The Christmas Chronicles: Notes, Stories & 100 Essential Recipes for Winter - By Nigel Slater

"Congratulations Nigel! The Christmas Chronicles is a magical, cosy hug of a book."

— Nigella Lawson

"A dream of a book. Slater … has produced such a hymn to winter that we’ll all be able to cope with it this year."

— Diana Henry, Telegraph

"The best food writers combine beauty with practicality, and no one does it more elegantly than Nigel Slater.”

— Jane Shilling, Daily Mail - Books of the Year

“The greatest cookery writer of them all.”

— The Guardian

“Nigel is a bloody genius.”

— Jamie Oliver

If you love beautiful books you can curl up with and also cook with year after year, ones that take you away and immerse you in a beautiful, different, yet familiar world that you will love to visit again and again, and those that you will cherish and make part of your winter solstice and holiday traditions year after year, then this gem is for you, or for someone special you know.

The Christmas Chronicles: Stories & 100 Essential Recipes for Winter by beloved English food author Nigel Slater is part journal, part cookbook and part story collection.

The Christmas Chronicles is the story of Nigel Slater’s love affair with winter, the scent of fir and spruce, ghost stories read with a glass of sloe gin, and beeswax candles with shadows dancing on the ceiling. There are recipes, decorations, fables and quick fireside suppers. With an easy, dip-into-dairy style, Nigel guides you through the essential preparations for Christmas and the New Year, with rituals and routines, everything you need to enjoy the winter months, regardless of where you live.

Written as a diary starting in November and going all the way to the end of January, The Christmas Chronicles covers everything from Bonfire Night, Christmas and New Year to Epiphany. Throughout the season, Nigel offers over 100 recipes to see you through the build-up, the celebrations and the aftermath. He also offers thoughts about books to read, films to see, candles to buy, as well as legends and folktales, myths and memoir, all told in Nigel’s warm and intimate signature style.

The Christmas Chronicles was the winner of Fortnum & Mason Awards' Best Food Book of the Year in 2018. At the heart of the book are Nigel’s recipes, from quick fireside suppers to winter baking and marmalade making. He is one of Britain’s most highly regarded food writers, and his recipes are enjoyed globally. His beautifully written prose, warm personality and unpretentious, easy-to-follow recipes have won him a huge following around the world.

This also is a stunningly beautiful book. Nigel's books are always beautiful, but he and his publishers outdid themselves with The Christmas Chronicles: textured paper over board, foil debossed type and illustration, luxurious paper stock and color photos throughout. This is a Christmas gift waiting to happen!

No one can describe this lovely book better than its author:

"I have always loved the winter months, with their crisp mornings, candlelight and promise of snow. The Christmas Chronicles is the story of my adoration of the cold months, my fondness for the winter landscape with its pale blue skies and bare trees; for autumn and winter baking and the season's rituals and feasting. At the heart of the book is Christmas, its fables, folklore and of course, its food.

There are over a hundred recipes for warming dinners, quick midweek meals and Christmas classics. There are midwinter cakes and baking, mincemeat and puddings, vegetarian suppers, the Christmas roasts, crisp winter salads, main course soups, pickles, chutney and marmalades..."

(Speaking of mincemeat, I had always wanted to make mincemeat pies for the holidays after having such delicious ones in England. So, I found Nigel's recipe — which is in Christmas Chronicles — and also the wonderfully fresh and delicious mincemeat from Thursday Cottage in Somerset, England, and made my first batch of mince pies last year. They were a big hit! Like Nigel, I love the magic of the holidays and the season of winter, too, so I wanted to bring The Christmas Chronicles, as well as Thursday Cottage's delicious Mincemeat and delightful Lemon Curd — directly from Somerset — to you!

Back to Nigel — "A very personal stir-up of diary, memoir and cook book, here are stories of Bonfire Night and Halloween, of Christmases past and present, trips to the best Christmas Markets, shopping for decorations and how to choose The Tree. There are mincepies and malt loaf, winter drinks and Christmas wreaths, candlelight and carols. This is my celebration of the cold months from late autumn to well into the New Year, a day by day story of the winter solstice and its pleasures. I should add that if your idea of Christmas is all candy canes and fluffy kittens then this is not the book for you. (We should never forget that winter is as deadly as she is beautiful.) I have never enjoyed writing a book more than this."

The Christmas Chronicles is such a gift — and the perfect one for someone you know — in so many ways!

THE DETAILS  

Format: New, hardcover, textured paper over board, foil debossed type and illustration, luxurious paper stock and color photos throughout

Published: August 15, 2018

Publisher: Fourth Estate - Harper Collins

ISBN: 9780008298494

Pages: 464

Dimensions: 8.5 inches L x 6.1 inches W x 1.6 inches D

Rating:  ★★★★1/2 (See FAQs in Main Menu for More Information)

ABOUT NIGEL SLATER 

Nigel Slater describes himself as a cook that writes. He is being very humble. Nigel is the author of a collection of best-selling books and cookbooks, and he is presenter of BBC 1's Eating Together, Simple Cooking and Dish of the Day.

He is the author of a collection of much-loved cookbooks, including the classics Appetite, The Kitchen Diaries and the two-volume Tender. He has written an award-winning weekly food column in the Observer for more than twenty years, which is syndicated internationally, and he is a regular contributor to Sainsbury’s The Magazine.

Nigel's writing has won the National Book Awards, the Glenfiddich Trophy, the James Beard Award, the British Biography of the Year and the André Simon Memorial Prize.

His television awards include a Guild of Food Writers' Award for his BBC1 series Simple Suppers, and the BBC Food Personality of the Year. His memoir Toast – the Story of a Boy's Hunger won six major awards, has been translated into five languages, and it is a BBC film starring Helena Bonham Carter and Freddie Highmore.