fast Food from 1992. He admired not just the simplicity and unfussiness of the book's recipes, which seem to just work with the minimum of time and effort, but the words too, sharing "the joy of eating and living well" and making you feel as if Nigel is there speaking directly to you. It's a sentiment I share, and while his more recent books are the ones I have tended to turn to of late, this article prompted me to bring down my copy from the shelf and flick through the pages again for inspiration and remind myself of what I'd tried before.

I've been gushing so far, I know. As I say, I'm very much on Team Nige. I hope he will forgive me therefore if I spend the rest of this post talking about one of the book's misses, rather than a hit. Before I had a copy of Real Fast Food myself, I remember reading an article by the writer-turned-restaurateur James Ramsden on the Guardian's Word of Mouth blog, in which he looked at some of the more bizarre, unsuccessful and unappealing recipes offered by chefs and writers over the years, such as a Spanish omelette made using a bag of crisps instead of potatoes (by Ferran Adria of El Bulli fame), Jean-Christophe Novelli's "mesmerisingly nasty" Orangina and smoked salmon timbale, and from Real Fast Food, the "Tinned Salmon Bake", which our own dear Mr Slater himself admitted still haunts him - "I wince every time I see it". Tinned salmon, you say? Sorry Nigel, but I had to give it a go.

He does say in the introduction to the recipe that when it comes to salmon, "Tinned bears little resemblance to fresh", but counters that "it has its uses. It is quite good here, baked with tomato juice and breadcrumbs." I feel that 'quite' is the operative word here; as an adverb it can equally mean "to the utmost degree" or "to a certain degree". So, did he mean the salmon bake is incredibly good, or just fairly good? If the recipe really does make him wince now, I suppose Nigel could claim he meant the latter, or not especially good, even - the culinary equivalent of a shrug. "It'll do." But why include a recipe in your book if you weren't happy with it? The more positive definition of 'quite' therefore seems more likely - but whatever he meant at the time, the big question is: is it any good at all? Only one way to find out.

Like everything in Real Fast Food, it's certainly a quick and easy recipe. You simply put the contents of a tin of salmon (drained) into an oven dish and flake it "a little...don't mash it". Squeeze over the juice of half a lemon, and stir in four chopped spring onions, salt and pepper. Then spoon over 8 tablespoons of tomato juice "from a can or bottle". Obviously, I went for the former. So far, so...liquid. I was glad I'd drained the salmon well.

You then mix 4 tablespoons of fresh breadcrumbs with 25g cold butter in tiny dice, and sprinkle this over the salmon.

It wasn't looking (or smelling) hugely promising at this stage. But I have faith in Nigel - some sort of alchemy must surely have been about to take place during its time in the oven. I gave it the specified 25 minutes at 200 degrees, opened the door, and...oh.

"It's ready when the crumbs are golden brown and the fish is bubbling" says Nigel.

Oh...dear...well, some of the liquid had bubbled away, but there was still quite a lot there. That had unfortunately had a detrimental effect on the breadcrumbs - rather than crisping up to a nice golden brown, it seemed they had instead soaked up a lot of the tomato juice and turned into a pale, soggy mush. It made for rather a sloppy mixture on the plate, and that characteristic tinned fish smell had somehow intensified during its time in the oven. The spring onions had softened and mellowed a bit, but I feel the lemon juice would have been better added at the end instead of before the cooking - it had largely lost its zingy, zestiness, which might have lifted the dish a bit. I ended up scooping it up with pitta bread, which, other than using a spoon, seemed the best way of eating it.

It certainly wasn't inedible, but not really the sort of recipe you would be tempted to try more than once. As for "quite good"...I would say "quite bad" is probably nearer to it and I can see why Nigel might wince at the thought of it now. But 1992 was a long time ago, and given that he must have written thousands of recipes in that time, we can't expect every one of them to be wonderful.

Nigel's recent new release, A Cook's Book, features many of his (and his readers') favourite recipes from over the years. You won't be surprised to hear that the Tinned Salmon Bake does not feature, but I'm pleased to say that Nige's down-to-earth style means that you will still see the odd tin of beans, tomatoes or chickpeas among fancier ingredients. Nigel, I'm sorry to have dredged up one of your misses, but the new book will definitely be on my Christmas list, and I'm hugely looking forward to trying out what I know will be a collection of hits.