'Eat' - marmalade chicken

"I refer to this book so often, it rarely makes it to a shelf and is usually  found laying on a table peppered with random pieces of paper marking ‘must make’ or ‘must make again’ recipes." Changing Pages

'The Little Book of Fast Food' is the subtitle of Nigel Slater's book Eat, which I recently found in my local bookshop. I pounced on it straightaway, because I am always on the lookout for Nigel Slater books that I have missed. Never mind the price - his books - like most cookery books are not cheap. But it contains over 600 recipes the cover claims and none of them are difficult. (An aside here - this photograph says 500 - my cover says 600 - but I'm not about to count.) You might not be attracted to all of them. Of course you aren't because we don't all like the same things - there are a few too many Japanesey ones for me for example, but there are many which I vow to try, and I'm using one - marmalade chicken (dinner tonight) - to demonstrate a few things, about this book, about Nigel Slater, and also about the way we all adapt and improvise these days. Well, even if we don't, because we are not that confident, others certainly do, and one of the main features of this particular book is that Nigel himself encourages you to make it your own and suggests ways of doing that. It is, as he says in his Introduction all about "Simple things done well."

The book was written back in 2013 (my edition is dated 2018 so maybe has had some additions?). It's sort of an update of Real Fast Food - his first book written way back in 1993, about which I have written several times - the perfect first cookbook for someone leaving home and having to fend for themselves. Well that's what I thought, and perhaps still do, but times have changed as he himself states in his introduction to Eat:

"Real Fast Food is still relevant but our eating has moved on. What seemed new and interesting two decades ago is now everyday. The speeded-up variations of well-known classics still stand, but there are several recipes that now seem somewhat naive, others that are no longer to my taste (we move on), and if truth be told, there are one or two that should probably never have been there in the first place."

So maybe he's right and today those leaving home, should, instead be given a copy of Eat. It's got pictures in it after all, which Real Fast Food did not, and I wonder whether today's young readers could cope with a cookbook without pictures. Probably not with a cookbook at all if I'm honest, as the impulse for them is to find what they want on their phones somewhere. I still think that first book is relevant however, and certainly costs less than Eat - well if you can find a copy and it's still important to Nigel himself - well it was his first book, but ready for a refresh:

"For some time now I have wanted to return to the subject of fast food, to update that dear little book and bring it in line with modern eating."

And so we have Eat - with pictures. The page shown below is the Marmalade chicken page - and I know the picture is small, but there are others for which one page is taken up by a photograph - all by the ever accomplished Jonathan Lovekin - and the opposite page by the recipe - as shown here - a randomly chosen recipe for carrots.

There are editorial sacrifices here for both formats. In the first, You sacrifice a large picture for more recipe options, and the majority of the pages in the book are formatted like this. It actually took me a few recipes to catch on to what was happening here. Mostly I think because of the main recipe being on the right-hand page, when one's instinct is to read the left-hand page first. But then I guess when one turns a page, one's eye is automatically drawn to the right-hand page first - particularly if that page has a picture on it. Whatever the reasoning, what you have is a full recipe on the right hand page - a picture top right, a list of the main ingredients below the recipe title, and the recipe below - arranged so that the last line of the text is at the bottom of the page with detailed ingredients in bold as they appear in the process. And the last line always contains a succinct summary of some kind, whimsical, evocative, practical, instructional even. For example Marmalade chicken has Sweet, spicy, succulent. The carrots - The sweetness of carrots. The balance of spice. Which, I guess are similar, but then there is a limit to the number of words in the English language, even though sometimes it doesn't feel like that, and also in a way these two dishes are actually similar - and would therefore possibly make good partners. One of my favourites, however, was for the fried tomatoes that I spoke about a while ago. Just one word. Provence. So much encapsulated in one word.

The sacrifice on the pages with the large picture is that there is just the recipe - no suggestions for alternatives. And what are those suggestions? Well for the Marmalade chicken there are three - the first is just a straight variation in which he suggests you could add a pinch of dried chilli flakes, or a little finely chopped shallot or onion - plus how to vary how the dressing is applied - either directly or into slashes made in the meat. This variation is followed by two slightly different approaches with different ingredients. The first is that instead of marmalade and mustard you use Mustard, mango chutney and Worcestershire sauce, and then you grill instead of roast, and stuff the chicken into a bap for a sandwich. Number two - Honey, black treacle, mustard and tomato ketchup.

And I guess once you have absorbed those two, you might be encouraged to have a go yourself at similar combinations. Two people I saw just mixed marmalade with a favourite barbecue sauce and a guy on TikTok added miso to the mix and piled it onto a ginger laced slaw:

So - the Marmalade chicken. I think it's one of his most popular recipes, judging by the number of people who have had a go - below some of their finished dishes, and you'd have to say they all look pretty good. From left to right Changing Pages, Cooked and Loved, Cupcake Muffin and Lucy Waverman :

I had been thinking about asparagus as my accompaniment too. Although I'm wondering about adding carrots to the mix - and some kind of crispy potato.

I also hunted for variations which weren't necessarily inspired by Nigel and found a few apart from those, taking his lead and adding things like barbeque sauce. Jill Dupleix, only slightly differed by adding in oranges and onions. Now this picture looked very familiar. Maybe I have made it before? Mandy Jackson goes slightly oriental with soy sauce and rice vinegar, and frying corn-starched chicken pieces, Coles goes for a trybake and Rachel Roddy goes Italian with olives and lemons as well.

In some ways it's a perfectly modern dish in the use of a flavour booster such as marmalade instead of orange zest and juice as one writer commented. I think she may have been the one who was experimenting with a simpler version of duck à l'orange - she had no duck. And as NIgel says:

"Life is too short to attempt perfection every day and to be inhibited by someone else's set of rules. Cooking should, surely, be a light-hearted, spirited affair, alive with invention, experimentation, appetite and a sense of adventure."

As you can see from my two photographs of the book's layout, I too have marked a couple of pages for special attention. Maybe I shall be commenting on them some time.

One last word about the book. There is not the usual sequence of chapters. Instead they have titles which refer either to how the dishes are cooked or how they are eaten: In the hand, In a bowl, In the frying pan, On the grill, On the hob, Little stews, In the oven, Under a crust, In a wok, On a plate, Puddings. And each one has a couple of pages of introduction and explanation in Nigel's inimitable style of writing. However, it does make it more challenging to find something specific without resorting to the index - which fortunately is very comprehensive. The only chapter which you approach in a more normal way is Puddings. So if you just want to browse what you might make for dessert you can. If you want to browse what to do with the chicken you're planning to eat today, then you can't just turn to Poultry and then flip through the pages. You will have to go to the index and then flip back to the recipes that entice with their titles.

But then it's the sort of book you could open at random and say to yourself - yes I'm going to try that today. Well almost - you could alight on The otherworldliness of squid, the homeliness of udon noodles. But that's just my personal taste - no real criticism of the recipe. And you can always turn to another page. I think it would not take more than three or four tries before finding something you really would like to try.

“sometimes we cook purely for the pleasure of it, understanding the provenance of our ingredients, choosing them with great care, thoughtfully taking them on the journey from shop to plate. ... Other times we just want to eat.” Nigel Slater

I perhaps chose the marmalade chicken because once again I am in the throes of marmalade making. My neighbour has a Seville orange tree and his donating the entire crop to me. Oh the simultaneous delight/pleasure and horror.

POSTSCRIPT

September 21

2023 - Deconstructing tomates provençales - first item in that article? Baked tomatoes, crumbs and herbs - from Nigel Slater - a slightly different version of his fried tomatoes mentioned above. Coincidence is rife in the universe. Has anyone done a study on this?

2022 - Holiday's end which begins with this quote from Nigel - "Summer has slowly slipped away like honey falling from a spoon." A different kind of coincidence

2021 - Shopping - part 2 - Supermarket minefields

2020 - An Italian bible - Lucky dip part 2

2019 - Nothing

2018 - Nothing

2017 - Quinoa

2016 - Smell - the underrated sense