Nigel Slater began his first ever column for the Observer, on 26 September 1993, with the words: ‘It has been a good week for flavour.’ Here, he looks back over the 30 years he has been feeding us – and chooses the recipes we have loved the most
The kitchen table is a plank of bog oak, rescued from the Fens, as dark as chocolate cake. The surface is matt except for a patch that has worn to a shine, marking the spot where I sit and write notes in fountain pen that eventually become my weekly Observer column – the letters I have been writing to you from this kitchen for 30 years. These handwritten notes are guided by the season, what is at its best, by my old collection of kitchen diaries and what I have been cooking over the last few days.
Such notes are made before I have been to the shops or the market, before I have cooked and tested and retested a recipe (then cooked it again to be photographed by Jonathan Lovekin, who has been part of this column here almost as long as I have). There are no recipe developers and food stylists, no photographic props, I just cook as if making dinner, put it on a plate or dish on which it looks comfortable and hopefully tempting then, once photographed, we sit down and eat. Any leftovers are packed up into a care package for Jonathan’s long journey home or are there to feed me for the next day or two. I then wash up.
