Nigel Slater - The Kitchen Diaries

tomatoes – 950g

garlic – 2 cloves

chillies – 2 small hot ones

olive oil

pumpkin or squash – 1kg

Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Cut the tomatoes in half and place them cut-side up on a baking sheet or in a roasting tin. Peel and finely slice the garlic, finely chop the chillies. Drizzle the tomatoes with oil, then season with salt and pepper and the garlic and chillies. Roast for forty-five to fifty minutes, till the tomatoes are soft and flecked with black.

Meanwhile, halve and peel the pumpkin. Cut into thick, melon-like slices and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Place on a baking sheet, toss in a little olive oil and season with salt and black pepper. Roast for forty minutes, turning it over after twenty minutes or so. It is done when it is fully tender to the point of a knife and nice and sticky on the cut edges.

Roughly chop the tomatoes to give a coarse ‘sauce’. Serve alongside the roasted pumpkin, with brown rice if you wish.

Enough for 2 as a main dish

Dinner is a couple of tins of Heinz baked beans, tarted up with finely chopped chillies, several shakes of Tabasco and mushroom ketchup, and a tablespoon of black treacle. It will do.

There is no set time for eating in our house, there never has been. One day lunch will be at twelve noon, the next four in the afternoon. Supper can be as early as six and as late as midnight. Neither is our eating always leisurely. Sometimes it is just a question of getting food inside you.

Many is the time supper has been sausage sandwiches all round, either with a jar of mustard on the table, or, if I can be bothered, a pot of wasabi mayonnaise, made by beating the jade green spice-paste from its tube into some commercial mayonnaise. The sausages will be hot and sticky and the mayo shockingly spicy. The general heat is tempered by soft bread cut thick and bottles of cold beer. Other times it may be pepperoni pizzas delivered by bike or sushi or sashimi from town. Just occasionally supper will come out of a bottle.

But there are also occasions when supper is nothing at all. From a health perspective this is probably not to be recommended, but frankly that is sometimes just what I need. A lot of water will pass my lips, but no food.

For the most part, I eat one decent meal a day and then some other stuff. Under which you can file beans on toast, bacon sandwiches, fish-fingers, cheese on toast, more cheese on toast and shop-bought sushi. Sourdough bread dunked into olive oil has been dinner on more than one occasion, as have slices of rye bread with a bit of smoked salmon. Other times I just stand at the fridge eating up the remains of meals past. Cold risotto is quite nice after the initial shock, though not as much fun as cold apple pie.

But I will tell you the best trick for making your bacon sandwich, cold sausage or bit of day-old fridge-rice take on an instant appeal. Have it with a glass of wine, better still a glass of Champagne. Yes, a scavenged supper can be made to sing with pickles or fresh, rough-textured chutney, but nothing works quite as well as a glass of wine.

At the far end of the fishmonger’s slab are the smoked goods: the primrose-coloured haddock and golden mackerel; the elegantly proportioned trout, and the brick-coloured lumps of cod’s roe. There are also kippers, their skin shining silver, gold and black. Sometimes I buy one to cook for a lone supper, a slice of butter melting on its mahogany flesh. Other times, with more to feed, I make fishcakes, plump ones the size of a yo-yo.

I make these little golden fishcakes as a change from the more traditional haddock version, usually in the winter when smoky flavours seem particularly appropriate. Parsley sauce isn’t right with the kippers, so I make a dill-flavoured mayonnaise instead, or sometimes have them with nothing more than a big squeeze of lemon and a generous helping of greens.

floury potatoes – 500g

butter – a thick slice

kipper fillets – 440g

dill – a small handful, chopped

flour for dusting

shallow groundnut oil for frying

For the sauce:

chopped dill – 2 heaped tablespoons

a crushed clove of garlic

mayonnaise – 6 heaped tablespoons

Peel the potatoes, cut them into quarters, then boil them in salted water till tender. Drain the potatoes, tip them into a food mixer and beat with the butter to make a smooth but firm consistency.

Put the kipper fillets in a jug or heatproof bowl and pour a kettle of boiling water over them. Leave them for ten minutes, till they have softened, then drain and flake the flesh. I tend to leave it in short pieces the size of a postage stamp rather than finely mashed.

Fold the fish into the warm potato, together with the chopped dill and a generous seasoning of salt and black pepper. Leave the mixture to cool a little, then shape it into rough patties. I make twelve of them the size of large golf balls, then flatten them slightly. Leave them to cool and firm up.

Dust the patties lightly with flour, then fry in shallow hot oil for five minutes or so.

To make the sauce, simply mix the chopped dill with the crushed garlic and mayo.

Enough for 4

The cold and the wet have resulted in a week of ‘proper’ food; stuff to fill hollow tummies and make your ears glow with warmth. No dinky bowls of clear soup and noodles or plates of greens with shaved Parmesan and olive oil on the table this week. Rarely has our eating been so unapologetically old-fashioned. Today is no exception, and I fancy a chop, a big one with a margin of golden fat and a bone on which to gnaw. Twice this week I have used cream in the main course – a rare occurrence, but I need an iota of luxury right now to make me feel better about this endlessly grey month.

pork spare rib or chump chops – 2 large, about 1cm thick

butter – 25g

olive oil – 1 tablespoon

garlic – 2 large unpeeled cloves, squashed flat

a glass of white wine

double or whipping cream – 150ml

grain mustard – 1½ tablespoons

smooth Dijon mustard – 1½ tablespoons

cornichons – 8, or half as many larger gherkins

Rub the chops all over with salt and pepper. Put the butter and oil in a shallow pan set over a moderate to high heat and, when they start to froth a little, add the flattened garlic and the seasoned chops. Leave to brown, then turn and brown the other side. Lower the heat and continue cooking, turning once, until the chops are no longer pink when cut into.

Lift out the chops, transfer to a warm serving dish and keep warm. Pour off most of the oil from the pan, leaving the sediment behind, then turn up the heat and pour in the wine. Let it boil for a minute or so, scraping at the sticky sediment in the pan and letting it dissolve. Pour in the cream, swirl the pan about a bit, then leave it to bubble up a little before adding the mustards and the chopped cornichons.

Taste for seasoning; you may need a little salt and possibly black pepper. The sauce should be piquant and creamy. If you want, you can finish the sauce with a few drops of liquor from the cornichon jar to sharpen it up. Pour the sauce over the chops and serve.

Enough for 2 with mashed or unbuttered new potatoes