Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger
This Sunday Times Bestseller is the memoir of Britain’s best loved food writer, Nigel Slater.TOAST is Nigel Slater’s truly extraordinary story of a childhood remembered through food. Whether relating his mother’s ritual burning of the toast, his father’s dreaded Boxing Day stew or such culinary highlights of the day as Arctic Roll and Grilled Grapefruit (then considered something of a status symbol in Wolverhampton) this remarkable memoir vividly recreates daily life in sixties surburban England.His mother was a chops-and-peas sort of cook, exasperated by the highs and lows of a temperamental AGA, a finicky little son and the asthma that was to prove fatal. His father was a honey-and-crumpets man who could occasionally go off ‘crack’ like a gun. When Nigel’s widowed father takes on a housekeeper with social aspirations and a talent in the kitchen, the following years become a heartbreaking cooking contest for his father’s affections. But as he slowly loses the battle, Nigel finds a new outlet for his culinary talents, and we witness the birth of what was to become a lifelong passion for food.Nigel’s likes and dislikes, aversions and sweet-toothed weaknesses form a fascinating and amusing backdrop to this incredibly moving and deliciously evocative memoir of childhood, adolescence and sexual awakening.
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Toast
The story of a boy’s hunger
Nigel Slater
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2003
This edition published by Fourth Estate 2010
Copyright © Nigel Slater 2003
Nigel Slater asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9781841154718
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 9780007386871
Version: 2019-04-19
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘An ingenious and touching treat’
Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year
‘Toast follows a recipe – boyhood blues without bitterness – that looks simple yet is actually hard to pull off. Slater manages it’
Guardian
‘Delightful…singular and original’
Evening Standard
‘The genius of his food writing comes from an obvious belief that food and happiness share the same organ in the brain’
LYNNE TRUSS, Sunday Times
‘A banquet of unlikely delectations…England’s answer to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential’
Daily Telegraph
‘Proves he can write mouth-wateringly about families and life too: I gobbled it up’
Daily Telegraph Books of the Year
Contents
Dedication
Sweets, Ices, Rock and Politics
Butterscotch Flavour Angel Delight
Crisps, Ketchup and a Few Other Unmentionables
The Night Just Before Christmas
Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney Pie
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Day She Darned Dad’s Socks
Bluebird Milk Chocolate Toffees
My mother is scraping a piece of burned toast out of the kitchen window, a crease of annoyance across her forehead. This is not an occasional occurrence, a once-in-a-while hiccup in a busy mother’s day. My mother burns the toast as surely as the sun rises each morning. In fact, I doubt if she has ever made a round of toast in her life that failed to fill the kitchen with plumes of throat-catching smoke. I am nine now and have never seen butter without black bits in it.
It is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you. People’s failings, even major ones such as when they make you wear short trousers to school, fall into insignificance as your teeth break through the rough, toasted crust and sink into the doughy cushion of white bread underneath. Once the warm, salty butter has hit your tongue, you are smitten. Putty in their hands.
Mum never was much of a cook. Meals arrived on the table as much by happy accident as by domestic science. She was a chops-and-peas sort of a cook, occasionally going so far as to make a rice pudding, exasperated by the highs and lows of a temperamental cream-and-black Aga and a finicky little son. She found it all a bit of an ordeal, and wished she could have left the cooking, like the washing, ironing and dusting, to Mrs P., her ‘woman what does’.
