tom parker bowles::I grew up on a farm in wiltshire, eating solid english food-tom parker bowles

tom parker bowles::I grew up on a farm in wiltshire, eating solid english food.
My father was a passionate gardener and my mother a good cook.
There were asparagus, artichokes, peas, broad beans and tomatoes in summer, with an endless, squidgy cavalcade of raspberries, plums and peaches as the autumn drew close.
Chickens and eggs came from the yard, beef, lamb and pork from farmers nearby.
This was local, seasonal and nearorganic food long before the terms became marketable but for my sister and me, the occasional trip to the swindon wimpy was far preferable to some shoulder of rarebreed, freerange pork.
A beautiful, shiny, striplit temple to gastronomic bliss.
Who cared about freshly caught brown trout when you could feast on chicken kiev, ice magic and readymade lasagne?
Still, these were all occasional treats rather than the norm.
At the age of eight came prep school: fried eggs that resembled greasy frisbees, bacon that was mean, flaccid and hideously salty, coated with a thick layer of white scum.
Even the tomatoes, served straight from vast industrial tins, managed to be both drab and suffused with the taste of metal.
As for the sausages.
This was eating as penance rather than pleasure.
And that turned a previously healthy appetite into a seriously raging greed.
The next 15 years were spent in the usual teenage pursuits experimenting with chillies and spices and being drawn into previously unknown worlds of sichuan pepper and prawn vindaloo.
I began to collect cookbooks.
As much as i adored alastair little, madhur jaffrey and nigella lawson, there was one man upon whose every word i hung.
Here was a writer whose passion was matched by the clarity of his prose.
You could hear his voice in every sentence, soothing yet authoritative, experienced but never patronising.
His recipes, be they for chicken broth or roast mackerel, made not only delectable reading but eating too.
They worked, and he always encouraged individuality, despising the confines of bossy, empirical tracts.
There were no fussy towers of ingredients, illjudged smears across the plate or extraneous foams.
Just food you wanted to cook, eat and share.
Real fast food, real cooking, real food and appetite.
It was entirely due to nigel that i first started buying the observer.
And when ofm first launched, 100 issues and nine years back, i received a telephone call.
I had just started as food editor at tatler, my first proper gig.
Would you like to cook for nigel slater, they asked.
I stammered an immediate yes, then put the phone down and panicked.
What would i cook?
For about two weeks.
When he finally arrived, clutching a bottle of the finest italian olive oil, i could barely speak.
But in his usual gentle and selfeffacing way, he took over peeling the potatoes and shelling the broad beans.
Helping me cook dinner.
This was the big time.
He demystifies cooking without ever demeaning it.
But like all the best, one with the endless power to inspire.