Cooking with Nigel

'Right food, right place, right time. It is my belief - and the point of this book - that this is the best recipe of all.  A crab sandwich by the sea on June afternoon' a slice of roast goose with apple sauce and roast potatoes on Christmas Day; hot sausages and a chunk of roast pumpkin on a frost-sparkling night in November. These are meals whose success relies not on the expertise of the cook but on the more basic premise that this is the food of the moment - something eaten at a time when it is most appropriate, when the ingredients are at their peak of perfection, when the food, the cook and the time if year are at one with each other. Yes, it is about the quality of the ingredients too, their provenance and the way they are cooked, but the very best eating is also about the feeling that the time is  right. Learning to eat with the ebb and flow of the seasons is the single thing that has made my eating more enjoyable. Our culinary seasons have been blurred by commerce, and in particular by the supermarkets' much vaunted idea that consumers want all things to be available all year round.  I don't believe this is true.  I have honestly never met anyone who want to eat a slice of watermelon on a cold March evening, or a plate of asparagus in January. It is a myth put about by the giant supermarkets.  I worry that today it is all  too easy to lose sight of food's natural timing and, worse, to miss it when it is at its sublime best. Hence my attempt at writing a book about rebuilding a cook's relationship with nature.' The above are excerpts from the introduction to his 'The Kitchen Diaries'.  I really think that Nigel Slater is a national treasure.