Charles Hutchinson reviews Nigel Slater's new cookbook.

"WITHOUT exception every single recipe in this book is a doddle to cook. A walk in the park."

From the pen of any other cookery writer than Nigel Slater this promise should be taken with a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper, but Slater has the gift of making you feel you really can cook like Nigel.

The Kitchen Diaries is his tenth book. If you put the confessional prose style of his childhood autobiography, Toast, with his easy way with a recipe description, then you will be at home with his home cooking for when you feel as "energetic, lazy, hungry or late" as Nigel.

The novelty here is the diary format, which makes for seasonal cooking, running counter to today's GM crops and all-year-round strawberries.

His creed is right food, right place, right time, not to the point of pedantry but to open up the joys of ingredients at their "glorious, juicy, sweetly flavoured peak".

His writing reads like he's thinking aloud, calmly at your shoulder, always coming up with variations and tips.

So, if you need to ripen peaches quickly, for example, "put them in a brown paper bag with a ripe banana".

Thank you Nigel.

Updated: 08:37 Saturday, November 19, 2005