I bought this book in a Whole Foods in London a few years ago, but hadn’t gotten around to reading it ’til now. I love Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries for the really vivid and satisfyingly descriptive way he writes about food. This book has some of that, like when, at the very beginning, he describes a French stew “of cubed beef that has simmered since breakfast with shallots, strips of unsmoked bacon, rosemary and mushrooms in an inky-violet red wine” (p 2). Mmm. But there is also a lot of humor/British self-deprecation: this is a book about British food, good and bad: British stew, he says, is honest and simple; it “tastes of nothing but itself,” though the broth “is the colour of washing-up water and smells of old people” (p 1, p 3).
Eating for England is a collection of vignettes, and it isn’t organized by theme, which is refreshing. It’s easy to pick up and put down (though I also found myself reading it in longer stretches), and I didn’t mind jumping from black pudding to cake, from “lunch on a bench” to afternoon tea, the latter of which Slater says “may be the only meal we take that is purely and utterly for pleasure,” and is “something that exists purely to make us feel good about life” (p 21). Some of the vignettes are better than others: I could have done without the sections on annoying-types-one-may-find-in-food-related-endeavours (“the kitchen fusspot,” “the naked cook,” which is to say a guy who’s newly taken up cooking and follows all the latest trends, “the economical cook,” “the voucher queen,” etc.) Also, the book could’ve done with some better fact-checking/editing: one section refers to “Frances and Bertha Upton” and their book about “Two Dutch Dolls,” but I believe that should be Florence and Bertha Upton, and there’s a bit of repetition: two sections talk about how the mouthfeel of cheap chocolate is comforting (in almost the same words), and two sections talk about how Brits are messy when eating out of doors, as opposed to sexy.
But it was fun to read about British food-cultural things I didn’t know about (Berni Inn restaurants, the fact that “no one has ever heard of a ‘lunch lady’ looking after school meals”—apparently they are “dinner ladies” (p 193), etc.) And when Slater is really writing about food, about color/texture/taste and not just about whatever a given food or food-related custom culturally signifies, this book is really pleasing. I love his descriptions of vegetables from farmers markets, the color and variety of them. And the way he talks about Welsh Rarebit, which I love, makes me want to go out to Sweet Melissa and order some right this second (or better: to make some at home). To wit: “Welsh rarebit is sometimes thought of as just cheese on toast, which is what people call it when they want to patronise it. The point is that a rarebit contains beer and mustard (you allow the grated cheese to melt into the beer in a saucepan), which makes a layer the texture of silk to sit on top of your toast” (p 206). Also pleasing are the sections that center on Slater’s own life/memories: the time his father bought a coffee percolator that got used once then relegated to a box in the garage, the first time he got taken out to a restaurant by his parents. The good parts of this book make me want to dig out my copy of The Kitchen Diaries again, and also make me want to read Toast.
Leave a Reply