Nights Out At Home
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  • Published: 8 October 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241639580
  • Imprint: Fig Tree
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

Nights Out At Home

Recipes and Stories from 25 years as a restaurant critic

Formats & editions
Hardback
8 Oct 2024
EBook
5 Sep 2024
Audiobook
5 Sep 2024
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A memoir-in-recipes inspired by Jay Rayner's quarter of a century at the table, recreating dishes he has loved from high-end restaurants, high street grills, and everything in between

‘For the past twenty-five years, I have been reviewing restaurants across Britain and beyond, from the humblest of diners to the grandest of gastro-palaces. And throughout I’ve been taking the best ideas home with me to create glorious dishes for my own table. Now I get to share those recipes with you.’

In Nights Out at Home, Jay Rayner’s first cookbook, the award-winning writer and broadcaster gives us delicious, achievable recipes inspired by the restaurant creations that have stolen his heart over the decades, for you to cook in your own kitchen.

With sixty recipes that take their inspiration from restaurants dishes served across the UK and further afield, Nights Out at Home includes a cheat’s version of the Ivy’s famed crispy duck salad, the brown butter and sage flatbreads from Manchester’s Erst, miso-glazed aubergine from Freak Scene and instructions for making the cult tandoori lamb chops from the legendary Tayyabs in London’s Whitechapel; a recipe which has never before been written down.

It also features Jay’s MasterChef Critics-winning baked chocolate pudding with cherries, and his own personal take on the mighty Greggs Steak Bake.

Seasoned with stories from Jay’s life as a restaurant critic, and written with warmth, wit and the blessing, and often help, of the chefs themselves, Nights Out at Home is a celebration of good food and great eating experiences, filled with irresistible dishes to inspire all cooks.
  • Published: 8 October 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241639580
  • Imprint: Fig Tree
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

About the author

Jay Rayner

Jay Rayner is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster who now writes for the Observer. He is the author of two novels, The Marble Kiss and Day of Atonement. He is married and lives in London with his wife and son.

Jay Rayner is an award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster. He is restaurant critic for the Observer and has written a number of books about food, including The Ten Food Commandments and A Greedy Man in a Hungry World. He has also written several novels, including The Apologist and Day of Atonement.

portrait photo of Jay Rayner

Also by Jay Rayner

Kitchen Cabinet, The Series 2 Episode 3
The Ten (Food) Commandments
My Dining Hell
See all

Praise for Nights Out At Home

Jay has a way with words, but he’s also a dab hand in the kitchen. This book is not just a collection of food memories but also of recipes that make you want to roll up your sleeves and start cooking

Michel Roux

A fantastic collection of heart warming, full-flavoured recipes from one of Britain’s leading food writers. Each recipe is beautifully put together and the stories that go with them are wonderfully written. A must buy for anyone who loves food, restaurants and cooking

Tom Kerridge

I can say without hesitation, having known and eaten with Jay for many many years, that he is the undisputed egalitarian king of finding the most delicious things wherever he goes. He elicits the same amount of delight from great food whether it is on the high road or the high table. This book allows him to share with us the pure joy that he takes in discovery, and of course with Jay as our guide it’s a particularly witty mouth tingling taste adventure! Sheer brilliance.

Andi Oliver

Jay Rayner's love and profound understanding of food has been channelled into a wonderful book of delicious recipes coupled with intelligent, brilliantly funny writing

Stanley Tucci

The perfect book for greedy people

Nigella Lawson

Excellent ... As fun to read as to cook from

The Bookseller, One to Watch

Some recipes are speculative recreations (including of a Greggs steak bake), some assisted by the chefs, some a Frankensteining together of great dishes

FT – Best books of 2024: Food, drink and travel

Nights Out At Home is written with obvious love for the restaurant world and those who inhabit it, and a warm enthusiasm to share that with the reader.This book would make a seriously good cookbook without the stories, and a brilliantly written, engaging read without the recipes; that we get both makes it essential for anyone who’s into the wider pleasures of food.

Delicious Magazine, The 25 best cookbooks of 2024

I love this book ... Couldn’t put it down ... It’s so interesting to read about the origin of our many beloved restaurant dishes and it’s great to have Jay reverse-engineer his favourites for the home cook

Stylist

Rayner is a keen home cook, and here he reverse-engineers the restaurant dishes that have wowed him over the years

Observer Food Monthly, The best food books of 2024