Nigel Slater is the author of a collection of bestselling books and presenter of BBC I’s Simple Cooking and Dish of the Day. He has been food columnist for the Observer for twenty years. His books include the classics Appetite and The Kitchen Diaries and the critically acclaimed two-volume Tender. His award-winning memoir Toast – the story of a boy’s hunger won six major awards and is now a BBC film starring Helena Bonham Carter and Freddie Highmore. His writing has won the National Book Award, the Glenfiddich Trophy, the André Simon Memorial Prize and the British Biography of the Year. He was the winner of a Guild of Food Writers’ Award for his BBC I series Simple Suppers.

Also by Nigel Slater

The Kitchen Diaries II

Tender Volumes I and II

Eating for England

The Kitchen Diaries

Toast – the story of a boy’s hunger

Thirst

Appetite

Nigel Slater’s Real Food

Real Cooking

The 30-Minute Cook

Real Fast Food

Contents

Acknowledgements

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Copyright

About the Publisher

To Digger, Magrath and Poppy

And to Louise and Jonnie with love

With thanks to Sam Blok, Araminta Whitley,

Allan Jenkins,Nung Puinongpho,

Jane Middleton, Silvia Crompton, and to Rohan and Sophie,

and everyone at 4th Estate

Right food, right place, right time. It is my belief – and the point of this book – that this is the best recipe of all. A crab sandwich by the sea on a June afternoon; a slice of roast goose with apple sauce and roast potatoes on Christmas Day; hot sausages and a chunk of roast pumpkin on a frost-sparkling night in November. These are meals whose success relies not on the expertise of the cook but on the more basic premise that this is the food of the moment – something eaten at a time when it is most appropriate, when the ingredients are at their peak of perfection, when the food, the cook and the time of year are at one with each other.

There is something deeply, unshakeably right about eating food in season: fresh runner beans in July, grilled sardines on a blisteringly hot August evening, a bowl of gently aromatic stew on a rainy day in February. Yes, it is about the quality of the ingredients too, their provenance and the way they are cooked, but the very best eating is also about the feeling that the time is right.

I do believe, for instance, that a cold Saturday in January is a good time to make gingerbread. It is when I made it and we had a good time with it. It felt right. So I offer it to you as a suggestion, just as I offer a cheesecake at Easter, a curry for a cold night in April and a pale gooseberry fool for a June afternoon. It is about seasonality, certainly, but also about going with the flow, cooking with the natural rhythm of the earth.

Learning to eat with the ebb and flow of the seasons is the single thing that has made my eating more enjoyable. Our culinary seasons have been blurred by commerce, and in particular by the supermarkets’ much vaunted idea that consumers want all things to be available all year round. I don’t believe this is true. I have honestly never met anyone who wants to eat a slice of watermelon on a cold March evening, or a plate of asparagus in January. It is a myth put about by the giant supermarkets. I worry that today it is all too easy to lose sight of food’s natural timing and, worse, to miss it when it is at its sublime best. Hence my attempt at writing a book about rebuilding a cook’s relationship with nature.

The diary

I wanted to know exactly when I might find something at its glorious, juicy, sweetly flavoured peak. If something is to be truly, remarkably good to eat, then isn’t it worth knowing precisely when that moment might be? ‘Spring’ or ‘autumn’ has always been too vague for me. There is a vast difference between winter-spring and summer-spring. Even labelling raw ingredients by the month in which they are due to ripen is a bit hit and miss (I missed the damsons and the greengages one year relying on that premise). Anyone who has gone to a farmers’ market in the first week of May and again in the last week will know where I am coming from. It is like two completely different months.

That said, this is not a book whose dates are to be followed like a mantra. It is simply a book of suggestions for when you might, should you care to look, find gooseberries, sprouts, damsons etc. at their best. It is a guide to what is and isn’t worth eating and when. And I like to think that there are few things more worth knowing than that. It is not some tyrannical culinary calendar but a book to dip in and out of throughout the year and the years to come, a reminder to keep an eye out for something, a gentle – and, I hope, delicious – aide-mémoire.

The
photographs

The photography has been done in ‘real time’. So when it says October 2nd or April 9th, then that is when the picture was shot. After I have cooked each meal and it has been photographed, we sit down and eat it while it is still hot. Then I wash up. The pictures are taken at home, so if you recognise plates and pans from my books Real Food or Appetite, then that is because they are things that I have come to love and cherish. Whether it’s a vegetable peeler or a palette knife, it works for me and has become part of my life.

The food

For the most part I shop at small local shops, farmers’ markets, proper butcher’s, fishmonger’s, delicatessens and cheese shops rather than all at once on a weekly trip to a supermarket. I have honestly never set foot inside a branch of Tesco. This book is very much a gentle plea to buy something, however small, each day, to take time to shop, to treat it as a pleasure rather than a chore. This doesn’t mean I spend my life shopping, far from it. It simply means that I stock up on dry goods, such as rice, pasta and the like, once a week, then manage to find half an hour a day (sometimes less) to buy just one or two fresh things from someone who sells them with a passion and a specialist interest – easier than ever now that shops tend to stay open later.

A weekly trip to the farmers’ market forms the backbone of my fresh food shopping, plus I have a weekly ‘organic box’ delivered to my door. I love to see those tables laid out under striped awnings with food that is being sold by the people who made or picked it. Shopping at the farmers’ market means that you can buy your cream from the person who churned it, your potatoes directly from the people who dug them from the ground, your salad leaves from the guy who planted the seeds. Food with a story you can follow from seed packet to table, picked that day. This, to me, is as good as food shopping gets.

I feel that buying ingredients as fresh, as honest as this is a chance to cook them as simply as possible, to let the food taste of itself, to allow it to be what it is.

The kitchen

My kitchen is not large, but a trio of skylights and the fact that the doors open up to the garden make it a hugely pleasurable place in which to cook. It has no fancy cookers, no batterie of expensive equipment, yet it has been thoughtfully and intelligently designed. The space works perfectly. Good kitchens are not about size, they are about ergonomics and light.

The garden

My garden is a tiny urban space, yet it has been crucial to this book. Leading down from the kitchen doors are steps on which rest pots of thyme and single marigolds, dark red pelargoniums and Italian aubergines. There is an old stone terrace where we eat in summer round a zinc-topped table set under a fig tree. The terrace makes way for a small, rather amateurish potager, with six little beds filled to overflowing. Two for pot-herbs, roses and old-fashioned scented pinks, one each for raspberries and currants, another for tomatoes and courgettes and one for runner beans, broad beans, artichokes and rhubarb. In amongst the chaos grow sweet peas, dahlias, nasturtiums and opium poppies.

Beyond that is a miniscule wooded patch, no deeper than twelve feet, with a tangle of plum, damson, hazelnut and quince trees, plus wood strawberries and, in winter, snowdrops growing underfoot. What I should emphasise is just how small this garden is. So when I refer to the ‘kitchen garden’, I am talking about a diminutive patch probably about the same size as the average allotment. I make no attempt to be self-sufficient, I simply haven’t the space. It is just that by growing something myself, from seed or a small plant, I feel closer to understanding how and when a pear, a medlar, a broad bean or a raspberry is at its best.

Anyone who has ever grown anything for themselves, or simply has an old apple tree in the garden, will know that you often end up with a glut – too much of the same ingredient at the same time. I was keen to reflect this in The Kitchen Diaries, so there are months where there may be a bounty of tomato recipes, others where almost every week seems to feature raspberries in some form or another. If you make the most of the good prices that go hand in hand with a glut at the market, or you want to use every bit of the ripe fruit and vegetables in your garden, then you will welcome this. Personally, I think of it as something of a glorious seasonal feast.

Roast rhubarb on a January morning; ‘pick-your-own’ strawberries in June; a piece of chicken on the grill on an August evening; a pot-roast pigeon on a damp October afternoon; a pork feast in November. This is more than just something to eat, it is food to be celebrated, food that is somehow in tune with the rhythm of nature. Quite simply, the right food at the right time.

january

Dal and pumpkin soup

A salad of fennel, winter leaves and Parmesan

Stew

A frosted marmalade cake

Frozen yoghurt with roast rhubarb

Double ginger cake

Onion soup without tears

Cheese-smothered potatoes

A velvety soup for a clear, cold day

Bulghur wheat with aubergines and mint

A really good spaghetti Bolognaise

Chicken broth with noodles, lemon and mint

Spiced crumbed mackerel with smoked paprika

A herb butter for grilled chops

A pot-roast pheasant with celery and sage

A clear, hot mussel soup

Sausages with salami and lentils

A lime tart

New Year’s
Day. A day
of hope and
hot soup

There is a single rose out in the garden, a faded bundle of cream and magenta petals struggling against grey boards. A handful of snowdrops peeps out from the ivy that has taken hold amongst the fruit trees. The raspberry canes are bare, save the odd dried berry I have left for the birds, and the bean stems stand brown and dry around their frames. A withered verbena’s lemon-scented leaves stand crisp against a clear, grey sky. January 1st is the day I prune back the tangle of dried sticks in the kitchen garden, chuck out anything over its sell-by date from the cupboards, flick through seed catalogues and make lists of what I want to grow and eat in the year to come. I have always loved the first day of the year. A day ringing with promise.

I bought little between Christmas and New Year, just salad and a few herbs, preferring to make do with larder stuff: white beans and yellow lentils, parsnips and a forgotten pumpkin, tins of baked beans, dried apricots and hard, chewy figs. There is still a crumbling wedge of Christmas cake, some crystallised orange and lemon slices, a few brazils to which I cannot gain entry and a handful of tight-skinned clementines. A feast of sorts, but what I need is a hot meal.

There is juice for breakfast, blood orange, the dull fruit brushed with scarlet and still sporting its glossy green leaves. It’s a bracing way to start a new year. I make a resolution to eat less but better food this year: to eat only food whose provenance I know at least a little of; to patronise artisan food producers; to increase my organic food consumption; and to shop even less at supermarkets than I do now. This should be the year in which I think carefully about everything I put in my mouth. ‘Where has this come from, what effect will this have on me, my well-being and that of the environment?’ Ten years ago this would all have sounded distinctly worthy, but today it just sounds like a blueprint for intelligent eating.

I have a tradition of making soup on New Year’s Day, too: green lentil, potato and Parmesan, noodle broth and this year red lentil and pumpkin. It is a warm ochre soup, soothing, yet capable of releasing a slow build-up of heat from its base notes of garlic, chilli and ginger; a bowl of soup that both whips and kisses.

Dal and pumpkin soup

a small onion

garlic – 2 cloves

ginger – a walnut-sized knob

split red lentils – 225g

ground turmeric – a teaspoon

ground chilli – a teaspoon

pumpkin – 250g

coriander – a small bunch, roughly chopped

For the onion topping:

onions – 2 medium

groundnut oil – 2 tablespoons

chillies – 2 small hot ones

garlic – 2 cloves

Peel the onion and chop it roughly. Peel and crush the garlic and put it with the onion into a medium-sized, heavy-based saucepan. Peel the ginger, cut it into thin shreds and stir that in too. Add the lentils and pour in one and a half litres of water. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down to an enthusiastic simmer. Stir in the ground turmeric and chilli, season and leave to simmer, covered, for twenty minutes.

While the soup is cooking, bring a medium-sized pan of water to the boil. Peel the pumpkin and scoop out the seeds and fibre, then cut the flesh into fat chunks. Boil the pumpkin pieces for ten minutes, until they are tender enough to take a skewer without much pressure. Drain them and set them aside.

To make the onion topping, peel the onions and cut them into thin rings. Cook them in the oil in a shallow pan until they start to colour. Cut the chillies in half, scrape out the seeds and slice the flesh finely. Peel and finely slice the garlic and add it with the chillies to the onions. Continue cooking until the onions are a deep golden brown. Set aside.

Remove the lid from the lentils and turn up the heat, boiling hard for five minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, then add the drained pumpkin. Put the soup through the blender (for safety, a little at a time) until smooth, then pour it into a bowl. Stir in the roughly chopped coriander and check the seasoning. I find this soup likes a more generous than usual amount of salt.

Serve in deep bowls with a spoonful of the spiced onions on top.

Makes 4 good-sized bowls

A salad of fennel, winter leaves and Parmesan

tarragon vinegar – 1 tablespoon

Dijon mustard – a teaspoon

an egg yolk

olive oil – 100ml

grated Parmesan – 3 tablespoons

lemon juice – 2 teaspoons

thick slices of white bread – 2

olive oil for frying the bread

1 medium fennel bulb

small, hot salad leaves such as rocket and watercress – 4 double handfuls

a block of Parmesan for shaving

Make the dressing by whisking the vinegar, mustard, egg yolk and olive oil together with a little salt and black pepper, then beating in the grated cheese. Squeeze in the lemon juice, stir and set aside for a few minutes.

Cut the bread into small squares and fry in shallow oil till golden on all sides. Drain on kitchen paper. Slice the fennel finely; it should be almost fine enough to see through. Toss it with the salad leaves and the dressing. Pile the salad on to two plates, then shave pieces of Parmesan over with a vegetable peeler. I usually do at least eight per salad, depending on my dexterity with the peeler. Tip the hot croûtons over the salad and eat straight away whilst all is fresh and crunchy.

Enough for 2

January 4
A salad of
winter
cabbage and
bacon

We have the first porridge of the year, made with medium oatmeal and water and drizzled with heather honey and several spoonfuls of blueberries. Supper is a tightwad affair of shredded winter cabbage, steamed till just bright and almost tender, tossed with shredded bacon rashers and their hot fat spiked with a dash of white wine vinegar. What lifts this from the mundane is the fact that I keep the cabbage jewel bright and use the best, lightly smoked bacon in generous amounts. A few caraway seeds add a nutty, almost musky flavour. Not the sort of thing to serve to guests but fine for a weekday supper.

Afterwards we eat slices of lemon tart from the deli.

January 6

Grilled mushrooms tonight, slathered with some of that garlicky French cream cheese from the corner shop and stuffed inside a soft burger bun. A TV supper of the first order, especially the bit where the cream cheese melts into the cut sides of the toasted bun.

January 7
Frugal, pure
and basic
food for a
rainy night

I try to prune the raspberry patch whilst being buffeted by high winds; sacks, buckets and even the watering can being blown across the garden. It is this annual task, and that of pruning the fruit trees in the thicket at the end of the garden, that is the turning point in the year for me. Seeing the neatly trimmed canes and the newly shorn branches of the young quince, medlar and mulberry trees is what rings in the new year for me rather than the bells, whoops and popping corks of New Year’s Eve. Anyway, Auld Lang Syne always makes me want to burst into tears.

Pruning holds no fears for me. It is a job I look forward to almost more than any other. The crisp snap of secateurs slicing through young rose-pink and walnut-coloured wood brings the possibility that this year I might actually manage to control this downright wayward kitchen garden. A garden where dahlias poke through blackcurrant bushes and dark purple clematis rambles through damson trees. Pruning makes me think, however briefly, that I am in charge.

But I give up after an hour or two, the wind thrashing the swaying and heavily thorned raspberry canes across my face just once too often. I go in and toast crumpets, then make a stew and an orange-scented cake.

Stew

pot barley – 100g

onions – 3 medium

celery – 2 large stalks

a large parsnip

carrots – 2

potatoes – 4–5 medium

neck of lamb chops – 8 thick ones

a few sprigs of thyme and a couple of bay leaves

white pepper

water or stock to cover

parsley – a small handful

Boil the pot barley in unsalted water for a good twenty-five minutes, then drain it.

Get the oven hot. It needs to be at 160°C/Gas 3. Peel the onions and slice them into thick rings. Cut the celery into short lengths. Peel the parsnip, carrots and potatoes and cut them into fat chunks. That’s 2–3cm if you are measuring. Pile the vegetables into a large, deep pot, then tuck in the chops, thyme and bay leaves. Season with a little white pepper, no salt, then pour in the drained barley and enough water or stock to cover the meat and vegetables completely. Bring it slowly to the boil.

Skim off the worst of the froth that has accumulated on the surface, easily done with a ‘holey’ spoon. Cover the top of the stew with a sheet of greaseproof paper, then with a lid. Transfer the pot to the oven and leave it there, untouched or fiddled with, for a good two hours.

Remove the lid. The liquor should be thin, thickened only slightly by the potatoes. Chop the parsley and mix it in carefully, so as not to smash the vegetables, then season with salt and black pepper.

Leave overnight. Next day, skim the fat from the top, then reheat slowly on the stove till the meat is thoroughly hot and the broth gently bubbling. Check the seasoning – be generous – and serve piping hot.

Enough for 4

A frosted marmalade cake

I don’t, as a rule, like icing. Yet on a home-made cake, drizzled over so that it sets wafer thin, it adds a welcome contrast to the soft sponge. You could use water to mix the icing but I prefer to use fruit juice, occasionally adding a hint of orange blossom water to perfume each slice of cake.

butter – 175g

golden unrefined caster sugar – 175g

a large orange

eggs – 3 large

orange marmalade – 75g

self-raising flour – 175g

For the frosting:

icing sugar – 100g

orange juice – 2 tablespoons

Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Line a loaf tin about 25 x 11cm and 7cm deep. Put the butter and sugar in a food mixer and beat till pale and fluffy. Finely grate the orange. Break the eggs into a small bowl and beat them lightly with a fork. With the machine set at moderate speed, pour in the beaten egg a little at a time, beating thoroughly between each addition. Beat in the marmalade and the grated orange zest.

Remove the bowl and fold in the flour with a large metal spoon. Do this slowly, firmly but carefully, till there is no sign of any flour. Lastly, gently stir in the juice of half the orange. Spoon the mixture into the lined tin, lightly smoothing the top. Bake for forty minutes, checking it after thirty-five with a metal skewer. Leave to cool in the tin – it will sink slightly – then remove and cool completely on a wire rack.

Sift the icing sugar and mix it to a smooth, slightly runny consistency with as much of the remaining orange juice as it takes – probably just under two tablespoons. Drizzle the icing over the cake, letting it run down the sides, and leave to set.

Enough for 8

January 8
The first
rhubarb

The first rhubarb appears with impeccable timing. Just as you want a fresh start to the year, along come the pale pink stems of the most tart and clean-tasting fruit to cleanse and invigorate. I no longer cut the stems into chunks and dip each piece raw into the sugar bowl like I did when I was a kid, but I do poach it only very lightly, so that the stems retain their shape, then I eat it first thing in the morning, slurping up spoonfuls of its limpid pink juice.

Frozen yoghurt with roast rhubarb

Warm, rudely pink rhubarb and snow-white frozen yoghurt has a smart, bright flavour and is breathtakingly pretty on a cold winter’s day. The frozen yoghurt is simply a bought vanilla smoothie chucked into an ice-cream machine; the baked fruit just rhubarb bunged in a dish with a spoonful of runny honey and the juice of an orange.

thick vanilla yoghurt smoothies – 3 × 250ml

young, pink rhubarb – 500g

an orange

mild honey – a tablespoon

To make the frozen yoghurt, pour the smoothies into the drum of your ice-cream machine and churn till almost frozen. Scoop out and into a plastic freezer box, then keep in the freezer till you need it.

Cut the rhubarb into short lengths about the size of a wine cork. Lay them in a shallow stainless steel or glass baking dish, squeeze over the orange juice and drizzle with the honey. Bake for twenty-five minutes at 200°C/Gas 6, occasionally spooning the juices over the fruit. The rhubarb is done when the stalks are tender enough to crush between your fingers. Leave to cool a little.

Divide the warm rhubarb between four dishes, then place a couple of scoops of frozen yoghurt on each, though it looks rather elegant served in separate bowls.

Enough for 4

Note

To make the frozen yoghurt without a machine, pour the smoothies into a plastic box and freeze for a couple of hours till a thick layer of ice crystals forms around the edge. Whisk the frozen edges into the middle of the mixture, then freeze again for an hour or so. Repeat, again beating the edges into the middle. Now leave the mixture to freeze. The whole process will take about four hours, depending on the temperature of your freezer. Try to catch the ice just before it freezes solid. The texture will be less smooth than if you use a machine.

January 9
Rain and
an old-
fashioned
cake

This is the grey, endless drizzle that Britain is regularly accused of having, yet in truth we rarely see, even in the depths of winter. It’s the sort of day on which to light the fire, turn on the radio and bake a cake. Once the smell of baking fills the house, I find the rain suddenly matters a good deal less, if at all. I make a decent ginger cake, a love of which seems to run in our family. My Dad adored them, along with Battenburg, or ‘window cake’ as he called it, which I leave to the experts. I take mine in the afternoon with a pot of green tea.

Double ginger cake

I am rather proud of this cake. Lightly crisp on top and with a good, open texture, it is light, moist and delicately gingery. It will keep for a week or so wrapped in paper and foil.

self-raising flour – 250g

ground ginger – 2 level teaspoons

ground cinnamon – half a teaspoon

bicarbonate of soda – a level teaspoon

a pinch of salt

golden syrup – 200g

syrup from the ginger jar – 2 tablespoons

butter – 125g

stem ginger in syrup – 3 lumps, about 55g

sultanas – 2 heaped tablespoons

dark muscovado sugar – 125g

large eggs – 2

milk – 240ml

You will need a square cake tin measuring approximately 20–22cm, lined on the bottom with baking parchment or greaseproof paper.

Set the oven at 180C/Gas 4. Sift the flour with the ginger, cinnamon, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Put the golden and ginger syrups and the butter into a small saucepan and warm over a low heat. Dice the ginger finely, then add it to the pan with the sultanas and sugar. Let the mixture bubble gently for a minute, giving it the occasional stir to stop the fruit sticking on the bottom.

Break the eggs into a bowl, pour in the milk and beat gently to break up the egg and mix it into the milk. Remove the butter and sugar mixture from the heat and pour into the flour, stirring smoothly and firmly with a large metal spoon. Mix in the milk and eggs. The mixture should be sloppy, with no trace of flour.

Scoop the mixture into the lined cake tin and bake for thirty-five or forty minutes, until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Unless you are serving it warm, leave the cake in its tin to cool, then tip it out on to a sheet of greaseproof paper. Wrap it up in foil and, if you can, leave it to mature for a day or two before eating.

Enough for 8

January 11
Onion soup
without
tears

I do love the classic onion soup, simmered for hours in a deep iron pot, but if I’m honest I hate making it. Onions make me cry at the best of times, but slicing enough for an entire pan of soup is more than I can handle, so this method where you roast the halved onions first solves all that. But there is more to this soup than convenience for those easily brought to tears; the roasting of the onions gives a sweet, caramel depth to the broth and the onions turn silky, slithery and soft. I could also add that the smell of onions baking in butter is a rather more attractive option than the pong of boiled onions wafting through the house.

onions – 4 medium

butter – 40g

a glass of white wine

vegetable stock – 1.5 litres

a small French loaf

grated Gruyère, Emmental or other good melting cheese – 150g

Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Peel the onions and cut them in half from tip to root, then lay them in a roasting tin and add the butter, salt and some pepper. Roast until they are tender and soft, and toasted dark brown here and there. You might have to turn them now and again.

Cut the onions into thick segments. Put them in a saucepan with the wine and bring to the boil. Let the wine bubble until it almost disappears (you just want the flavour, not the alcohol), then pour in the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for about twenty minutes.

Just before you want to serve the soup, make the cheese croûtes. Cut the loaf into thin slices and toast lightly on one side under a hot grill. Turn them over and sprinkle with the grated cheese. Get the soup hot, ladle it into bowls and float the cheese croûtes on top. Place the bowls under a hot grill and leave until the cheese melts. Eat immediately, whilst the cheese is still stringy and molten.

Enough for 4

January 12
Potatoes
and cheese
for a cold
night

I rather like those dishes that can be eaten as either a side dish or a main course depending on what else you might be eating. They slot neatly into my ‘very useful’ category. This potato recipe is one of those. If we were having a few slices of cold roast beef or pork, or maybe some chicken left over from Sunday, then this is what I would want to eat with it at this time of year when the weather is so cold. Yet today two of us sit down each with a plate of these potatoes as a main course, with just a bowl of crisp winter salad of chicory, frisée and roughly hashed walnuts. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a rough-looking dish of cheese melting over the lightly fried potatoes.

It is not essential to stick to my choice of cheese. Anything that melts easily will do but both Fontina and Taleggio will melt superbly.

Cheese-smothered potatoes

waxy potatoes – 500g

olive oil – 2 tablespoons

butter – 50g

a medium-sized onion, sliced

garlic – 2 large cloves, finely sliced

thyme leaves – 1 tablespoon, chopped

easy melting cheese such as Taleggio or Fontina – 120g

Rinse the potatoes. There is no need to peel them unless the skins are very tough. Slice them thinly – about as thick as a pound coin. The thinner you slice them, the quicker they will cook.

Put the olive oil and butter in a shallow pan about 25cm in diameter and cook the onion and garlic in it for about five minutes, until they start to soften. Add the potatoes, some pepper and salt and the thyme to the pan and toss gently in the cooking fat. Cover with a lid and cook over a low heat for twenty-five minutes, turning once.

Test the cooked potatoes for tenderness. If the point of a knife slices into them easily, they are done. Slice the cheese thinly and lay it over the top of the potatoes. Cover the pan once more and continue cooking for a couple of minutes until the cheese has melted. Serve immediately, while the cheese is still soft and oozing.

Enough for 2

January 13
A velvety
soup for a
clear, cold
day

Crisp, clear, and the sky looks like Sweden. One of those days when you get tricked by the bright, crystal sky and go out with one layer too few, then come home freezing cold. I had every intention of bringing back something for supper but, after eating Turkish mezze at lunch, come home empty handed and end up scouring the fridge and cupboards for something to eat.

I never throw away Parmesan rinds. No matter how dry and cracked they get, the craggy ends are full of intense, cheesy flavour. A more organised cook would freeze theirs; mine tend to collect in one of the little plastic drawers in the fridge door, the one you are supposed to keep eggs in. To get the full, soothingly velvet texture of this soup, you will need a couple of large hunks of rind, about 5-6cm long. If the fridge is bare, then ask at your local deli. They may let you have them for little or nothing.

good-sized leeks – 3

butter – a thick slice, about 40g

potatoes – 3 medium-sized

Parmesan rinds

light stock or water – 1.5 litres

parsley – a handful

grated Parmesan – 6 tablespoons

Trim the leeks, slice them into thick rings, then wash thoroughly under cold running water. Melt the butter in a heavy-based pan (I use a cast-iron casserole), then tip in the washed leeks and let them soften slowly, covered with a lid, over a low to moderate heat. After about twenty minutes and with some occasional stirring they should be silkily tender.

While they are softening, peel the potatoes and cut them into chunks. Add them to the leeks when they are soft and let them cook for five minutes or so, before dropping in the cheese rinds and pouring in the stock or water. Season with salt and black pepper, then partially cover and leave to simmer for a good forty minutes.

Remove and discard the undissolved cheese rinds, scraping back into the soup any cheesy goo from them as you go. Add the leaves of the parsley and blitz the soup in a blender. Check the seasoning – it may need a surprisingly generous amount of salt and pepper – then bring briefly to the boil. Serve piping hot, with the grated Parmesan.

Enough for 6

January 15

I buy oysters today, fines de claire from the fish shop on Marylebone High Street, six apiece. They smell clean and slightly salty. The heavy-gauge oyster opener I bought five years ago has proved a sound investment, firmer and safer than its predecessor, which was, with hindsight, too flimsy to do the job. Opening oysters requires a no-messing attitude. Not exactly gung-ho, but with a certain amount of (mock) confidence. Even then I have to fish out bits of broken shell from the tender flesh and not-to-be-wasted juices. The shellfish was quite expensive, so I strike a balance with a cheap cupboard recipe to follow.

Bulghur wheat with aubergines and mint

Bulghur is one of those mild, warming grains that soothes and satisfies. I value it for its knubbly texture and nutty flavour. This, to me, is supper, but others may like to use it beside something else, such as grilled chicken or a gravy-rich stew.

olive oil – 6 tablespoons

a small onion

a bay leaf

aubergines – 2 small ones

garlic – 2 large cloves, chopped

bulghur wheat – 225g

vegetable stock – 500ml

tomatoes – 4

pine kernels – 3 tablespoons, toasted

mint – 15-20 leaves, chopped

lemon juice to taste

Warm the olive oil in a shallow pan, peel and finely slice the onion and let it cook slowly in the oil with the bay leaf. When the onion is soft and pale gold, add the aubergines, cut into 3cm pieces, and the chopped garlic. Let the aubergines cook, adding more oil if necessary, until they are golden and soft.

Pour in the bulghur wheat and the vegetable stock. Bring to the boil, then leave to simmer gently for fifteen to twenty minutes, till the wheat is tender and almost dry. Half way through cooking, roughly chop the tomatoes and add them. Once the wheat is cooked (it should still be nutty and have some bite), stir in the toasted pine kernels and chopped mint leaves. Check the seasoning; it will need lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Enough for 2, with seconds

January 17
A bench-
mark
Bolognese

No sooner is lunch over (supermarket sushi brought to life with enough wasabi to make my sinuses sting) than it starts to rain. The butcher has fresh mince, which looks straight from the mincer, the sight of which is enough to stir me into making a proper Bolognese. By which I mean one that has been left to blip and putter slowly on the stove, so that the flavours have a chance to mellow and deepen.

A really good spaghetti Bolognese

butter – 50g

cubed pancetta – 70g

a medium onion

garlic – 2 fat cloves

a carrot

celery – 2 stalks

flat mushrooms – 2 large, about 100g

bay leaves – 2

minced beef or lamb – 400g

crushed tomatoes or passata – 200ml

red wine – 200ml

stock – 200ml

a nutmeg

full-cream milk or cream – 200ml

To serve:

spaghetti or tagliatelle for 4

grated Parmesan

Melt the butter in a heavy-based pan – I use a cast-iron one about 24cm in diameter – then stir in the pancetta and let it cook for five minutes or so, without colouring much. Meanwhile peel and finely chop the onion and garlic and stir them into the pancetta. Scrub and finely chop the carrot and celery and stir them in, too. Lastly, finely chop the mushrooms and add to the pan, then tuck in the bay leaves and leave to cook for ten minutes over a moderate heat, stirring frequently.

Turn up the heat and tip in the meat, breaking it up well with a fork. Now leave to cook without stirring for a good three or four minutes, then, as the meat on the bottom is starting to brown, stir again, breaking up the meat where necessary, and leave to colour.

Mix in the tomatoes, red wine, stock, a grating of nutmeg and some salt and black pepper, letting it come to the boil. Turn the heat down so that everything barely bubbles. There should be movement, but one that is gentle, not quite a simmer. Partially cover the pan with a lid and leave to putter away for an hour to an hour and a half, stirring from time to time and checking the liquid levels. You don’t want it to be dry.

Pour in the milk or cream a bit at a time, stir and continue cooking for twenty minutes. Check the seasoning, then serve with the pasta and grated Parmesan.

Enough for 4

January 19

Sometimes I make my own chicken stock and sometimes I buy it ready-made. Today I take the lazy route, picking up a large tub from the butcher’s, idle, good-for-nothing guy that I am. The outcome is another ten-minute supper, which turns out to be more appreciated than any supermarket cook-chill dinner, at once warming (the broth), uplifting (lemon, mint) and satisfying (the noodles).

Chicken broth with noodles, lemon and mint

dried egg noodles – 50g

very good chicken broth – 1 litre

cooked chicken (leftover roast is fine) – 200g

chopped mint leaves – 2 heaped tablespoons

roughly chopped coriander leaves – 2 heaped tablespoons

the juice of a lemon

Drop the noodles into a deep pan of boiling, salted water and cook for two to three minutes, until tender. Drain them, rinse under cold running water, then leave to cool in a bowl of cold water until you need them.

Bring the chicken broth to the boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer. Shred the chicken with a sharp knife and add it to the simmering broth with the mint, coriander and lemon juice. Add the noodles, leave for one minute, then serve steaming hot in big bowls.

Enough for 2 as a main dish

January 21
A cheap fish
supper

I sometimes feel as if I am on a one-man mission to make the world eat more mackerel. This recipe, spiced with smoked paprika and rings of soft, golden onions, is one of the best I have come up with for this underrated fish. I am not sure you need anything more with it than some steamed spinach or spinach salad.

Spiced crumbed mackerel with smoked paprika

mackerel – 4, filleted

onion – 1 medium to large

olive oil

parsley – a handful

garlic – 3 small cloves

smoked ‘hot’ paprika – half a teaspoon

fresh breadcrumbs – 100g

a lemon

Rinse and dry the mackerel fillets and lay them skin-side down in a lightly oiled dish. Season them lightly with salt and pepper. Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4.

Peel the onion and slice it into very thin rings, then let it cook over a moderate heat in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil until it starts to soften. Chop the parsley, not too finely, then peel and crush the garlic and stir into the onion with the paprika, a seasoning of black pepper and salt and the breadcrumbs. Pour in three tablespoons of olive oil.

Spoon the spiced breadcrumbs evenly over the fish and bake for twenty minutes. It is ready when the crumbs are golden and the fish is opaque and tender. Lift on to plates using a fish slice, then squeeze the lemon over each one.

Enough for 4

January 25
A herb
butter for
grilled
chops

I make a quick herb butter with equal amounts of blue cheese and butter (I use 100g of each), mashed with a tablespoon each of thyme leaves and Dijon mustard, then stir in a couple of tablespoons of double cream and a grinding of black pepper. It sits in the fridge till supper, when I lay thick slices of it on grilled pork steaks. The cheese butter melts over the charred edges of the chops, making an impromptu sauce to mop up with craggy lumps of sourdough bread.

No matter how beautiful its carmine and orange stalks, the sight of a bunch of chard in my organic bag always makes my heart sink. This is unfair. It’s a useful vegetable, with lush, heavily veined green leaves and enough colour to liven up even the greyest of winter days.

You can cook chard in a modicum of water, like spinach; it needs just enough to cover the stalks. I then drain it while the colours are still bright, say after six minutes or so, and drizzle it with olive oil, squeeze over masses of lemon juice and toss in a few green or black olives.

January 27

Cauliflower is something I can live without, but it surprises me today in a salad, lightly cooked, then drained and tossed with warmed canned chickpeas, plenty of lemon juice, good olive oil and coriander leaves. The crisp florets get a scattering of sesame seeds and a few stoned green olives. A pile of warm pitta bread finishes it off. Clean, lemony and fresh, this might prove a sound way to win other cauliflower haters round.

January 28
A pot-roast
bird and a
new cheese

On grey January days we must make our own fun. Today is a flat day that only seems to come to life when I go shopping, returning with bags of Italian lemons complete with their bottle-green leaves, craggy lumps of Crockhamdale and snow-white Ticklemore cheeses from Neal’s Yard Dairy and a cheap pheasant from Borough Market. There’s only two to feed, so a pheasant does nicely here. People get down about this time of year, but even today there were fat little partridges, clementines heavy with juice, and bunches of narcissi to cheer us up. There is good stuff if you are prepared to go and find it.

A pot-roast pheasant with celery and sage

The pheasant’s lack of fat means that we need to find ways of keeping its flesh moist during cooking. The time-honoured way is to wrap the bird in fatty bacon. Fine. But I don’t always want the intrusion of that particular flavour. Another way is to let the pheasant cook in its own steam. In other words, a pot roast. What you get is plenty of juicy meat that tastes of itself and plenty of clear, savoury juices.

a pheasant – plump and oven-ready

butter – 2 thick slices (80g)

garlic – 4 large, juicy cloves

celery – 3 large stalks and a few leaves

new potatoes – 12 smallish

sage – 6 decent-sized leaves

white vermouth such as Noilly Prat – 250ml

Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Wipe the pheasant and remove any stray feathers, then season it thoroughly with salt and pepper.

Melt half the butter in a deep casserole, one to which you have a lid. You want it hot enough to brown the bird but not so hot that it burns too quickly. Put the bird in the hot butter, letting it colour heartily on all sides. When the skin is a rich gold, remove the bird, pour away the butter and wipe the pan with kitchen paper (the trick is to wipe away any burned butter but to leave any sticky goo stuck to the pan).

Whilst the bird is colouring in the butter, you can peel the garlic, trim the celery and cut it into short (2cm) lengths, wash the potatoes and either halve them or slice them thickly, depending on their size.

Melt the remaining butter in the pan and add the potatoes, letting them colour lightly. Then introduce the garlic, celery pieces and the sage and celery leaves and season with salt and pepper. Pour over the vermouth, bring to the boil, letting it bubble for a minute or two, then return the bird and any escaped juices to the pan. Cover with a lid and transfer to the oven for thirty-five to forty minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven, take off the lid and gently split the bird's legs away from its body, nicking the skin with a knife as you go. Return the bird, legs akimbo and without the lid, to the oven for five minutes.

Remove the legs, then remove each breast in one piece. Put a leg and a breast on each of two warm plates, then divide up the potatoes, celery and their juices.

Enough for 2

January 29
A hot salad
from the
leftovers
and a clear,
aromatic
soup

There are a few slices of pheasant left, scraps actually. They will do two for supper with some hot onion chutney I found in the cupboard and a plate of boiled potatoes, sliced and fried in hot olive oil. At the last minute I decide to toss the cold cuts with the hot fried potatoes, a couple of spoonfuls of the chutney and a bunch of watercress. It looks a bit of a jumble on the plate, but eats well enough.

A clear, hot mussel soup

The point is that this is a clean-tasting broth, hot and aromatic. If you wish to add fish sauce or even soy sauce, then do, but I suspect the recipe will lose its pure, simple flavours. The coriander is essential.

mussels in their shells – 1kg

light chicken or vegetable stock – 800ml

a small, hot, red chilli

the juice of 2 limes

a little sea salt and sugar

a handful of coriander leaves

Scrub the mussels thoroughly, tug out any of the fibrous ‘beards’ that may be hanging from their shells and discard any that are broken or open. I always squeeze each mussel hard, pushing the shells together tightly to check they have some life in them. Any that refuse to close when squeezed or tapped on the side of the sink, or any that seem light for their size, should be discarded.

Tip the mussels into a large, heavy pot over a high flame and add a splash of water. Cover them tightly with a lid and let them steam for a minute or two, till their shells are just open and the mussels are quivering and juicy. Remove them from the heat the second they are ready.

Bring the stock to the boil. Cut the chilli in half, remove its seeds and chop the flesh very finely, then put it in with the stock, together with the lime juice, a pinch of salt and the same of sugar. Turn the stock down to a simmer.

Remove the mussels from their cooking liquor, pull the flesh from the shells and drop it into the pan of stock, with a little of the mussel juices. Roughly chop the coriander leaves and stir them into the hot soup.

Enough for 2

January 30
A sausage
hotpot and
a citrus tart

The air is again clear and cold, and there are paper-white narcissi in a bowl on the table, filling the kitchen with their gentle, vanilla smell. Winter at its purest. This is the sort of day on which I like to bake – a cake, a pie, a tart perhaps. I enjoy making pastry, though rarely do, each time adding as much butter as I dare, just to see how crisp and fragile I can get the crust. Today I want something fresh, with a clean bite to it, a dessert to make everyone smack their lips. I decide on a lime custard tart in the style of a tarte au citron. The lime zest cuts through the cool air. The warm smell of baking pastry wafts into the rest of the house. Heaven. Half way through baking, I check the tart’s progress, only to find the pastry case empty and the citrus filling forming a lemon-coloured pool on the baking sheet. I pile the whole damn failure into a basin (and later eat it in secret after everyone has gone home) and start again. This time I make absolutely certain the pastry case has not the faintest hole or crack in it before I pour in the filling.

Sausages with salami and lentils

A rough-edged casserole that gives the impression of having been cooked for hours but is pretty much ready to eat in forty-five minutes. You could put it in the oven if you prefer, in which case you should let it cook for about an hour at moderate heat. This is the sort of food I like to put on the table at Saturday lunch, with a bowl of rocket salad by the side. Then you can swoosh the salad leaves around your plate to mop up the last bits of tomatoey lentil sauce.

onions – 2 medium

olive oil – 2 tablespoons

garlic – 2 cloves

a small salami – about 200g

fresh sausages – 350g

crushed tomatoes or tomato passata – 500g

green or brown lentils – 150g

bay leaves – 3

Peel the onions and cut each one in half from tip to root, then cut each half into four or five pieces. Warm the oil in a heavy-based casserole, add the onions and let them cook over a moderate heat until tender. Meanwhile, peel the garlic, slice it thinly and add it to the onions. You’ll need to stir them regularly.

Peel the thin skin from the salami and cut the inside into fat matchsticks. Add this to the softening onions and leave for a couple of minutes, during which time the salami will darken slightly.

Start cooking the sausages in a non-stick pan. You want them to colour on the outside; they will do most of their cooking once they are in the sauce. Tip the crushed tomatoes into the onions, add the washed lentils and stir in 500ml water. Bring to the boil. Remove the sausages from their pan and tuck them into the casserole with the bay leaves. Cover the pot with a lid and leave to simmer gently for about half an hour, until the lentils are tender. Stir the lentils and season with black pepper. You may find it needs little or no salt.

Enough for 2, with seconds

A lime tart

Not difficult this, but do make absolutely certain there are no holes or cracks in the pastry case, otherwise the filling will escape, I guarantee.

limes – 5–7

large eggs – 6

caster sugar – 250g

double cream – 175ml

For the pastry:

plain flour – 175g

golden icing sugar – 40g

cold butter – 90g

egg yolks – 2

cold water – 1 tablespoon

To make the pastry, put the flour and icing sugar into a food processor, add the butter, cut into chunks, and blitz for a few seconds. Stop when the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Mix in the egg yolks and water. Tip into a mixing bowl and bring the dough together into a thick log with your hands. Wrap it in greaseproof paper and refrigerate for a good half hour. Warning: skipping this bit will make your pastry shrink.

Cut thin, round slices from the log of pastry, then press them into a loose-bottomed 23–24cm tart tin with high sides (3.5cm), pressing the pastry gently up the sides and over the base (this pastry is too fragile to roll). Make certain that there are absolutely no holes, otherwise the filling will leak through. Prick lightly with a fork and refrigerate for half an hour.

Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Place a sheet of greaseproof paper in the tart case and fill it with baking beans (I use old haricot beans but you can buy ceramic or metal beans especially for the job from cookware shops). Bake the tart case for ten minutes, then remove the greaseproof paper and beans and bake for a further five minutes, until the pastry is dry to the touch.

Turn the oven down to 150°C/Gas 2. Finely grate the zest from two of the limes. Squeeze enough limes to give 180ml juice; this could be anything from five to seven limes, depending on their ripeness. Mix the eggs and sugar together, beating lightly for a few seconds – you don’t want it to be frothy – then stir in the lime juice and cream. Pour the mixture through a sieve and stir in the lime zest. Pour into the baked tart tin and bake for forty-five to fifty minutes. Remove whilst the filling is still a little wobbly and leave to cool.

Enough for 8

January 31

A ploughman’s lunch is something to be kept away from the whims of an imaginative cook. The most tinkering I will tolerate is the occasional oatcake in lieu of bread and the odd radish or pickled onion as a crunchy distraction. If the cheese is firm and British then I’ll willingly take an apple too. Today I slice a Cox’s apple and let it colour in a little butter in a non-stick frying pan. I put a jagged piece of Mrs Appleby’s Cheshire cheese and a slice of warm, tender apple on to each oatcake and eat them whilst the apple is still hot. Yes, a mucked-about ploughman’s but surprisingly none the worse for it.

february

Chicken patties with rosemary and pancetta

A herb and barley broth to bring you back to health

Spiced roast potatoes with yoghurt and mint

Lamb shanks with mustard and mash

Smoked haddock with flageolet beans and mustard

Roast pumpkin, spicy tomato sauce

Kipper patties, dill mayonnaise

Pork chops, mustard sauce

Linguine alla vongole

Hot chocolate puddings

Sausage and black pudding with baked parsnips

Braised lamb with leeks and haricot beans

Spiced pumpkin soup with bacon

Slow-roast lamb with chickpea mash

Braised oxtail with mustard and mash

Treacle tart

Warm soused mackerel

February 1

The thought of shopping for home-grown fruit and vegetables in February makes my heart sink. There is only so much enthusiasm you can muster for kohlrabi and potatoes, floury apples and crates of stinky old sprouts.

As I turn the corner by the farmers’ market, I am greeted by a stall almost hidden by tin buckets of daffodils, the traditional variety with large trumpets, the sort that look so cheerful in a jug by the kitchen sink. Beyond them is David Deme’s apple stall with bright boxes of Cox’s as crisp as shattered ice, russets still in fine nick and plump Comice and Conference pears. There is much pleasure to be found in a pear on a cold winter’s day, with its crisp flesh and sweet, nutty juice.

Iridescent, candy-striped beetroots I have only ever seen in a seed catalogue, boxes of curly, red and Russian kale, fat carrots for juicing and tight little Brussels on the stem are in A1 condition. One grower is showing a wooden crate of the perkiest celeriac I have ever seen, each root with a neat tuft of green leaves looking as if they were dug only an hour ago.

I stop at the stall selling cartons of Hurdlebrook Guernsey cream from Olive Farm in Somerset and proper untreated milk. Dairy produce doesn’t come better than this. It is not just about richness, it is about flavour. This is cream worth waiting all week for, a world away from the thin white stuff in the ‘super’markets. I buy double cream and then rhubarb for a fool. The shopping trip I almost abandoned as a bad idea has come good, and I walk home with a heavy basket.

February 2
Succulent
little patties
for four

It is the deep, salty stickiness of food that intrigues me more than any other quality. The sheer savour of it. The Marmite-like goo that adheres to the skin of anything roasted; the crust where something – usually a potato or a parsnip – has stuck to the roasting tin; the underside of a piece of meat that has been left long enough in the pan to form a gooey crust. This is partly why I cook rather than buying my supper readymade. This you will probably know, unless of course this is your first Nigel Slater book.

Meatballs, left to cook without constant prodding and poking, will form a satisfyingly savoury outer coating that presses all the right buzzers for me. In many ways they are the ultimate casual supper for friends. I say this because of their ability to wait patiently when people are late, to cook quickly so you are not away from your guests for long and, the real clincher, because of the fact that they have a down-to-earth friendliness to them. A meatball never says, ‘Look at me, aren’t I clever?’ It just says, ‘Eat me.’ No matter how fancy you get in terms of seasoning and sauces, you can’t show off with them. Best of all, they are one of the few recipes you can easily multiply for a large number without having to rejig everything. You just double or quadruple as you need. This is of particular resonance today. There are four of us for supper tonight and I know two of them will almost certainly be late. They always are.

Chicken patties with rosemary and pancetta

I put these on the table with fat wedges of lemon and a spinach salad.

a medium onion

garlic – 2 cloves

a thick slice of butter

cubed pancetta – 100g

rosemary – 3 bushy sprigs

minced chicken – 450g

a little groundnut oil for frying

chicken stock – 250ml

Peel the onion and garlic and chop them finely, then let them soften in the butter over a moderate heat (a non-stick frying pan is best for this, then you can use it to fry the patties in later) until they are lightly honey-coloured. Stir in the small cubes of pancetta. Strip the rosemary leaves from their stalks, chop them finely, then add them to the onions, letting them cook for a few minutes till coloured. Let the mixture cool a little.

Mix the minced chicken into the onion, seasoning it generously with black pepper and a little salt (the pancetta will contribute to the seasoning).

Set the oven at 190°C/Gas 5. Now, to make the simple patties, shape the mixture into six little burgers about the size of a digestive biscuit, then leave to settle for half an hour.

Wipe the onion pan clean and get it hot. Add a little groundnut oil and brown the patties on both sides – that’s a matter of three minutes per side – then transfer them to an ovenproof dish. Pour in the stock and bake for twenty-five to thirty minutes, till the patties are sizzling and the stock is bubbling. Serve two to three per person and spoon over some of the hot chicken stock.

Enough for 2–3.

Note

If you want something richer, make stuffed patties. Take a heaped tablespoon of the chicken mixture and push a hollow in it with your thumb. Take a heaped teaspoon of Gorgonzola cheese (you will need 75g for this amount of chicken) and push it into the hollow, then cover it with a second tablespoon of chicken mixture. Squash gently to form a patty and place on a baking sheet. Continue with this till you have used up the mixture – you will have about six – then refrigerate them for twenty to thirty minutes before cooking.

February 4
Broth

I try planting some late crocus bulbs in the garden, which I had forgotten about and which now appear to have started sprouting. There’s a freezing wind and my fingers are numb even through the fleece-lined luxury of leather gardening gloves. Another of those days when you feel you are going to get snow but all that appears is sleet, which has neither the romance of snow nor the refreshing quality of rain. The ice-cold needles prickle your skin, your cheeks start to lose all feeling. I battle on till I think my nose might be running, but my face is so cold I am not sure. I call it a day and make a big pot of chicken broth, as much out of defiance as anything else.

A herb and barley broth to bring you back to health

The herbs are essential and I don’t suggest goose fat just to be annoying; it contains a certain magic.

pot barley – 100g

carrots – 3 large

leeks – 3, trimmed and rinsed to remove any grit

celery – 3 medium-sized stalks

onions – 2

garlic – 4 large cloves

dripping, goose fat or olive oil – a couple of tablespoons

enough good chicken stock to cover

a few bay leaves

thyme – 3 or 4 sprigs

sage leaves – 6

potatoes – 4 small to medium

parsley – a small bunch

Simmer the rinsed barley in salted water for about twenty minutes till it feels reasonably tender, then drain it. Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4.

Peel the carrots and cut them into large chunks, then cut the leeks and celery into short lengths. I think it is important to keep the vegetables in fat, juicy pieces for this. Peel the onions, cut them in half and then into large segments. Peel and finely slice the garlic. Warm the fat in a large, deep casserole. Turn the vegetables and garlic in the hot fat and let them soften a little, but don’t allow them to colour. Bring the stock to the boil in a separate pan.

Now add the barley to the vegetables, pouring over the hot stock and tucking in all the herbs except the parsley as you go. Slice the potatoes the thickness of pound coins and lay them over the top of the vegetables – some will inevitably sink; others will sit on top, the stock just lapping at their edges.

Cover with a lid and place in the oven for an hour and a half, by which time the vegetables will be meltingly tender. Remove the lid (the smell is part of the healing process), turn the heat up to 200°C/Gas 6 and leave for thirty minutes for the potatoes to colour here and there. Remove very carefully from the oven – the pan will be full and very hot – chop the parsley and sink it into the broth.

Spoon the vegetables, barley and plenty of broth into shallow bowls with flakes of sea salt and several firm grinds of the pepper mill.

Enough for 4

February 6
Cold meat,
hot potatoes

There is cold meat to eat up from yesterday’s roast but it needs something warming to sit alongside. So potatoes it is, spiced with onions and chillies, all cooked to a crisp. To be honest, I let it cook for longer than I intend, with the result that the onions are crisp and slightly singed. A plate of big, mouth-popping flavours that I cool by drizzling yoghurt over at the table.

Spiced roast potatoes with yoghurt and mint

When Indian cooks bake potatoes, they tend to add spices and some sort of liquid, such as water or yoghurt, but I see no reason why you cannot add the yoghurt afterwards, which has the advantage of allowing the potatoes to crisp nicely. A moderate heat is needed here to stop the spices burning in the oven.

potatoes – 4 medium

onions – 2 medium

vegetable or groundnut oil

red chillies, as hot as you like – 2, chopped

garlic – 2 cloves, crushed

cumin seeds – half a teaspoon

ground turmeric – half a teaspoon

To finish:

natural yoghurt – 4 tablespoons

a little mild ground chilli

young mint leaves – a palmful, chopped

Peel the potatoes, cut them into the sort of pieces you would for normal roasting, then bring them to the boil in deep water. Add salt to the pot and simmer for ten to fifteen minutes, until the potatoes are approaching tenderness. You should be able to slide a knifepoint through them with almost no pressure. Drain the potatoes thoroughly, then very gently shake them in their pan so the edges fluff and ‘bruise’. Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4.

Peel the onions and slice them finely. Heat enough oil in a roasting tin to make a thin film over the bottom. The thicker the base, the less likelihood there is of the spices burning. As the oil warms, add the sliced onions and let them soften, then stir in the chopped chillies, garlic and cumin and let them warm through, stirring (and watching like a hawk) so that they do not burn. Add the potatoes to the hot oil, add the turmeric, then slowly stir and toss the potatoes so that they are covered with the seasoned oil.

Roast the potatoes in the preheated oven until they have started to crisp. Thirty to thirty-five minutes or so should do it. You don’t want them to be as brown as classic roast potatoes. They should be golden and flecked with spice.

As the potatoes come from the oven, grind over a seasoning of salt, then spoon over the yoghurt, sprinkle with a very little mild ground chilli and scatter with the chopped mint leaves.

Enough for 4 as a side dish

February 7
Lamb
shanks to
warm the
soul

A chill day, the sky the colour of wet aluminium. I need the sort of meal that ends with everyone squishing their potatoes into the meaty, oniony sauce on their plate. A sauce that is warm rather than spicy, enriched with the goodness of meat cooked on the bone.

The butcher suggests lamb shanks, cheaper now they are not so trendy. I buy nothing else; there is wine, bay, rosemary, garlic and grain mustard in the kitchen already. The preparation will take ten minutes, the cooking an hour and a half on a low heat. A supper of melting tenderness.

Lamb shanks with mustard and mash

olive oil

lamb shanks – 2 small

onions – 4 small to medium

bay leaves – 3

sprigs of rosemary – 2 or 3

vegetable or meat stock – 250ml

red wine – 250ml

garlic – 3 cloves

grain mustard – 1 heaped tablespoon

To serve:

mashed potato and a bit more mustard

Set the oven at 160°C/Gas 3. Warm a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a roasting tin large enough to take the meat snugly, then seal the lamb on all sides in the hot oil. The fat and the cut end of the meat should take on a little colour.

Peel the onions, slice them in half from root to tip, then each half into quarters. Add them to the lamb with the bay leaves and the leaves from the rosemary sprigs. Pour in the stock and red wine. Peel the garlic cloves and squash them flat with the blade of a heavy knife. Drop them into the roasting tin with a grinding of salt and some coarse black pepper. Cover the dish with foil, place in the oven and bake for an hour and a half.

Half way through cooking, uncover the dish and stir in the mustard, turning the lamb as you do so. Cover once more and return to the oven. Serve with mashed potato and a bit more mustard.

Enough for 2

February 8
A smoked
fish supper

There is something old-fashioned about a supper of smoked haddock, something redolent of the 1950s, when women wore an apron when they cooked and would get a meal on the table at the same time each day, year in, year out. I like my smoked haddock baked with a little cream, as I do almost anything smoked, but until recently was never sure what to eat with it. Mash never seemed right, buttered toast never substantial enough, rice too reminiscent of kedgeree. It was out of curiosity that I turned to beans, pale ones from a can, their texture a pleasing contrast. Now it is one of my favourite teas, though not the prettiest.

Smoked haddock with flageolet beans and mustard

The parsley is important here and should be vivid emerald green and full of life. I see no reason why you can’t use equally mealy cannellini beans if that is what you have, though I have used butter beans before now and they were good, too. This is a mild, gently flavoured dish, consoling even, for a cold night.

smoked haddock – 400g

butter

milk – 250ml, plus a little more for later

bay leaves

flageolet beans – two 400g tins

double cream – 300ml

parsley leaves – a good fistful

grain mustard – 1 heaped tablespoon

steamed spinach, to serve

Remove the skin from the smoked haddock and place the fish in a lightly buttered baking dish. Pour over the milk, then add enough water almost to cover the fish. Tuck in a couple of bay leaves and grind over some black pepper. Bake at 200°C/Gas 6 for about fifteen to twenty minutes or until you can pull one of the large, fat flakes of flesh out with ease. Drain and discard the milk.

Rinse and re-butter the baking dish – you don’t want any bits of skin from the milk left behind. Rinse the beans in a sieve under running water, then empty them into a mixing bowl. Pour in the cream and a couple of tablespoons of milk, then chop the parsley and add it together with the mustard, a grinding of black pepper and a little salt. Go easy on the salt; smoked fish is saltier than fresh.

Spoon the beans into the dish and lay the fish on top, spooning some of the creamy beans over the top to keep it moist. Turn the oven down to 180°C/Gas 4 and bake for about forty minutes, until the cream is bubbling and the sauce has thickened around the beans. Serve with spinach.

Enough for 2

February 9

A pumpkin has been languishing in the vegetable rack for longer than I care to remember. To use it now would be more than a great satisfaction; it would be a relief.

Roast pumpkin, spicy tomato sauce

Deep red and gold, a cheering supper if ever there was one. This simple dish of roast vegetables stands or falls by the timing. I like to roast the pumpkin till it is soft but not quite collapsing, deep golden in colour, the edges slightly caramelised and sticky. Undercook it at your peril. The sauce is chunky and has a certain bitter-sweetness from the lightly blackened tomato skins. You may want to cook some brown rice to go with this, especially if you are having nothing to follow.

tomatoes – 950g

garlic – 2 cloves

chillies – 2 small hot ones

olive oil

pumpkin or squash – 1kg

Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Cut the tomatoes in half and place them cut-side up on a baking sheet or in a roasting tin. Peel and finely slice the garlic, finely chop the chillies. Drizzle the tomatoes with oil, then season with salt and pepper and the garlic and chillies. Roast for forty-five to fifty minutes, till the tomatoes are soft and flecked with black.

Meanwhile, halve and peel the pumpkin. Cut into thick, melon-like slices and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Place on a baking sheet, toss in a little olive oil and season with salt and black pepper. Roast for forty minutes, turning it over after twenty minutes or so. It is done when it is fully tender to the point of a knife and nice and sticky on the cut edges.

Roughly chop the tomatoes to give a coarse ‘sauce’. Serve alongside the roasted pumpkin, with brown rice if you wish.

Enough for 2 as a main dish

February 11

Dinner is a couple of tins of Heinz baked beans, tarted up with finely chopped chillies, several shakes of Tabasco and mushroom ketchup, and a tablespoon of black treacle. It will do.

There is no set time for eating in our house, there never has been. One day lunch will be at twelve noon, the next four in the afternoon. Supper can be as early as six and as late as midnight. Neither is our eating always leisurely. Sometimes it is just a question of getting food inside you.

Many is the time supper has been sausage sandwiches all round, either with a jar of mustard on the table, or, if I can be bothered, a pot of wasabi mayonnaise, made by beating the jade green spice-paste from its tube into some commercial mayonnaise. The sausages will be hot and sticky and the mayo shockingly spicy. The general heat is tempered by soft bread cut thick and bottles of cold beer. Other times it may be pepperoni pizzas delivered by bike or sushi or sashimi from town. Just occasionally supper will come out of a bottle.

But there are also occasions when supper is nothing at all. From a health perspective this is probably not to be recommended, but frankly that is sometimes just what I need. A lot of water will pass my lips, but no food.

For the most part, I eat one decent meal a day and then some other stuff. Under which you can file beans on toast, bacon sandwiches, fish-fingers, cheese on toast, more cheese on toast and shop-bought sushi. Sourdough bread dunked into olive oil has been dinner on more than one occasion, as have slices of rye bread with a bit of smoked salmon. Other times I just stand at the fridge eating up the remains of meals past. Cold risotto is quite nice after the initial shock, though not as much fun as cold apple pie.

But I will tell you the best trick for making your bacon sandwich, cold sausage or bit of day-old fridge-rice take on an instant appeal. Have it with a glass of wine, better still a glass of Champagne. Yes, a scavenged supper can be made to sing with pickles or fresh, rough-textured chutney, but nothing works quite as well as a glass of wine.

February 12
Another
smoked fish
supper

At the far end of the fishmonger’s slab are the smoked goods: the primrose-coloured haddock and golden mackerel; the elegantly proportioned trout, and the brick-coloured lumps of cod’s roe. There are also kippers, their skin shining silver, gold and black. Sometimes I buy one to cook for a lone supper, a slice of butter melting on its mahogany flesh. Other times, with more to feed, I make fishcakes, plump ones the size of a yo-yo.

Kipper patties, dill mayonnaise

I make these little golden fishcakes as a change from the more traditional haddock version, usually in the winter when smoky flavours seem particularly appropriate. Parsley sauce isn’t right with the kippers, so I make a dill-flavoured mayonnaise instead, or sometimes have them with nothing more than a big squeeze of lemon and a generous helping of greens.

floury potatoes – 500g

butter – a thick slice

kipper fillets – 440g

dill – a small handful, chopped

flour for dusting

shallow groundnut oil for frying

For the sauce:

chopped dill – 2 heaped tablespoons

a crushed clove of garlic

mayonnaise – 6 heaped tablespoons

Peel the potatoes, cut them into quarters, then boil them in salted water till tender. Drain the potatoes, tip them into a food mixer and beat with the butter to make a smooth but firm consistency.

Put the kipper fillets in a jug or heatproof bowl and pour a kettle of boiling water over them. Leave them for ten minutes, till they have softened, then drain and flake the flesh. I tend to leave it in short pieces the size of a postage stamp rather than finely mashed.

Fold the fish into the warm potato, together with the chopped dill and a generous seasoning of salt and black pepper. Leave the mixture to cool a little, then shape it into rough patties. I make twelve of them the size of large golf balls, then flatten them slightly. Leave them to cool and firm up.

Dust the patties lightly with flour, then fry in shallow hot oil for five minutes or so.

To make the sauce, simply mix the chopped dill with the crushed garlic and mayo.

Enough for 4

February 13

The cold and the wet have resulted in a week of ‘proper’ food; stuff to fill hollow tummies and make your ears glow with warmth. No dinky bowls of clear soup and noodles or plates of greens with shaved Parmesan and olive oil on the table this week. Rarely has our eating been so unapologetically old-fashioned. Today is no exception, and I fancy a chop, a big one with a margin of golden fat and a bone on which to gnaw. Twice this week I have used cream in the main course – a rare occurrence, but I need an iota of luxury right now to make me feel better about this endlessly grey month.

Pork chops, mustard sauce

pork spare rib or chump chops – 2 large, about 1cm thick

butter – 25g

olive oil – 1 tablespoon

garlic – 2 large unpeeled cloves, squashed flat

a glass of white wine

double or whipping cream – 150ml

grain mustard – 1½ tablespoons

smooth Dijon mustard – 1½ tablespoons

cornichons – 8, or half as many larger gherkins

Rub the chops all over with salt and pepper. Put the butter and oil in a shallow pan set over a moderate to high heat and, when they start to froth a little, add the flattened garlic and the seasoned chops. Leave to brown, then turn and brown the other side. Lower the heat and continue cooking, turning once, until the chops are no longer pink when cut into.

Lift out the chops, transfer to a warm serving dish and keep warm. Pour off most of the oil from the pan, leaving the sediment behind, then turn up the heat and pour in the wine. Let it boil for a minute or so, scraping at the sticky sediment in the pan and letting it dissolve. Pour in the cream, swirl the pan about a bit, then leave it to bubble up a little before adding the mustards and the chopped cornichons.

Taste for seasoning; you may need a little salt and possibly black pepper. The sauce should be piquant and creamy. If you want, you can finish the sauce with a few drops of liquor from the cornichon jar to sharpen it up. Pour the sauce over the chops and serve.

Enough for 2 with mashed or unbuttered new potatoes

February 14
St Valentine’s
Day

I won’t eat out on Valentine’s Day, every restaurant filled with couples talking in whispers, the usual buzz and clatter reduced to a muffled sigh. Home is the place to be. More than that, there is something about cooking a special meal for someone you love that seems to mean more than simply sliding your credit card to a waiter.

I can find no reason not to go over the top on this night of the year: candles, Champagne, a chocolate pudding. St Valentine’s is rather like Christmas, in that if you ignore it you always end up regretting it, feeling mean and cynical. Yes, it is more than a bit cheesy, but I think we have to go with it.

Linguine alla vongole

small clams in their shells – 500g

a glass of white wine or vermouth

linguine or spaghettini – 300g

garlic – 2 cloves

olive oil – 3 tablespoons

crushed dried chilli – a good pinch

flat-leaf parsley – a small bunch

Scrub the clams, throwing away any that are chipped or wide open. Leave them to soak in cold water for half an hour or so. This will clear some of their inherent grit.

Put a large pan of water on to boil. Drain the clams and tip them into a medium-sized pan set over a moderate heat. Pour in the white wine or vermouth and cover them tightly with a lid. After two minutes, no longer, lift the lid and check their progress. If most of the shells are open, turn off the heat. If not, give them a minute or so longer.

Generously salt the boiling water and lower in the pasta. Lift the clams from their liquor and pick out each morsel of clam flesh. Discard the shells, but not the cooking liquor.

Peel the garlic and slice it thinly, then let it soften in a tablespoon or so of the olive oil over a low heat. It must not colour. Stir in the dried chilli, then roughly chop the parsley leaves and add them. Let them cook briefly, then strain in the cooking liquor from the clams and let it bubble down for a minute.

Test the pasta for doneness; you want it to be tender but on the tacky side. About nine minutes should do it. Drain the pasta, tip it in with the clam liquor, then stir in the shelled clam meat. Grind over a little black pepper and pour in the remaining olive oil, then toss gently and serve in warm, shallow bowls.

Enough for 2, with seconds

Hot chocolate puddings

It is strange that, despite having a long and passionate love affair with the stuff, I so rarely cook with chocolate. I attempt to redress the balance with these little chocolate puddings – fluffy outside and molten within, a cross between a soufflé and a sponge pudding. I make them with the best chocolate I can get my hands on. Usually Valrhona’s Manjari or something from the Chocolate Society. The hazelnut spread, such as Nutella or Green & Black’s, sounds an odd addition, an intrusion perhaps, but in fact lends a lingering, nutty depth. If you feel the need to offer cream (and well you might), make it a jug of pouring cream. This recipe is too fiddly to do for two, so I make enough for four and eat the extra two cold the next day, with a drizzle of cream.

dark, fine-quality chocolate – 200g

caster sugar – 100g

eggs – 3

butter – 60g

chocolate hazelnut spread – 2 lightly heaped tablespoons

Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Lightly butter 4 small ramekins or ovenproof cups.

Break the chocolate into rough pieces and put it in a basin suspended over a pan of gently simmering water. Let it melt without stirring, occasionally poking any unmelted chocolate down into the liquid chocolate.

Put the sugar into a food mixer, separate the eggs and add the yolks to the sugar. Beat till thick and creamy. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites till airy and almost stiff.

Stir the butter into the chocolate and leave to melt, then gently stir in the chocolate hazelnut spread. Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg and sugar, then carefully fold in the beaten egg whites with a metal spoon. Take care not to overmix. Just firmly, calmly mix the egg white into the chocolate, making certain there are no floating drifts of egg white.

Scoop into the four buttered dishes and place on a baking sheet. Bake for twelve to fifteen minutes, till risen. The tops should be cracked and the centres still slightly wobbly. Should you open one too early, it can go back in the oven without coming to as much harm as you might think.

Enough for 4

February 15
A minimal
supper

Miso soup, made with a couple of tablespoons of yellow miso paste to a litre of boiling water, is something to have on days when you really cannot be bothered to cook. It manages to be both sustaining and light at the same time, and will take anything else you care to throw at it, by which I mean mushrooms, noodles, Chinese greens or crisp French beans. Tonight I have it just as it is, a meal that stretches the notion of minimal eating to its limit. Dessert is pineapple, cold from the fridge.

February 16

I fall for some exquisitely delicate pâtisserie from a flashy new shop in Soho. Tiny pastries like jewels, and precious in the extreme. They sit awkwardly with tonight’s supper and its rough edges and big flavours. Charming though they are, the little cakes would have been much better with last night’s miso soup, proving that it is not just what you eat but how you eat it.

Sausage and black pudding with baked parsnips

onions – 2 medium

groundnut oil

medium parsnips – 4, or 2 very large

butcher’s sausages – 4

black pudding – 250g

the leaves from a few sprigs of thyme

chicken stock – 250ml

Set the oven at 190°C/Gas 5. Peel the onions and slice them in half from root to tip, then cut each half into about six or eight pieces. Soften them slowly in a tablespoon or so of oil in a flameproof baking dish or roasting tin set over a moderate heat. While they are softening, peel the parsnips and cut them into short, thick chunks. Add them to the onions and leave to colour, turning up the heat a little if needs be.

Cut each sausage into three and add to the pan. Cut the black pudding into thick slices, then cook them with everything else till they are golden on the outside. It is important that everything is a good colour before you proceed. Stir in the thyme and the chicken stock. Bring to the boil, then put in the oven for thirty to forty minutes, until the parsnips are truly tender and the stock has reduced to a syrupy glaze.

Enough for 2

February 18
A mild and
creamy
casserole

Friends and I are debating the merits of bland food, dishes such as marrow in white sauce, cauliflower cheese, porridge and, of course, risotto. My position is that there are times when you want something spicy, bright and hot, and others when you want something less taxing on the taste-buds. Occasionally the mouth and body need calming rather than stimulating. With this in mind, I make a beige casserole of tender lamb and soft leeks. There could be no better example.

Braised lamb with leeks and haricot beans

dried haricot beans – 200g

olive oil – 3 tablespoons

lamb neck fillet – 500g, trimmed and cut into 5cm cubes

large leeks – 4, trimmed, halved lengthways and rinsed

garlic – 2 cloves, finely chopped

chopped thyme leaves – 1 tablespoon

bay leaves – 2

plain flour – 1 tablespoon

double cream – 150ml

a handful of parsley, chopped

a handful of mint leaves

Soak the beans overnight in cold water. I use mineral water for this. The next day, drain them, put them into a deep saucepan and cover with fresh water. Bring to the boil, skim off the froth and simmer for about forty minutes, or until tender. Turn off the heat and leave them in the cooking water.

Warm the oil in a flameproof casserole and add the meat. It should sizzle when it hits the oil. Let the meat brown slightly all over. You may have to do this in two batches, depending on the size of your casserole. Remove the meat from the casserole and set aside.

Set the oven at 150°C/Gas 2. Cut the leeks into 5cm pieces, then put them in the casserole, with a little more oil if need be. Leave them to cook till soft and silky. You will have to give them an occasional stir to ensure they do not colour. Stir in the garlic, thyme and bay leaves. Sprinkle the flour over the top and continue cooking for three or four minutes, stirring occasionally.

Pour in 570ml water and return the meat and any juices to the pan. Drain the beans and add them too. Then bring everything to the boil. As soon as the liquid boils, cover the casserole with a lid and put it in the oven for an hour, until the lamb is completely tender. Remove from the oven, stir in the cream, parsley and mint and warm through gently on the hob before serving.

Enough for 4

February 19
A bento
box dinner

Tonight it’s bento boxes all round from a Japanese place in town – crystal noodles with coriander, red chilli and sesame seeds with tubs of crisp green edamame. I love these bright green beans and cannot stop popping them out of their pods straight into my mouth. There are crab rolls too with dipping sauce and crunchy matchsticks of cucumber.

February 20
Red soup
and a
crunchy
salad

It has taken me years to figure out that when it rains I invariably make (or think about making) soup. I never noticed this till I started to write everything down.

Spiced pumpkin soup with bacon

a medium onion

garlic – 2 plump cloves

butter – 50g

pumpkin – 900g

coriander seeds – 1 tablespoon

cumin seeds – 2 teaspoons

small dried chillies – 2

chicken or vegetable stock – 1 litre

smoked bacon – 4 rashers

single cream – 100ml

Peel and roughly chop the onion. Peel and slice the garlic. Melt the butter in a large, heavy-based saucepan and cook the onion and garlic until soft and translucent. Meanwhile, peel the pumpkin, remove the stringy bits and seeds and discard them with the peel. You will probably have about 650g of orangey-yellow flesh. Chop into rough cubes and add to the onion. Cook until the pumpkin is golden brown at the edges.

Toast the coriander and cumin seeds in a small pan over a low heat for about two minutes, until they start to smell warm and nutty. Keep the pan to one side for later. Grind the roasted spices in a coffee mill or with a pestle and mortar. Add them and the crumbled chillies to the onion and pumpkin. Cook for a minute or so, then add the stock. Leave to simmer for twenty minutes or until the pumpkin is tender.

Fry the bacon in the pan in which you toasted the spices. It should be crisp. Cool a little, then cut up into small pieces with scissors. Whiz the soup in a blender or food processor till smooth. Pour in the cream and taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as necessary. Return to the pan, bring almost to the boil and then serve, piping hot, with the bacon bits scattered on top.

Enough to serve 4 generously

I also make a salad dressing tonight with 4 tablespoons of sake, 100g miso paste, 2 tablespoons of groundnut oil and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. I use it to dress a salad made from the following raw crunchy things: a couple of big handfuls of bean shoots, a handful of mint leaves and another of coriander, half a cucumber and a couple of carrots, shredded into matchsticks, four shredded spring onions and three red chillies, seeded and chopped. I toast 150g peanuts till they smell warm and nutty, chop them roughly, then toss the nuts, salad and miso dressing together. It makes a great, scrunchy, nutty, knubbly salad for two of us.

February 21
A slow roast
for a snowy
night

There is something romantic about falling snow. This is the first decent fall we have had this year, in two hours covering the box hedges and settling on the grey branches of the plum trees. By mid afternoon, with a single trail of fox prints to the kitchen door, the garden looks like a Christmas card. The cats, huddled together round the Aga, look as if they are not amused: ‘Oh, that stuff again.’

Every sound is muffled, the grass across the road sparkles in the streetlights, not a soul passes the front door. It is as if everyone is asleep. It takes something magical to make this stretch of road look as it does now, like a scene from a fairy tale. There is a leg of lamb in the fridge that I intended to roast as usual, with mint sauce and roast potatoes. With each windowpane edged in snow, I now want something more suited to a world white over. I put the leg into a deep cast-iron casserole with a rub of ground cumin, salt and thyme and let it bake slowly, occasionally basting its fat, as it turns a deep, glowing amber.

Slow-roast lamb with chickpea mash

a leg of lamb, about 2.3kg

For the spice rub:

garlic – 2 cloves

sea salt flakes – a tablespoon

a pinch of sweet paprika

cumin seeds – a tablespoon

thyme leaves – 2 tablespoons

olive oil – 2 tablespoons

butter – a thick slice

Set the oven at 160˚C/Gas 3. Make the spice rub: peel the garlic cloves, then lightly crush them with the salt, using a pestle and mortar. Mix in the sweet paprika, cumin seeds and thyme leaves. Gradually add the olive oil so that you end up with a thickish paste. Melt the butter in a small pan and stir it into the spice paste.

Put the lamb into a casserole or roasting tin and rub it all over with the spice paste, either with the back of a spoon or with your hands. Put it in the oven and leave for thirty-five minutes. Pour in 250ml of water and baste the lamb with the liquid, then continue roasting for three hours, basting the meat every hour with the juices that have collected in the bottom of the pan.

Remove the pan from the oven and pour off the top layer of oil, leaving the cloudy, herbal sediment in place. Cover the pan with a lid and set aside for ten minutes or so.

Carve the lamb, serving with the mashed chickpeas below, spooning the pan juices over both as you go.

Chickpea mash:

chickpeas – two 400g tins

a small onion

olive oil – 3–4 tablespoons

hot paprika

Drain the chickpeas and put them into a pan of lightly salted water. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a light simmer. You are doing this to warm the chickpeas rather than cook them any further. Peel and finely slice the onion, then let it soften with the olive oil in a pan over a moderate heat. This will seem like too much oil but bear with me. Let the onion colour a little, then stir in a pinch of hot paprika. Drain the chickpeas, then either mash them with a potato masher or, better I think, in a food processor. Mix in enough olive oil from the cooked onion to give a smooth and luxurious purée. Stir in the onion and serve with the roast lamb above.

Enough for 6.

February 22

Cold lamb, sliced thinly and tossed into a salad of tiny spinach leaves, Little Gem lettuce and baby red chard leaves. The whole thing looks pretty pedestrian until I add chopped fresh mint leaves to the olive oil and lemon dressing. Suddenly everything lights up. We eat it with bought focaccia and follow it with slices of commercial gingerbread spread with lemon curd.

February 23
and 24
Bones and
gravy for an
icy day

There is still snow but it has turned to slush, the odd bit of ice taking you by surprise on your way to the shops. In ten minutes I manage to pick up an oxtail for tomorrow from the butcher, a bottle of wine, a few carrots and some mushrooms and even stop to pay the newspaper bill, which somehow I have let run into three figures. I feel as if I am eating too much meat this month, but squishy snow and ice means just one thing to me: gravy. Rich and thick with onions, gravy to fork into mounds of mashed potato, gravy to soothe and heal, to warm and satisfy. Gravy as your best friend.

Braised oxtail with mustard and mash

This is not a liquid stew, but one where the lumps of meat and bone are coated in a sticky, glossy gravy. Piles of creamy mashed potato, made on the sloppy side with the addition of hot milk, are an essential part of this.

a large oxtail, cut into joints

a little flour for dusting

ground chilli – a teaspoon

dry mustard powder – a heaped teaspoon

butter – a thick slice

a little oil, fat or dripping

onions – 2 large

winter carrots – 2 large

celery – 2 stalks

garlic – 4 large cloves

mushrooms – 5 large

tomato purée – 2 teaspoons

bay leaves – 4

thyme – a few bushy sprigs

a bottle of ballsy red wine, such as a Rioja

grain mustard – a tablespoon

smooth Dijon mustard – a tablespoon

a little parsley

creamy mashed potato, to serve

Set the oven at 150°C/Gas 2. Put the oxtail in a plastic or zip-lock bag with the flour, ground chilli, dry mustard powder and a good grinding of black pepper. Seal it and shake it gently until the oxtail is covered.

Warm the butter and a little oil, fat or dripping in a heavy-based casserole. Lower in the pieces of oxtail and let them colour on each side, turning them as they take on a nice, tasty bronze colour. Whilst the meat is browning, peel the onions and carrots and roughly chop them, then cut the celery into similar-sized pieces. Lift out the meat and set aside, then put the vegetables in the pot and let them colour lightly. Peel the garlic, slice it thinly, then add it to the vegetables, along with the mushrooms, each cut into six or eight pieces. Squeeze in the tomato purée. Continue cooking until the mushrooms have softened and lost some of their bulk.

Return the oxtail and any escaped juices to the pan, tuck in the bay and thyme, then pour in the red wine. Bring briefly to the boil, season lightly with salt and cover with a tight lid. Transfer the dish to the oven. You can now leave the whole thing alone for a good two hours. I’m not sure you even need to give it a stir, though I inevitably do half way through cooking. After an hour, check the meat for tenderness. I don’t think it should be actually falling off the bones but it certainly should come away from the bone easily when tugged. Depending on the oxtail, it could take as long as two or three hours in total. Set the oxtail aside to cool, then refrigerate, preferably overnight.

The next day, scrape off the fat that has set on the surface, then reheat the casserole slowly on the hot plate, stirring from time to time. Stir in the mustards. Once they are in, you should cook the stew for no longer than fifteen minutes, otherwise it will lose its edge. Stir in the parsley and serve with creamy mash.

Treacle tart

You could call this a basic domestic version of treacle tart, but that would be to undersell it. No frills, none of the oozing unctuousness of a restaurant version, just a pleasingly frugal tart with crisp pastry and a thick golden filling. I do think cream in some form or another is essential here, and by the generous jugful too. You will need an old-fashioned shallow pie plate with sloping sides about 18cm diameter (across the base).

fresh, white bread – 220g

golden syrup – 8 heaped tablespoons (600g)

the juice of half a lemon

For the crust:

plain flour – 180g

butter – 90g

water – 2 tablespoons

Put the flour into a food processor with the cold butter cut into cubes and blitz until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. Pour in the cold water, blitz briefly, then tip the wet crumbs into a bowl. Bring the mixture together with your hands to form a ball. It will seem dry at first, but once you have squeezed and rolled the dough for a minute with your hands it will soften. Roll out on a lightly floured board to fit the tart tin.

Very lightly butter the tin, then lay the pastry over and push it carefully into the tin. Trim any overhanging pastry, then prick the base gently with a fork and put in the fridge to rest. Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6.

After twenty minutes’ resting (the pastry that is, not you), remove the pastry from the fridge, place a piece of greaseproof paper over it, then cover it with baking beans or a similar-sized tart tin to stop it bubbling up. Bake for ten minutes. Remove the paper and beans and return the tin to the oven for ten minutes, until the surface of the pastry is dry to the touch.

While the case bakes, whiz the bread in a food processor till it is in fine crumbs, then tip them into the empty pastry bowl. Mix in the golden syrup and the lemon juice. Pour the mixture into the pastry case, turn the oven down to 180°C/Gas 4 and bake for thirty minutes. When it comes from the oven, leave the tart to rest for a good ten minutes, then serve with cream.

Enough for 6

February 25
Grey skies
and piquant
flavours

After a row of rib-sticking suppers, I need something clean-tasting and sharp. Something to wake us up rather than make me nod off in front of the TV.

Anything cooked with vinegar, onions and northern European spices has always excited me. Juniper is something I can never get enough of, its clean ‘gin and tonic’ scent instantly invigorating a grey February soul.

Warm soused mackerel

Piquancy is something I value in a fish recipe, especially when that fish is one of the oily varieties, such as tuna, herring or my favourite mackerel. It may sound a little strange but I recommend some sautéed potatoes with this.

mackerel – 3, filleted

a small onion

tarragon vinegar – 150ml

white vermouth or white wine – 50ml

juniper berries – 12, lightly crushed

mustard seeds – half a teaspoon

white peppercorns – 6

black peppercorns – 9

caster sugar – 2 tablespoons

bay leaves – 2

sautéed potatoes, to serve

Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Rinse the mackerel fillets and lay them in a shallow ovenproof dish of china, glass or stainless steel (not aluminium). Peel and thinly slice the onion and put it into a non-corrosive saucepan, together with the vinegar and vermouth or wine. Then add the juniper berries, mustard seeds, white and black peppercorns, sugar, bay leaves and a good pinch of salt. Bring to the boil, then pour the mixture over the fish. Add enough water to just cover the fish – no more.

Cover the dish lightly with aluminium foil and bake for twenty minutes. Serve the fish warm, two fillets each, with sautéed potatoes.

Enough for 3

march

An English cheese salad

A simple flatbread

Taramasalata – the real thing

Chicken stew and mash

Pork burgers with lime leaves and coriander

A fiery way with lamb

Chicken salad with watercress, almonds and orange

Smoked mackerel on toast

Roast fillet of lamb with anchovy and mint

Demerara lemon cake with thick yoghurt

Prawn and coriander rolls

Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce and ginger

Chocolate almond cake

Stir-fried mushrooms, spring leaves and lemon grass

Chickpea and sweet potato curry

Orange jelly with lemon and cardamom

Chicken with mushrooms and lemon grass

March 1
An English
cheese salad

It is a bit spooky the way the contents of those ‘pillow packs’ of salad from the supermarket somehow collapse and die within what seems like minutes of opening. Yet the mixed salad leaves you buy at the farmers’ market and the ones that come from the organic boxes last several days in the fridge. The bag of leaves I picked up from Marylebone farmers’ market – baby leaves of red chard, wild rocket, oak-leaf lettuce, spiky-leaved mizuna and crunchy little Cos – is still perfect three days after I brought it home. I toss the delicate leaves and their fragile stems with large shavings of young Wensleydale, toasted walnut halves, a bunch of large-leaved watercress and the merest dribble of walnut oil and lemon juice. A gentle, softly flavoured salad of unmistakable Englishness.

We follow this with a soup made from fat, old, woody carrots and vegetable bouillon, the root vegetables coarsely grated and then sweated with finely chopped onion in a very little butter. No cream, just the soup put in a blender till smooth, then chopped chives and a knob of butter stirred in at the end.

March 2
Flatbread and
a homemade
dip

Fat flakes of snow are pattering against the panes of the kitchen door, each one sticking on the glass for just a second before dissolving. It is cold enough to have frozen the water in the bucket on the back steps. If ever there was a day to bake bread, this is it. No gung-ho excitement here, just a gentle bit of bread making, the feel of warm, soft dough in the hands, the smell of a fresh loaf coming from the oven and always, always the feeling of ‘Why don’t I do this more often?’

I use dried yeast rather than fresh, simply because I can buy it in the local health-food shop. The flour is organic white from a small mill. Rather than a loaf, today I make slipper-shaped flatbreads to eat warm with taramasalata and hummus. I have never made hummus better than the stuff you can buy at the Green Valley, just off the Edgware Road. White-coated counter staff serve it by the big spoonful straight into a shallow plastic tray, then drizzle the parchment-coloured cream with emerald-green olive oil. But proper tarama is almost impossible to find, and shoppers seem to have accepted the bubblegum-pink stuff sold in tubs at the deli as the real thing. It isn’t. It’s crap. As commercially made food (mayonnaise, tomato soup, pesto) goes, it is the furthest from the real thing. Not even the merest shadow. So I draw a deep breath and pay a small fortune for real smoked cod’s roe from the fishmonger’s, a purple-veined, rusty-pink lobe of roe to beat into olive oil, a clove of garlic and perhaps a little bread to eke it out.

A simple flatbread

strong white flour – 500g

sea salt – half a teaspoon

dried yeast – a 7g sachet

warm water – 350ml

olive oil – 2 tablespoons

Put the flour into the bowl of a food mixer (you will need the beater attachment), then add the salt. If you are using a coarse salt, crumble it first between your finger and thumb. Empty the yeast into a small glass, pour on enough water to make a thin paste, then stir in the rest of the warm water. (This isn’t strictly necessary, you can put the dry yeast straight into the flour, but I prefer to do it this way.) Pour the water on to the flour and turn the mixer on slow. Introduce the olive oil, mixing till you have a stiffish dough. Tip the dough out on to a floured board and knead it with your hands, pushing and folding the dough until it feels springy and elastic to the touch. Set aside in a bowl covered with a clean tea towel and leave to rise for an hour or so. A warm place out of any draughts is ideal.

If you want to make the dough by hand, add the yeast and water to the flour and salt, mixing the two together with your hands or a wooden spoon. Mix in the olive oil – a pleasant, if squelchy, thing to do with your bare hands – then turn the lot on to a lightly floured work surface. Knead for a good nine or ten minutes, folding the far edge of the dough towards you and pushing it back into the dough. It should feel soft, springy and alive. Cover the dough with a clean tea towel as before and leave to rise.

Get the oven hot to 240°C/Gas 9. When your dough is about four times the size it was, break it into six pieces and push each one into a rough slipper shape. Dust them with flour and lie them flat on a baking sheet. Bake for five minutes, then turn the oven down to 220°C/Gas 7 and continue baking for a further five minutes or so, until the underside of the bread sounds hollow when you tap it.

Makes 6 small flatbreads

Taramasalata – the real thing

smoked cod’s roe – a 100g piece

white bread – 2 thick slices

garlic – a plump clove

olive oil – 200–300ml

the juice of a lemon

Peel the skin from the roe, or scoop the eggs out of the skin with a teaspoon. Soak the bread in water, then wring it out. Mash the bread into the roe with a pestle and mortar or in a food mixer. Add the clove of garlic, finely chopped, then the olive oil, pouring it in gradually as if you are making mayonnaise. When the mixture is a thick cream, stir in the lemon juice. Serve lightly chilled, with the warm flatbreads and some black olives.

Enough for 4

March 3

In my smug haze of good housekeeping from yesterday’s baking session, not to mention my arch disdain for factory-produced foods, I fail to notice there is bugger all to eat in the house. At seven-thirty I dash to the corner shop, returning with a tin of baked beans, a bag of oven chips and some beers.

March 4
Snow and a
chicken
stew

Snow has fallen as I slept. I fold back the shutters and stare out at the garden without moving for a full ten minutes. Snow brings a hush, a softness, to the city that is all too brief. You have to make time for it. The gravel path, the spindly trees, the little hedges that frame the vegetable and fruit beds are white over. The kitchen itself is icy this morning, its light muffled by the snow that has built up on the skylights. Breakfast is porridge, made with water. No sugar, no treacle, no hot milk. Just rolled oats and water.

Shopping is usually slipped into other jobs and journeys: a dash into the greengrocer’s whilst I am on my way to a meeting; a trip to the fishmonger’s on my way home. But today’s shopping is thought out, with a list and a big bag. There are four of us for supper and it is still snowing. I am not going to get away with a salad and a slice of tart.

One of the advantages of my butcher’s free-range birds is that their bones are heavy and strong, as you would expect from something that has had the opportunity to exercise. The availability of these big birds and their fat, sauce-enriching bones makes it seriously worth thinking about chicken stew – a bird cooked slowly, with stock, herbs and aromatics. The results are mild but meaty, which is just what you want when the wind is cold enough to make your eyes water.

Starch is an essential accompaniment to stew – polenta, mashed roots, potatoes slipped into the pot. This time my stew has beans in it. There is quite a lot of juice, which, despite the beans, screams out to be poured over some mashed parsnip or potato, perhaps with some parsley and a dollop of mustard stirred in. Something for the coldest days of the year.

Chicken stew and mash

dried cannellini beans – 150g

a large chicken, jointed

olive oil – 50ml, plus more for frying

balsamic vinegar – 50ml

garlic – 4 plump cloves, peeled

bay leaves – 3 or 4

dried herbes de Provence – 1–2 teaspoons

the pared rind of a small orange

leeks – 3 medium, thickly sliced

mash, to serve

Soak the beans in cold water for three or four hours, though overnight will not hurt (the older your beans, the longer they will need). Bring them to the boil in unsalted water and boil them for forty minutes.

Put the chicken joints in a glass, china or steel dish. Pour over the olive oil and a couple of tablespoons of the balsamic vinegar, then tuck in the peeled garlic cloves and the bay leaves. Scatter over the herbes de Provence, a good grinding of pepper and salt and the strips of pared orange. Leave in a cool place, overnight if possible or at least for four or five hours.

Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Heat enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a shallow pan (don’t be tempted to fry the chicken in the oil from the marinade; it will spit and pop because of the vinegar). Add the chicken pieces, shaking the marinade from each as you go, and let them fry till they are golden brown on each side. You may find it easier to do this in two batches. Transfer the browned meat to a deep casserole – one for which you have a lid. Drain the boiled beans and add them to the pot.

In the same oil, fry the leeks over a low heat, so that they soften rather than colour. Allowing a leek to brown will send it bitter. Now add the garlic from the marinade, then pour in the remaining marinade, the rest of the balsamic vinegar and about a litre of water. Don’t be tempted to use stock instead; it will make the dish too rich. Bring to the boil, season generously with salt, then pour this mixture over the chicken. Tuck in the bay leaves and orange from the marinade, then cover the casserole and put it in the preheated oven for two hours. Half way through cooking, check that the chicken is still submerged. Check for seasoning: it may need salt, it will need black pepper and you may feel it needs a little more balsamic vinegar. Serve steaming hot, with mash, letting the thick juices from the stew form pools in the mash.

March 5

If there is a recurrent theme to my cooking at the moment, it is the clean bite of lime leaves and chillies. I appreciate them for the freshness and vitality they bring with them. I have no luck at the greengrocer’s with the lime leaves today, nor at the major supermarket that stands, red brick and sprawling, less than thirty minutes’ walk from home. I end up catching the bus to the crush of Chinese shops that line Gerrard Street, which have more lime leaves than you could shake a chopstick at. They freeze at a push, and for once I remember to take a second packet home with that in mind.

I have had this problem before, usually when the leaves’ inclusion is crucial (Thai fish cakes, perhaps). People say you can use lime zest instead. I agree to an extent, but there is something missing. There is more than just the well-known flavour of lime in those finely shredded leaves. They carry a bite, a spritz, to them that is missing in the skin of the fruit. If lime leaves remain elusive, I would rather add a stalk of lemon grass instead.

While I’m in Chinatown, I pick up a couple of papayas. Unusually, they are perfectly ripe, a deep custard yellow. Tender as a kitten, they get carried home on top of everything else. One of them still gets bruised. After the pork, I slice each fruit and scoop out the black seeds – they look like caviar – then squeeze over a little lime juice. It means there is too much lime in the meal but it has brightened up a wet day.

Pork burgers with lime leaves and coriander

At first glance, this may seem like a lot of work. It isn’t. The whole thing should take about half an hour, plus a little time for the meatballs to chill. I like this with a salad of crisp, white lettuce, chopped mint and coriander leaves, dressed with lime juice and salt. If you need something to fill, then some plain steamed white rice would fit the bill, or some soft buns between which to sandwich the hot pork patties.

spring onions – 4

hot red chillies and their seeds – 4

garlic – 4 medium-sized cloves

the stalks and leaves from a small bunch of coriander

ginger – a thumb-sized lump

lime leaves – 6

smoked pancetta or fatty bacon – 100g

minced pork – 500g

a little vegetable or groundnut oil for frying

Chop the spring onions, chillies, garlic and coriander and finely grate the ginger. Roll up and finely shred the lime leaves – they should be as fine as you can get them – then put the lot in a food processor and blitz till all is finely chopped and well mixed. Scrape the paste out into a large basin. Cut up the pancetta, then put it into the processor and whiz it to a coarse mush. Now add it, with the spice paste, to the minced pork. Mix everything together – I like to do this with my hands – grinding in some salt and black pepper as you go. Set aside in the fridge for about half an hour for the flavours to mingle.

Squash the seasoned pork into about twelve small balls, then flatten them into patties. Pour a little oil into a heavy, shallow pan, just enough to cover the bottom. When it is hot, add half the meatballs and let them cook for several minutes over a high heat, turning them half way through, till they are cooked in the middle and nicely brown and stickily, sensuously glossy on the outside.

Enough for 4 with rice and salad

March 7
Inspiration
for a lamb
chop

I have no idea what I had in mind when I bought the two lamb chops that are now sitting on the kitchen worktop. Actually they are leg steaks and there’s enough for two. Whatever it was, the flash of inspiration must have got lost on the way home. In the fridge are mixed salad leaves – rocket, baby spinach and some baby chard – and a bunch of mint. I might also be able to rescue a few leaves from the bunch of basil that has got too close to the back of the fridge and burned on the ice. There is also the usual stuff in the fridge and cupboards.

I put the chops into a bowl with a couple of tablespoons of light soy sauce and a crushed garlic clove and let them sit for twenty minutes. I get the grill hot and chuck the chops on it, a couple of minutes on each side. Whilst the meat is cooking, I toss the salad leaves into a bowl. Then I knock up a dressing consisting of a couple of small, hot red chillies, finely chopped, the juice of half a ripe lime, a tablespoon of dark soy, a handful of shredded mint leaves and a wee bit of sugar. I slice the lamb into pencil-thin strips and, while it is still hot, toss it with the salad and dressing, then divide it between two plates.

The mixture of sizzling meat, mellow, salty soy and sharp lime juice is startling, especially with the green leaves that have softened slightly where they have touched the lamb. The few juices left on our plates are stunning, and we mop them up with crisp white rolls.

March 9

Dinner out tonight, so just a quick snack for lunch. The perfect salad sandwich is all about the vitality of the ingredients: the uber-freshness of the watercress, the jelly-soft tomatoes, the crunch of the ice-cold cucumber and the heat of the radishes against the soft, white and impeccably fresh bread. If you are not obsessively fussy about every detail of this sandwich, it won’t hit the spot. You might as well not bother. Lunch today is that perfect salad sandwich, with old-fashioned crunchy lettuce, cucumber, radishes, spring onions and tomato. There is a slick of mayonnaise, a dusting of fine sea salt and bread so soft, thick and doughy it could double for a duvet. For once, something is as it should be, a sandwich to be proud of.

March 11
A fiery way
with lamb

The Ginger Pig has a display of lamb chops that is irresistible even to someone who has had them once already this week. Thick, deep red and meaty, they have been cut from the middle of the loin and have a generous bone on which to chew. Rarely have I seen such tempting pieces of meat.

There are two of us tonight so I buy four out of greed rather than necessity. I am set on some sort of meaty supper with Indian spicing, not a curry exactly, but something vibrant. The chops will do fine for this.

At home I raid the spice jars, a teaspoon each of four seeds: mustard, coriander, fennel and cumin, left whole rather than ground. I fry them gently in two tablespoons of groundnut oil, then stir in two peeled and chopped shallots, two hot red chillies that I have seeded and chopped, and four crushed cloves of garlic. I let everything soften without colouring, then stir in a grated knob of ginger the size of a walnut in its shell and six chopped tomatoes, their seeds and juice. Once everything has come to the boil, I crumble in some sea salt, turn the heat down and let it simmer, partly covered with a lid, for fifteen minutes.

Off the heat I squeeze in the juice of a lime and add a handful of chopped coriander leaves and a little more salt. Once the spicy-red slop has cooled, I dunk the lamb chops in it and leave them for an hour or so.

The chops, cooked under an overhead grill, their marinade still clinging to them, are a fiery, juicy delight. The spices bring heat and savour but in no way overpower the lamb; the fat is crisp and lightly scorched from the grill, the flesh tender and rich with pink juices. Rarely have I enjoyed a chop quite so much.

March 12
A simple
supper

There have been three restaurant meals this week, including sensationally good plates of hot salt cod fritters at Moro in Exmouth Market and a wonderfully elegant dish of kidneys with lentils and potato purée at Locanda Locatelli in the West End. Add to that a bowl of fried oysters in a clear broth at the ‘cheap-as-chips’ Japan Centre in Piccadilly Circus and I have barely had to cook at home at all. I don’t think the kitchen has ever stayed tidy for that long in its entire life. Eating out remains an absolute treat for me; especially so this year, when for one reason or another I have spent so much time at home. Even if I could eat out every night, I wouldn’t. Although I will admit to occasionally getting a bit ‘cooked out’, I cannot pretend I don’t enjoy putting something I have made for someone on the table. To this day, it still sends tingles down my spine.

I have a theory that I love cooking for people after all these years because I rarely attempt too much. Many is the time supper is little more than a bowl of soup and a salad, or perhaps some chicken pieces roasted with butter and served with a handful of green leaves. It is the way I prefer to eat, but it also happens to be a lot less trouble than roast chicken with gravy, spuds and vegetables, followed by pudding and custard. I like to think of it as a love of simplicity, but it could also be a mixture of greed tinged with laziness.

We eat roast chicken, mashed butternut squash and the juices from the roasting tin mixed with a little white vermouth and a shot of lemon juice. Dessert is sliced mangoes and whole rambutans that look like diminutive pan-scrubbers.

March 13
A refreshing
chicken
salad

It’s funny how even on the coldest day people seem to appreciate a salad – if, of course, the ingredients are right. In other words, not tomato, cucumber and lettuce. Hot, spicy leaves such as watercress or rocket go down well, especially when matched with something sharp and bright like orange or grapefruit. With that I would chuck in something meaty, such as bacon, pieces of duck breast (it is almost as cheap as chicken now) or a grilled breast of game. Often as not, though, a big salad like this is made to use up cold roast chicken, or perhaps a game bird from the weekend.

The oranges right now are as fat and juicy as I have ever known them and I will eat them at every chance. This time, they wake up a salad made from yesterday’s roast chicken.

Chicken salad with watercress, almonds and orange

The main-course salads I value the most are those that are refreshing. This, with salty, soy-toasted pumpkin seeds and the clean, fresh taste of oranges, is one of the best. You could serve couscous with it, if you wish, or perhaps a Lebanese tabbouleh.

pumpkin seeds – 3 tablespoons

a little dark soy sauce

whole skinned almonds – 2 tablespoons

watercress – 50g

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