Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger

Now with an updated foreword by Elizabeth Day and afterword by Nigel Slater, twenty years later Toast has become a classic food memoir, detailing all the food, recipes and cooking that have marked NigelÕs passage from greedy schoolboy to great food writer.
ÔToastÕ is Nigel SlaterÕs truly extraordinary story of a childhood remembered through food. Whether relating his motherÕs ritual burning of the toast, his fatherÕs 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 ÔcrackÕ like a gun. When NigelÕs 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 fatherÕs 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.

NigelÕs 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.