Your question almost implies that it would be acceptable to hold the AoA and just wait for the the slats to deploy
Not really. Nose down and adding thrust will always be the first two steps. What I meant was that once these two steps have been done then what will be the downside of taking slats before flight path recovery. If slats increase drag they also reduce AoA, so the net effect might not be unfavorable. Following figure might clear what the question is:
As mentioned by Vilas:
as you extend slat there is small margin to VFE
Taking slats at position 1 (in the fig above) will also increase this VFE margin and there will be more time available for the good effect of slats. Obviously the manufacturer has a reason but was just curious about it.