Nights Out At Home
Recipes and Stories from 25 years as a Restaurant Critic
Published on 5. September 2024
Book
Hardback
384 pages
978-0-241-63958-0 (ISBN)
Description
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
In his first cookbook, award-winning writer and broadcaster Jay Rayner offers delicious, doable recipes inspired by his favourite restaurant dishes for you to cook at home.
___
'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.'
With 60 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
The cult tandoori lamb chops from London's Tayyabs - a recipe which has never been written down before!
Jay's 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, great eating experiences, and home cooking - with a twist!
---
'Jay Rayner's love and profound understanding of food has been channelled into a wonderful book' STANLEY TUCCI
'A must buy for anyone who loves food, restaurants and cooking' TOM KERRIDGE
'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
'With Jay as our guide, Nights Out At Home is a witty, mouth-tingling taste adventure' ANDI OLIVER
In his first cookbook, award-winning writer and broadcaster Jay Rayner offers delicious, doable recipes inspired by his favourite restaurant dishes for you to cook at home.
___
'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.'
With 60 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
The cult tandoori lamb chops from London's Tayyabs - a recipe which has never been written down before!
Jay's 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, great eating experiences, and home cooking - with a twist!
---
'Jay Rayner's love and profound understanding of food has been channelled into a wonderful book' STANLEY TUCCI
'A must buy for anyone who loves food, restaurants and cooking' TOM KERRIDGE
'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
'With Jay as our guide, Nights Out At Home is a witty, mouth-tingling taste adventure' ANDI OLIVER
Reviews / Votes
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 *
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 158 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
618 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-63958-0 (9780241639580)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2024
Penguin Books Ltd
€14.99
Available for download
Person
Jay Rayner is an award-winning writer, musician, journalist and broadcaster. He is best known as restaurant critic, a job he did for the Observer from 1999 until 2025, and which he now continues for the Financial Times. As well as being a former Young Journalist of the Year and Restaurant Critic of the Year, in 2023 and again in 2025 he was named Critic of the Year in the UK Press Awards. He was also shortlisted for Cookery Writer of the Year at the 2026 Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards. Jay has published four novels and nine works of non-fiction, the most recent of which is Nights Out At Home, his first cookbook marking his 25 years as a restaurant critic which was a Sunday Times bestseller. He chairs BBC Radio 4's The Kitchen Cabinet, and is a familiar judge on MasterChef. Jay regularly performs live, both in his one man shows and as the pianist in his jazz sextet. Nights Out in the Kitchen is his second cookbook.