Real Fast Food

Here is my comment over at Bittman's place recommending Nigel Slater's "Real Fast Food" (one of the great, underappreciated cookbooks of the last twenty years, in my view):

I think of Nigel Slater’s “Real Fast Food” as a sort of a minimalist for the British taste. Mustardy sardines and kippers on toast, rarebit, potatoes baked and scooped out, and then stuffed again with cream and cheese, pages of sauces for simple, poached, salmon. It’s the food that helped me learn to cook, that fed me in college, and that I turned to as a graduate student. “Real Fast Food” is what I would take with me into a nuclear shelter, faced with cooking tuna forever, but my copy is also dog eared and circled and wrinkled with stray splashes of soy here in the real world too. Slater’s other books are good, but other people take nice pictures too. “Real Fast Food” is a lifesaver.