This week sees the 20th anniversary of Nigel Slater's very first column for the Observer. The sweet autumn heat of roasted red peppers and an intense damson compote for 28 September 1993, to be precise. He has been silkily transforming the tough and bland into the soft and sensuous for us all ever since.

To celebrate this milestone, we are presenting a feast of Nigel this month, starting with an exclusive extract from his brand-new cookbook, Eat, with 20 brilliant recipes to mark his 20 years of Observer columns. It's all here, including duck burgers, Vietnamese prawn baguettes, a spiced fish soup and his "favourite meatballs, ever". Delicious, simple and quick to make: trademark Nigel Slater.

Nigel also lifts the curtain on his life and week, from filming his television series and proofing his new book to shopping for and writing the recipes for his weekly column. Working through the weekend – but never on Friday – and getting up every day at 5.30am seems to help.

Perhaps my favourite feature, though, is a collection of your best-loved Nigel recipes from the Observer years. Reader Les Plant says he "couldn't live without the peperoni alla Piemontese, with anchovies in mine but not for my wife"; Caroline Leygue likes the 2010 recipe for an onion tatin because it feels "a bit like a miracle", while Katherine Stephenson's son's "life was made richer" by Nigel's recipe for rosemary and honey bread. (My own favourite changes with time but if I had to choose just one, it's maybe an early, buttery, tarragon chicken.)

Elsewhere in the issue, Tim Lott tells us why he no longer forces his girls to eat greens, Darcey Bussell explains why she associates Strictly with crème brûlée, and we share a surprising lunch with actor Simon Pegg.