The Ten (Food) Commandments

Britain's culinary Moses brings us the new foodie rules to live by, celebrating what and how we eat 
 
The Ten Commandments may have had a lot going for them, but they don't offer those of us located in the 21st Century much in the way of guidance when it comes to our relationship with our food. And Lord knows we need it. 
 
Enter our new culinary Moses, the legendary restaurant critic Jay Rayner, with a new set of hand-tooled commandments for this food-obsessed age. He deals once and for all with questions like whether it is ever okay to covet thy neighbour's oxen (it is), eating with your hands (very important indeed) and if you should cut off the fat (no). Combining reportage and anecdotes with recipes worthy of adoration, Jay Rayner brings us the new foodie rules to live by.

Jay Rayner is an award-winning writer and broadcaster, best known as restaurant critic for the Observer. He is a former Critic of the Year and Restaurant Critic of the Year, and in the 2014 British Press Awards he was shortlisted for both Critic of the Year and Specialist Journalist of the Year. In a recent survey of journalists and the public by UK Press Gazette Jay was voted the most influential food and drink journalist in Britain. He likes pig.

The Ten Commandments may have had a lot going for them, but they don't offer those of us located in the 21st Century much in the way of guidance when it comes to our relationship with our food. And Lord knows we need it. 
 
Enter our new culinary Moses, the legendary restaurant critic Jay Rayner, with a new set of hand-tooled commandments for this food-obsessed age. He deals once and for all with questions like whether it is ever okay to covet thy neighbour's oxen (it is), eating with your hands (very important indeed) and if you should cut off the fat (no). Combining reportage and anecdotes with recipes worthy of adoration, Jay Rayner brings us the new foodie rules to live by.

Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy Night Out

My Dining Hell

Jay Rayner is an award-winning writer, journalist and broadcaster with a fine collection of floral shirts. He has written on everything from crime and politics, through cinema and theatre to the visual arts, but is best known as restaurant critic for the Observer. For a while he was a sex columnist for Cosmopolitan; he also once got himself completely waxed in the name of journalism. He only mentions this because it hurt. Jay is a former Young Journalist of the Year, Critic of the Year and Restaurant Critic of the Year, though not all in the same year. Somehow he has also found time to write four novels and two works of non-fiction. He is a regular on British television, where he is familiar as a judge on Masterchef and the resident food expert on The One Show. He likes pig.

I have been a restaurant critic for over a decade, written reviews of well over 700 establishments, and if there is one thing I have learnt it is that people like reviews of bad restaurants. No, scratch that. They adore them, feast upon them like starving vultures who have spotted fly-blown carrion out in the bush. 
 
They claim otherwise, of course. Readers like to present themselves as private arbiters of taste; as people interested in the good stuff. I'm sure they are. I'm sure they really do care whether the steak was served au point as requested or whether the soufflé had achieved a certain ineffable lightness. And yet, when I compare dinner to bodily fluids, the room to an S &amp; M chamber in Neasden (only without the glamour or class), and the bill to an act of grand larceny, why, then the baying crowd is truly happy. 
 
Don't believe me? Then why, presented with the chance to buy this ebook filled with accounts of twenty restaurants - their chefs, their owners, their poor benighted front of house staff - getting a complete stiffing courtesy of the sort of vitriolic bloody-curdling review which would make the victims call for their mummies, did you seize it with both hands?

Nights Out in the Kitchen

In his bestselling cookbook Nights Out At Home, Jay Rayner reflected on his quarter-century as a restaurant critic and outed himself as not only a professional eater, but someone with a profound understanding of how the very best meals are crafted. Read on sofas and poured over in kitchens, it offered inspiration and permission to roll up our sleeves and start cooking our favourite restaurant dishes at home. 
 
Now, in Nights Out in the Kitchen, readers will encounter Jay in his kitchen, with another 40 cleverly reverse-engineered recipes, taking inspiration from restaurants and chefs across the UK, alongside 20 of his very own recipes, including meatballs with braised spaghetti, shaved fennel and lemon zest salad, tartiflette tart and slow cooked tandoori lamb shoulder. 
 
With each dish, we’ll get to peek behind Jay’s kitchen door to discover how he cooks these family favourites, and the dynamic mix of restaurants, chefs and cookbooks – as well as Jay’s own creative flair – that inspired them. Including accessible, home-cooked versions of Little Dumpling King’s haggis dumplings with crispy chilli oil, a take on Jacuzzi’s vitello tonnato croquettes, Claro’s squash three ways and a whole section dedicated to the joys of good things on toast, Nights Out in the Kitchen is also seasoned with stories which walk both sides of the ‘home’ and ‘away’ line in Jay’s life. From the problem with dinner parties and the route to a less painful Christmas at home, to the lexicographical challenges facing a food critic who wants to describe flavour without resorting to ‘mouth-watering’, ‘moist’ and ‘sumptuous’, to the burning question of whether, given the large number of wretchedly negative reviews he’s written, Jay might actually be a total scumbag. 
 
On every page of this beautifully written and inspiring cookbook (with colour inset illustrations) Jay’s warmth and love of the restaurant industry and of great home cooking spills off the page.

Jay Rayner is an award-winning writer, musician, journalist and broadcaster. He has written on everything from crime and politics, through cinema and theatre to the visual arts, but 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 has published four novels and eight 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 regular on British television, where he is familiar as a judge on MasterChef. Jay regularly performs live, both in his one man shows and as the pianist in his jazz sextet.

In his bestselling Nights Out At Home, Jay Rayner reflected on his quarter-century as a restaurant critic and outed himself as not only a professional eater, but someone with a profound understanding of how the very best meals are crafted. Read on sofas and poured over in kitchens, it offered inspiration and permission to roll up our sleeves and start cooking our favourite restaurant dishes at home. 
 
In Days Out in the Kitchen, readers will discover Jay at ‘Home’, with another 50 cleverly reverse-engineered recipes, taking inspiration from restaurants and chefs across the UK, alongside 25 of his very own recipes, including meatballs with braised spaghetti, whole roasted cauliflower, fritto misto and meringue tumbles. With each dish, we’ll get to peek behind Jay’s kitchen door to discover how he cooks these family favourites and the dynamic mix of restaurants, chefs and cookbooks – as well as Jay’s own creative flair – that inspired them. . 
 
Inspired by his professional eating ‘Away’ from the kitchen, Days out in the Kitchen includes accessible, home-cooked versions of Jay’s most loved meals out, such as St John’s Welsh rarebit, 40 Maltby’s (and his local farmer’s market’s) tartiflette, Claro’s fried brussels sprouts and Maison Francois’s Paris Brest. And in the stead of the legendary Greggs steak bake, there is Morley’s red spareribs. 
 
On every page of this beautifully written and inspiring cookbook (with colour inset illustrations) Jay’s warmth and love of the restaurant industry and of great home cooking spills off the page.

Jay Rayner

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Recipes and Stories from 25 years as a Restaurant Critic

‘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.

Jay Rayner

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

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 b ...

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 deli ...

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

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 b ...

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 deli ...

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

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 b ...

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 deli ...

Books by Jay Rayner

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