Copyright

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.4thEstate.co.uk

This eBook edition published by 4th Estate in 2017

Text copyright © Nigel Slater 2017

Location photographs © Nigel Slater 2017

Recipe photographs © Jonathan Lovekin 2017

Nigel Slater asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008260194

Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008260200

Version: 2017-11-03

For James

Who once told me ‘You can grow old, just make sure you never grow up.’

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

November

December

January

February

Index

Acknowledgements

Note about the type

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Nigel Slater

About the Publisher

Introduction

The icy prickle across your face as you walk out into the freezing air. The piercing burn to your sinuses, like wasabi. Your eyes sparkle, your ears tingle. The rush of cold to your head is stimulating, vital, energising.

The arrival of the first snap of cold is invigorating, like jumping into an ice pool after the long sauna of summer. Winter feels like a renewal, at least it does to me. I long for that ice-bright light, skies of pale blue and soft grey light that is at once calm and gentle, fresh and crisp. Away from the stifling airlessness of summer, I once again have more energy. Winter has arrived. I can breathe again.

My childhood memories of summer are few and precious. Picking blackcurrants for pocket money. A vanilla ice cream, held between two wafers, eaten on the seafront with my mum, seagulls overhead. Sitting in a meadow, buttercups tickling my bare legs, eating ham sandwiches and drinking dandelion and burdock. Pleading with my parents to stop the car so I could get out and pick scarlet poppies, with petals like butterflies’ wings that wilted before I could get them home. These are virtually the only recollections I have of those early summers. It is the winters that stay in my memory, carved deep as a fjord, as long and clear as an icicle.

It is as if my entire childhood was lived out in the cold months, a decade spent togged up in duffel coats and mittens, wellingtons and woolly hats. To this day, I am never happier than when there is frost on the roof and a fire in the hearth. I have always preferred snow underfoot to sand between my toes.

I love the crackle of winter. The snap of dry twigs underfoot, boots crunching on frozen grass, a fire spitting in the hearth, ice thawing on a pond, the sound of unwrapping a Christmas present from its paper. The innate crispness of the season appeals to me, like newly fallen snow, frosted hedges, the first fresh page of a new diary. Yes, there is softness in the cold months, too, the voluminous jumpers and woolly hats, the steam rising from soup served in a deep bowl, the light from a single candle and the much-loved scarf that would feel like a burden at any other time of year.

We all know winter. The mysterious whiff of jasmine or narcissus caught in the cold air; the sadness of spent, blackened fireworks the morning after Bonfire Night; a row of pumpkins on a frosted allotment spied from a train window; the magical alchemy of frost and smoke. Winter is the smell of freshly cut ivy or yew and the childish excitement of finding that first, crisp layer of fine ice on a puddle. It is a freckling of snow on cobbled pavements and the golden light from a window on a dark evening that glows like a Russian icon on a museum wall. But for each midwinter sunset, there is another side to this season. Like the one of 1962–3, when farmers, unable to negotiate deep snowdrifts, wept as their animals froze to death in the fields; the snap of frail bones as an elderly neighbour slips on the ice; the grim catalogue of deaths of the homeless from hypothermia. Winter is as deadly as she is beautiful.

A walk through the snow

It started with berries. Holly, rowan, rosehips. A project to record the plants, edible and poisonous, that we spotted on our walk to school. Two miles, in my case, of hedgerows to inspect daily. Hardly a project for me; I knew those hedgerows intimately, each tree and ditch, every lichen-covered gate. I knew which had wild sweet peas – Lathyrus odoratus – or primroses hidden by twigs and where to find a bullfinch’s nest. When you walk the same route every day on your own, you get to know these things. A tree you must duck to avoid a soaking if it has rained during the night; the progress of a slowly decomposing tree stump among the grass; a bush that delights with a froth of white blossom in spring that by autumn is a mass of purple-black berries. You get to know the site of the sweetest blackberries and the exact location of the wild violets, white and piercing purple, that twinkle like stars in dark holloways.

Even then I knew that hedgerows were sacred, the homes of birds’ nests and voles, hedgehogs and haws. I knew that the long, slim rosehips came from the single wild roses that are to this day one of my favourite flowers, along with the hawthorn. I knew too that my father’s name for hawthorn was ‘bread and cheese’, an ancient reference to the usefulness of its leaves and berries in winter. I also understood that the scarlet berries of yew and holly were never, ever, for consumption.

It was the berries left behind in the winter that held a special fascination for me. The darkening rosehips and hawthorn berries seen against a tapestry of frosty leaves; the solemn beauty of ivy and hypericum berries against a grey wall; a rosehip trapped in ice. Walking was part of my country childhood. A solitary one, but by no means lonely. Not that there was any choice. My father drove back to the Black Country during the week. We had just four buses, two on a Wednesday – one there, one back – and two on Saturday. A bike, you say? Not up the steep hills that surrounded Knightwick, with a gym bag and a leather satchel full of books. There were always books. We lived on the border of two counties. Home and school were in Worcestershire, the nearest shops in Herefordshire. The walks were wretched in summer, sweaty and hateful, full of stinging nettles and sunburn, but in autumn and winter each day was an adventure. I rarely got home before darkness fell. There was a moment, a patch of barely half an hour, when the sun would burn fiercely in the winter sky, just before it slid away, that I regarded as unmissable. Something I had to be outside for.

It was the walk to school that started everything. A life lived with the rhythm of the seasons. Not purely the food (miles from a supermarket or a greengrocer, we ate more seasonally than most), but the outdoors too, the landscape, the garden and the market. The sounds and smells that mark one season as different from another.

By the way, I kept that school project, neatly written in fountain pen, its berry-studded exercise books covered in dried leaves and curls of ‘old man’s beard’, for almost twenty years. Like pretty much everything I owned, it was destroyed in a house fire shortly after I moved to London.

Getting to grips with the season

Winter is caused by the movement of the Earth, the dark winter months appearing when the Earth’s axis is at its furthest point from the Sun. For all its bare twigs and pale, watery sunshine, winter is very much alive. Underneath the fallen leaves things are happening at a rate of knots; new life burgeons. Bulbs are sprouting, buds are bursting through grey bark, new shoots push their way to the surface. Many plants require vernalisation, a prolonged patch of low temperatures, in order to grow. Tulips, freesias, crocus and snowdrops, for instance. (I sometimes feel I do, too.) A secret world quietly doing what it does each year. A study in renewal, rebirth, new life.

Winter officially starts in Britain on December 21, the winter solstice, which is the shortest day. I feel this is slightly odd. You would expect the shortest day to be in the middle of winter, not the start, but it gets more complicated when you learn that the date varies from country to country. Sweden and Ireland, for instance, consider the start of winter as November 1, All Hallows’ Day. Agriculturally, it is Martinmas, November 11, that is considered to be the beginning. Some cultures also measure winter by temperature rather than by the calendar. Others ecologically or astrologically. In the northern hemisphere we generally consider winter to mean the months of December, January and February. Just to throw a further wooden spoon into the works, this book includes much of November.

The winter light. Stars and shadows

The winter sky has a clarity and gentleness that I find more pleasing than the harsh, screaming colours of summer. Softer tones, those clean, arctic blues, the whisper-soft greys and pin-sharp paper whites, are the skies I want to live under.

The night sky is clearer in cold weather too, the stars infinitely more visible. During the months of December, January and February we are no longer facing directly into the heart of the Milky Way, whose brightness has the effect of making our view of the stars hazy and blurred. In winter, with the planet facing the galaxy at a different angle, we see fewer stars, which is why they seem clearer on a cold frosty night. A clear case of less is more. Standing in the garden, even in London, it is easier to read the sky on a frosty night.

Shadows are more interesting in winter too. More fuel for the imagination. As the Earth tilts away from the sun, the shadows become longer. This is why, perhaps, the walk home is more scary on a winter’s night, because generally, shadows are seen as ghostly, eerie, even sinister. That said, it is true that most horror films and ghost stories are set on winter nights (if there is a summer ghost story, it has escaped my attention), where long shadows lend a suitably mysterious, spine-tingling atmosphere. I see them differently, thinking of shadows mostly as benign and fascinating. I often move lamps, furniture and plants in order to get a clearer, longer, more intriguing shadow.

The landscape

The stillness of winter. Snow on a twig. A berry imprisoned in ice. The quietness of a frozen lake. The bareness of the winter landscape allows us to get a better view of the world we inhabit. No long grass and canopy of green leaves to confuse the eye. No fluff of blossom to deceive us (their blossom gone, cherry trees surely get the prize for the most boring trees on the planet), just the clean lines of a winter landscape. The architecture is clear and crisp. The shape of a tree, the path of a river, the outline of a barn, as clear as if they were drawn on a map.

I was brought up with the mother of all ‘views’, which as an eleven-year-old I somewhat took for granted. From our back door, an undulating landscape of meadows, woodlands, rivers, against a backdrop of the Cotswolds and the Malvern Hills. Snowfall would stay untouched for days, sullied only by the footprints of birds, rabbits, squirrels and foxes. (As a child I imagined wolves and bears too.) Walking in the plantation of Christmas trees that backed on to our long, thin garden was like a trip to see Mr Tumnus. No lamplight, but we had the moon to illuminate the frost-like glitter on a Christmas card. The joy of the little forest of fir trees in the dell was that they stayed cool in the hottest of summers too. A place for a child to hide and play.

The move to the city has brought an altogether different winter into my life. Shorter (city snow is gone in a heartbeat); frosted pavements trashed by pedestrians and the warmth from buildings; snow in London is as rare as hens’ teeth. I have lived in the city for thirty years now and have seen all too few proper winters. By proper, I mean those winters with snow deep enough to shovel. The bare trees, however, remain majestic.

I’m not sure you really know a tree until you have seen it without its leaves. Naked, so to speak. They are often at their most peaceful and romantic in winter, like watching a loved one asleep.

Without the diversion of leaves, deciduous trees take on a sculptural quality; we get the opportunity to see their bark more clearly, the dance and flow of their branches, their character and form. Large trees are bare for only four months before new leaf buds emerge, first as freckles, then as tiny, opening leaves. This is when I take them into the house; as large twigs break off the horse chestnuts in the street, I gather them up and stuff them, however large, into one of two capacious vases. The branches I value most are those that have a good horizontal, fluid form, large enough to leave a shadow across the table. As the season moves into spring, their leaves will often open, slightly ahead of those out in the cold. A gift.

Being out in the cold

Those who work outdoors probably have a different view of the winter landscape from someone like me, who simply plays in it. Fishermen, shepherds, road sweepers, farm workers, professional gardeners and those whose working life is spent mostly in the open air may have an altogether less rosy take on the season. Fair enough. Working in the fields, for instance, your fingers can soon become numb, your face raw.

Being outside in the cold is invigorating but we do need to keep moving. The body doesn’t like being cold and still, which in extreme cases can result in hypothermia. It wants to maintain a steady temperature. We shiver simply because the brain is sending a message to the nerves all over our body to move quickly to generate heat. We should listen to it.

I am rarely happier than when working outside. Digging, sweeping, walking, all do it for me. I find manual work in the cold as energising and life-affirming as much as I find it (deliciously) exhausting. Short trips around the garden punctuate my day. I walk rather than use public transport to go shopping. Each morning, I will usually saunter around the garden, coffee in hand, rain or shine, frost or snow. I live in hope of that last one.

Coming in from the cold

It is just as good to come in. You stamp to shake the snow from your boots. The flakes of snow on your coat melt instantly. Your glasses steam up. You close the door and thank God you remembered to put the hall light on a timer.

You hang up your coat, tug off your boots and light the fire. You will probably put the kettle on or pour yourself a drink. Not so much as a way to get warm, more to welcome yourself home. Home means more to us in cold weather. Making ourselves comfortable is a duty. Making friends and family comfortable is an art.

‘Come in.’ Two short words, heavy with meaning. Step out of the big, bad, wet world and into my home. You’ll be safe here, toasty and well fed. ‘Come in.’ They are two of the loveliest words to say and to hear.

Having suggested someone might like to enter, then it is up to us to make them feel welcome. The words alone aren’t enough. And that is where the art comes in. There is almost nothing I enjoy more than welcoming visitors into my home. (Full disclosure, I quite like it when they go too.) But in between ‘in’ and ‘out’ I want them to feel wanted, comfortable (cosy even) and happy. Yes, warm, even in my rather chilly house, but also fed, watered and generally made to feel that all is well with the world. And yes, I know the world is a shit-storm at the moment, but we all need a safe harbour.

A welcome will invariably involve food, and never more so than at this time of year. No, I don’t have a tray of warm mince pies waiting. I don’t really live that sort of life, but I do like to have a cake of some sort in the house. Gingerbread in the biscuit tin (Lebkuchen if it’s remotely near Christmas), or a fruit cake. I am one of those people who, even in the twenty-first century, still makes fruit cake. Guests only get something savoury if they arrive in the evening, when I’m eating anyway. This house is always in a state of flux, being an office, photography studio and workspace all in one. But it is first and foremost a home, and I have always been a bit of home-maker. (The only thing I ever made in woodwork lessons at school was a coffee table, because I hoped it would make my unhappy adolescent home more hospitable.)

Our lives cannot always be about other people, love them as we do. We need some time for ourselves. I am never, ever without a book, but I do read differently in the winter. My feet curled underneath me, a blanket over my legs. I will always put another layer of clothes on rather than turn the heating up. I dislike, intensely, an overheated room.

But I am getting ahead of myself. It is the months prior to the arrival of the winter solstice – on December 21 – that I look forward to as much as anything. That first nudge that the summer is finally exhausted and we are slowly sliding into the golden days of another autumn. The slide is often protracted, but last year I distinctly remember the moment. We had eaten lunch in the garden, the last in a long, good summer of eating outside; the dahlias were collapsing into the flower beds in a tangle of burgundy and brown; the leaves on the medlar tree had turned as yellow as a ripe quince; dinner had been, at the last moment, bolstered by a dish of roast potatoes. Suddenly, from nowhere, the smell of drifting woodsmoke, and yet not a garden fire in sight, followed in a heartbeat by the urgent need for a jumper, another glass of wine. The season had, in the space of an afternoon, turned.

You either ‘get’ the cheer of winter, or you don’t. Some are rarely happy in fresh air. They only want to eat outside when the air is heavy and hot. But the mood is changing. We are, at last, seeing cafés hanging blankets and woollen throws over their outdoor seats for us to wrap ourselves in, as they do in Scandinavia. (Sadly, too many are often accompanied by the dreaded outdoor heaters.) I have happy memories of flasks of hot drinks on cold walks, of winter picnics of sugar-encrusted cardamom buns and hot coffee. And yet we have a long way to go before we see the cold the way some of our neighbours do.

The negative vocabulary of winter is well used. ‘It’s so cold’ is almost always said in a negative sense. ‘Yes,’ I usually say, ‘invigorating, isn’t it?’ A sentiment often met with a look of bafflement. We talk about ‘fighting the cold’, ‘battling the elements’, and ‘cold comfort’. The dead are ‘cold’ and we give people the ‘cold shoulder’. You can argue that statistically more people take their own life in cold countries. Yet those same countries, with their long winters and fewest hours of daylight, continually come out top in quality of life surveys. Go figure.

I pick a newspaper article about winter, totally at random, from the internet. Within the first three paragraphs the author trots out ‘bitter, plummeting, battered, dire, freezing, awful, discontent’, and then the ultimate – ‘Snowmageddon’. Finally, with the vocabulary of negativity exhausted, we get ‘Click to see our countdown of Britain’s Worst Winters.’ Not a single word in praise of an entire season of the year. Which is, in an average lifespan, over twenty years of our life. In my book, that is far too long not to enjoy ourselves.

Eating winter – The food of fairy tales

Gingerbread biscuits with icing like melting snow; steaming glasses of ‘glow-wine’; savoury puddings of bread and cheese and a goose with golden skin and a puddle of apple sauce. There are stews of game birds with twigs of thyme and rosemary; fish soups the colour of rust and baked apples frothing at the brim. Winter is the time for marzipan-filled stollen, thick with powdered sugar, pork chops as thick as a plank, and rings of Cumberland sausage sweet with dates and bacon.

The flavours of winter come at us like paper-wrapped presents in a Christmas stocking. Ginger, aniseed, cardamom, juniper and cloves. The caramel notes of maple syrup, treacle, butterscotch and the damp muscovado sugars. Fruits dried on the vine, and preserved in sugar. Ingredients too that hold the essence of the cold months: red cabbage, russet apples, walnuts, smoked garlic, chestnuts, parsnips and cranberries. Winter cooking is clouds of mashed potato flecked with dark green cabbage, roasted onions glistening like brass bedknobs and parsnips that crisp and stick molasses-like to the roasting tin. The food of the cold months is fatty cuts of meat, the flanks, shins and cheeks that we can leave to braise unhindered in a slow oven, with onions and thyme, wine and woody herbs, plodding silently towards tenderness. Meat you could cut with a spoon. Winter cooking is ham with a quince paste crust; game birds with redcurrant jelly; treacle sponge and Lebkuchen, mince pies and marmalade tarts.

Winter food is about both celebration and survival. It is about feasting – roast turkey, plum pudding and fruit cake; frugality – bean soups and mugs of miso broth; it is the food of hope – lentil soup for good luck on New Year’s day and the food of love – the mug of hot, cardamom-spiced chocolate you make for a loved one on a freezing day.

There is a gleeful abundance to late autumn and winter shopping, and a feeling of urgency to gather up things while we can. The last of the late-fruiting raspberries and damsons well on their way to jam; the late white peaches and crisp-as-ice local pippins and russets; walnuts in their shells and green figs with their soft, powdery scent. Late on an autumn evening, as I turn the corner to do my vegetable shopping, the heavy, sweet ripeness of the season hangs in the air, the glowing melons and late plums, the pumpkins and the last of the runner beans. Tomatoes, green and orange, red and gold. This is as good as food shopping gets.

As the season slides into winter – you can feel the heavy, sweet air of autumn turning crisp and clean with each passing dawn – there is the return of chestnuts and sweet potatoes, almonds in their shells, cream-fleshed parsnips, fat leeks and muscat grapes with their scent of sugary wine and honey. There are squashes shaped like acorns and others that resemble turbans to bake and stuff and beat into piles of fluffy mash; pomegranates – I love to see one or two cut in half on the display so we know whether we are buying jewels or pith – and proper big-as-your-hat apples for baking.

The game birds are lined up at the butchers, their featherless breasts kept warm by fatty bacon and a bay leaf. Partridges, pheasants and quail to roast, pigeons to bring to tenderness slowly with red wine and onions, and quails to split, skewer and grill till their skin blackens and their bones crunch. As the winter wears on, we see the first of the turkeys dressed for the feast, fat ducks and hams ready to boil, bake and slice.

That said, I don’t go wholly along with the idea of winter food as a source of comfort and cossetting, solace and warmth. I still want a crackling fresh salad, a plate of fruit to finish my meal, food that refreshes. I don’t drop my need for a daily bowl of leaves and herbs lightly dressed just because there is frost on the ground and woodsmoke in the air. It is all here, by the way, in these pages.

Drinking winter – raising a glass

Nothing changes quite so dramatically with the seasons as what I drink. Gone the glasses of rosé in the garden as the evening light falls, the artisan gin, cucumber and tonic. Gone too the lemon verbena tea glistening like absinthe in its fragile glass pot. Winter brings a whole new type of refreshment. Hot cider in a thick glass, frothy cocoa in a mug, buckwheat tea smelling of toast and warm rice. The drinks of winter smell different, of cloves and cinnamon, honey and fruit, rice and smoke, damson and cardamom.

I make my favourite winter drink in early autumn, so it is ready for Christmas. Damsons, squirrelled away in a bottle of gin, as happy as a fruit could ever be. (The recipe, by the way, is in Tender, Volume II.) I make cocoa thick and creamy, beaten to a froth with a little whisk, and serve it in deep mugs to keep it hot right to the end. It is part of the ritual of drinking cocoa that the first sip scalds your lips. Cardamom seeds, crushed beneath the weight of a pestle and mortar, have much to offer to a mug of hot, dark chocolate.

Apple drinks abound. Hot juice, mulled with cinnamon sticks and cloves; steaming cider with orange peel; cider brandy, sugar and cream. For the feast there are frivolous, sparkly things, sometimes flushed with pomegranate or blood orange and, occasionally, a hot toddy in a glass dotted with condensation. Even tea changes with the weather. The light green teas I drink in summer, welcome at any time of year, take a step back while the roasted teas, full of smoky notes and the humble cosy notes of toasted rice, take their place.

The alcohol level rises as the temperature dips. It is the only time of year the eaux-de-vie come out, the fruit liqueurs whose potency hides under a cloak of fruit and syrup.

My winters start with sight of the first damsons in the shops, the first bonfire lit. They end in late March when I take off to the coldest place I can find. And then, in an attempt to hold on to it all, I end up in Japan, Iceland or Finland. I eat a cup of crab soup in a hut on the harbour in Reykjavik or a thoughtful, foraged meal at one of my favourite restaurants in Helsinki, where each meal is peppered with Douglas fir or shoots of young green spruce, rowan berries picked from a tree in the churchyard, or an ice cream made from the young, green berries of juniper. Chef’s cooking, full of imagination and playfulness, and a world away from the simpler fodder I make at home. And then, full of the last tastes of winter, I step out into the cold for the last time.

The coldest winters

Some people remember summers. A holiday in Tuscany; a lunch outdoors that turned into dinner and ran long into the darkness; a picnic on the beach or the summer afternoon they lost their virginity.

I remember winters. I can trace my love of the cold months to one particular day. The winter of 1962–3, to be precise. Late afternoon, just as the sun went down and the sky slipped from apricot to scarlet to lavender. I was playing outside, a huge lump of snow that we had rolled down the silent street, getting larger and larger until we could roll it no further and which I then flattened to form a counter. I was playing shop, in duffel coat and mittens, with the food fashioned out of snow. A vast truckle of cheese from which I cut wedges to sell, a cake (of course) and snow sweets the size of pebbles. (There is a little shopkeeping in the family’s blood: in Victorian times we had a dairy in Birmingham.) My friends bought the snow cakes and then hurled them at one another as snowballs. I remember my mother bringing me in when she realised that every other kid had gone in for tea and I was still there, tending my snow shop.

The winter of 1962–3 was the coldest since 1895. I was six. It had been a particularly foggy late autumn and snow first arrived on December 12. The heaviest snow came on Boxing Day and by the 29th had drifted in some places to twenty feet deep. We had eighteen inches in Staffordshire. Villages were without power, people were stranded in their cars, the sea froze in parts of Kent and temperatures as low as –19°C were recorded. The lowest since 1814. I can’t ever remember having such fun as I did that winter, leaping into snowdrifts on my walk to school; building a snowman (carrot nose, lumps of coal for eyes) with my brother in the back garden; coming home soaked and freezing from having lost another snowball fight. It is no wonder that modern winters are something of a disappointment.

In truth Britain has had very few truly cold winters, especially in the south of the country. The coldest on record was 1684, the year the Thames froze over for two months and a fair was held on its frozen waters. The coldest of the last century have been 1940, 1947, 1963 and 1979.

Daily meteorological records began in the seventeenth century. Britain’s coldest include 1739–40, when snow started on Christmas Day and lasted to February 17, with temperatures as low as –9°C. London, usually one of the least snowy areas of the country, recorded thirty-nine days of snow. Two full months where the average temperature was less than 0°C were recorded.

1836 was one of the coldest but also a winter of floods, avalanches and stranded rail passengers. 1927–8 was a white Christmas, and with one of the heaviest snowfalls of the twentieth century. In 1933, forty-eight hours of continual snowfall were recorded.

The north, which takes the brunt of winter weather, did so especially in 1940, and was particularly cold. Four feet of snow fell in Sheffield, and the Thames froze for the first time since 1880. An ice storm hit the south on January 28.

The long winter of 1947 began in late January and lasted until mid-March. Many villages around the country were snowed in and thousands were cut off for days. Not especially cold, but a good one for snow, with not a single area of the country that didn’t record snowfall from January 22 to March 17. Many snowfalls measured 60cm or more, with Scotland recording drifts of seven metres. At one point the armed forces were brought in to rescue people.

1952–3 saw the highest winter loss of life this country has ever known during peacetime. The smog in London accounted for 12,000 deaths. 1962–3 is still the coldest I remember, and the coldest weather for 200 years. The sea froze in some parts of the country, and villages were cut off. Animals froze in their fields because farmers couldn’t gain access. A temperature of –22°C was recorded in Braemar in Scotland. The mean maximum temperature in January was –2°C, making it the coldest month since the 1800s. The Guardian reported that a farm in Dartmoor was cut off by snowdrifts for sixty-six days, and the owners had to be rescued by troops. It wasn’t until March that the temperatures climbed above –5°C. Glasgow recorded its first white Christmas since the 30s.

The scent of winter

Scent always seems particularly intense to me in winter. The smell of a toasted crumpet on a frosty morning. The sap from a branch, snapped in the garden, or of lemon zest grated in the kitchen, all seem especially vivid, heightened at this time of year. The cold air seems to illuminate scent.

Well, yes, and no. The cold actually reduces our ability to detect smells. Our body’s capacity to pick up the scent of something reduces on cold days partly because our odour receptors, all three to four hundred of them, protect themselves against freezing by burying themselves deeper in the nose. They snuggle down and are less ‘receptive’. It is like they can’t be bothered to get out of bed.

There is also less to smell in the winter, because odour molecules, denser in the cold, move more slowly in the air in the cool weather. So we actually smell fewer things. This may explain why the smells we do notice, the smoke from burning leaves or of roasting nuts, of a pot of marmalade bubbling on the hob or the Christmas tree being brought into the house, is more pronounced. Our nose is less confused with other smells.

Some things actually smell cold. Snow, obviously, but also peppermint, cucumber, yoghurt, ginger and juniper. They make us feel cool. But there are also smells that don’t actually smell of winter, but simply make us think of it, things that we connect with this season alone. A tray of mince pies in the oven; an orange studded with cloves; dumplings swelling in the damp wood of a Chinese steamer; or a shallow dish of potato Dauphinoise, calm and creamy, baking. There are the winter herbs, of course, bay, rosemary and thyme, the aromatics that weave their magic in stock or meat juices over time rather than the instant hit of torn basil or coriander. The comforting ‘sugar smells’ of warm treacle, toffee, butterscotch and liquorice. Of marmalade and caramel.

I don’t like the smell of mulled wine, it reminds me of cheap pot-pourri. But the zest of an orange mingled with the warmth of cloves is certainly a part of any catalogue of winter scents. All the more when it comes in the form of a Seville orange. The lumpy, bitter sort needed for classic duck à l’orange and for marmalade. More pleasing, I think, is that of orange blossom, preferably caught on a breeze rather than from a bottle. (Too much, it reminds me of Savlon, and childhood grazes and cuts.) If ever you are in Sorrento in Italy in the winter, head for the nearest lemon tree, often overhanging the path, and its white, star-like blossom. There is an olfactory treat in store.

One of the loveliest things anyone has said about my home is that it always smells nice. I hardly ever notice it, to be honest, but thinking about it they are probably right. In winter there will almost certainly be woodsmoke and beeswax polish.

Most of the things designed to make our houses smell festive are uniformly nauseous. They are the very essence of the fake Christmas. Those ‘Yule-scented’ candles, usually red, that smell of cinnamon and orange, or plug-in room fragrances that smell like cheap air-freshener. Hideous. A real Christmas will smell of itself without us trying to evoke it.

The tree, of course. The scent of the tree will vary according to the variety. The smell comes from a cocktail of compounds, including a-pinene and ß-pinene, in which conifers are particularly abundant, and bornyl acetate, known as the heart of pine. Balsam, Douglas and Nordmann firs are particularly high in the balsamic and camphor compounds. The reason the tree smells so strongly when you first bring it into the house is because the sap continues to rise in a freshly-cut tree. As the cut tree ages, the sap stops moving and the smell fades.

There is a difference between the smell of winter and winter smells. The latter tend to be induced by us – the smell of a potato baking, of logs burning or of hot chocolate. But winter has its own smell: step outside on a frosty morning and you are smelling the cold. That scent of smoke we detect despite the lack of a fire nearby is due to the fact that smoke doesn’t rise as well in cold air, so any there is will stay closer to the ground.

Evergreens, freshly cut, give subtle seasonal notes. Holly, mistletoe and laurels all work. Eucalyptus will make your home smell like granddad’s chest rub. I would have to add the sweet, Barbara Cartland fragrance from a bowl of hyacinths too, though really only from a nostalgia point of view. My father always insisting on having a bowl of them ready in time for Christmas. He would force them in a dark cupboard under the stairs, then in the airing cupboard. He usually managed to get them to perform on cue.

Bay shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, being one of the more fragrant evergreens, but I have only just realised its seasonal notes. The essential oil made from its leaves (I am talking bay laurel – Laurus nobilis – here) is rather like having a little bottle of Christmas around. A few drops on a saucer or an oil burner, or dribbled on to a few dry leaves and twigs in a bowl, will scent the house subtly for several hours. There are some good bay candles around too.

Fire

Fire has always been at the heart of it all. The place where everyone gathered, for warmth and for safety. Flames to warm us from the cold, but also to ward off danger. Flames to keep wild animals at bay. Flames to sit round and read, a place for conversation. Now a real fire is a rare and wonderful thing. It is hard work: the carrying of logs, the lighting of kindling and taking the ashes out, but nothing can match it.

A fire is a magical thing. There are those who worship them, literally. Zoroastrians, some Vedic branches of Hindu religion, the Romans and the Greeks have all at some time worshipped the fire or the hearth. The purity of the fire, its ability to render food from the inedible to the edible and the protection it affords, are all worthy of worship.

I have two fires burning at home. On a winter’s night, the room changes the instant they are lit. Bricks and mortar transcend from house to home. The fire lit, the mood of the room changes too. Shoes are removed, feet are put up on sofas, we tuck ourselves up. In truth, after a day’s work, we sleep too. Friends joke that within ten minutes of me lighting the fire, they are asleep. Cosy.

There is much to watch in the flames. We say they ‘dance’. And with good reason. The flames flicker and wave, float and soar as the mood takes them. Sometimes the embers are even more beautiful than the flames. I could watch them for hours.

We shouldn’t ignore the ashes. You can use a small amount of them on the garden. But they should be ashes from wood, not coal, and shouldn’t be used near blueberries, azaleas or potatoes, which don’t like a high pH. Burned wood doesn’t contain nitrogen, but it is a source of potassium, phosphorus and calcium. Useful for raising the pH of the soil if it is low, by which I mean below pH 6.

There is a little Japanese onsen I visit. It takes a while to get there, as there is no rail connection. The wooden building is hidden in the hills, and is probably my favourite place on Earth. It is undeniably beautiful, with its lovingly polished wooden floors and moss-covered garden. What sets it firmly as the place where I want my ashes scattered is the constant scent of smoke. It filters through the house but also through the gardens – little trails of blue-grey cross your path as you walk along the stone paths, or warm the wooden arbours where you sit and read.

What we burn affects the smell of the fire and also the heat it gives. My parents burned coal and logs. I have never liked the smell of a coal fire, preferring to use logs. You need kindling to light a fire – thin, crisp sticks of wood that are, crucially, dry. A few sheets of newspaper rolled into loose balls tucked among them, and then some larger logs to burn slowly. The reason most fires go out is because the logs are too large, or there is not enough air. A loose arrangement of scrunched paper, kindling and small logs, no thicker than your arm, is a good start. Newspaper lights more easily than the paper from glossy magazines. (My stepmother used to roll up newspaper, then tie a loose knot in each roll. Worked a treat.) A taper, if you have such a thing, is better, safer, than a match or a lighter.

Although my parents and grandmother kept a fire going, almost constantly, in the hearth, the idea is not a practical one for most of us. A wood-burning stove is one answer. The flames hidden behind glass, they can be left burning safely while you are out. They are clean and easy to deal with. They are the heart of many a Scandinavian and Japanese home, and are becoming popular in Britain too. A wood-burner has a constant glow, the low golden flame that greets and warms and toasts us. It is my next project.

Fire has always been precious, particularly when it was the only form of heating or cooking. Therefore taxable. In 1662, on May 19, a hearth tax was introduced, where householders had to pay two shillings for each hearth. Payment was twice a year, once at Michaelmas and again at Lady Day, March 25. The poor and charitable institutions were exempt. The tax was abolished by William III in 1689. Good for him.

For me the cold months are the best of times. And at the heart of those months lies Christmas.

Celebrating Christmas

Christmas is celebrated by Christians and non-Christians alike. It is a cultural event as much as a religious one, and its history is confused. Many of the festival’s observances date from pre-Christian times, and those who celebrate it as a purely religious event might be surprised to find how much of the festivities hails from pagan times. We celebrated winter long before we celebrated Christmas. (Saturnalia was the Roman festival in honour of the God Saturn, with feasting lasting from December 17 to the 23rd.) Happily atheist, I celebrate Christmas as much as anyone, with food and gifts and, yes, carols, but I fully accept that much of my own celebration has a religious history.

I go along with the religious details of Christmas because they have become interwoven with the cultural side of the festivities. The Nativity is as much a part of Christmas as Santa Claus and the pagan habit of bringing holly and mistletoe into the house. It is almost impossible to separate the pagan from the pious, and why would I want to anyway when December 25 was chosen simply because it landed in the middle of what was already a pagan festival?

Christmas is a vast steaming pudding of Christianity, folklore, paganism, tradition and commerce. Those of us who are part of a tolerant, open-minded and intelligent society can make our Christmas whatever we want it to be. To put it another way, we can have our cake and eat it.

The best of Christmases, the worst of Christmases

We tend to remember Christmases with exemplary clarity. Something unusual that happens over these twelve days at the heart of winter is unlikely ever to be forgotten. Even the most innocent event is almost guaranteed to be re-lived with a certain annual glee. My own catalogue of unlikely Yuletide events has involved a Christmas Eve where I forgot to tell the family I was coming home, only to find they had left for the week (I was taken in, waif-like, by generous neighbours). The year the cake sat half-iced because I had run out of icing sugar. The Christmas morning I realised the goose was too long for the oven and had to be cut in half. Then there was the time the cats pulled the ten-foot tree on to the floor, smashing my much-loved collection of decorations (and frightening the life out of themselves into the bargain). Then there was the Christmas Mum died.

For me Christmas is the heart and soul of the cold months, the jewel in the crown of midwinter, a time to feast and to give. But it is, after all is said and done, just a few days that sit at the heart of the season. Three months of our year in which to offer warmth, welcome and something good to eat to all.

1 NOVEMBER

A toast to the winter solstice

‘What can I get you to drink?’ Never has a simple question been so bursting with delicious possibilities. The word ‘welcome’ put instantly, joyously into motion.

It is true, I do love pouring someone a drink. In my time I have worked in a country pub (all gumboots, roaring fires and golden labradors) and behind the bar of a grande dame five-star hotel. You probably didn’t know that. Whether it is as simple as a cup of coffee, a beer served in a small, ice-cold glass or a home-made fruit liqueur that has been steeping in my pantry for six weeks, I get quite a buzz handing someone a glass of ‘welcome’.

Drinks are different in winter. I often want something sweeter, darker and more alcoholic when the weather is cold. This is the only time of year I have a fancy for sweet wines, by which I mean the muscats and Pedro Ximénez sherries, the fruit-based eau-de-vie of quince and plum and the sloe gin that light up the drinks cupboard like the stained-glass window at Midnight Mass.

There are drinks I make especially for a winter’s night. A tiny glass of apricot brandy, glowing like a candle, the fruit steeping quietly for a month with orange zest and star anise. A liqueur made with dried figs and fennel seed, and another of sticky prunes in sweet wine. Served very cold, in diminutive glasses, the drinks warm, soothe and delight. The other contenders are the hot drinks, the mulled ciders and spiced mixtures. Drinks that will melt anybody’s frost.

The best known of cold-weather tipples is probably the least well regarded. I speak of mulled wine. I like the idea of this ancient winter ritual (the instant bonhomie of sweet spices, rosy cheeks and hot red wine) more than the drink itself. Wonderful, I think, is a spiced punch of hot cider or apple juice. This is the drink whose cinnamon-scented fumes fill the air on Guy Fawkes Night, Hallowe’en and in many of Europe’s Christmas markets. The stir-up of ingredients – baked apples, brandy, cider, cloves, cinnamon and allspice – actually makes sense. A drink with a winter nose and too good to be left for wassailing. I shall start right here.

A hot apple drink for a cold night

Slice an apple in half, then into quarters, discard the core and pips, then cut each piece of apple into two thick segments. Warm 3 tablespoons of apple juice in a shallow pan, add 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and lower in the apples. Let them cook until soft, stopping before they fall apart. Remove from the heat.

In a deep, stainless steel saucepan put 100ml of brandy, 400ml of cloudy apple juice, a clementine, 3 cloves, a stick of cinnamon, 3 allspice berries gently bashed with a heavy weight and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, so the cooking continues at a gentle bubble for fifteen minutes. Ladle into four glasses, dropping a few of the cooked apple slices into each drink.

A welcoming drink, may I suggest, is not just about other people. Something good in a glass can be a rather lovely way to welcome our own arrival home. God knows, we deserve it. Finding a rare moment of peace and quiet, there are surely few greater joys than pouring ourselves a drink as we curl up on the sofa with a book after a long hard day. It might only be a stolen few minutes, but I regard this time as deeply grounding. Something that, just for once, is about no one but ourselves.

I was brought up in a family that drank sherry. Not a chilled manzanilla with a dish of crisp, salty almonds or an amontillado the colour of amber, but Bristol Cream sherry, sweet as fudge. We drank it from a glass called a schooner and had it with Twiglets (in the days when Twiglets were long and thin, rather than dumpy and puffed up with air as they are now). Occasionally there would be a bottle of Italian fizz and at Christmas my father would make snowballs with advocaat and maraschino cherries for everyone. To this day I would hardly call myself much of a drinker, but pouring something into a glass for someone remains one of life’s pleasures.

This week seems a prudent time to put drinks down for Christmas and the chilly weeks that follow. There are few fresh fruits, save the pear and the quince, that will make a fruit liqueur dazzling enough to show its face in candlelight at Christmas. So I turn to the store cupboard, and especially to the stoppered jars of dried fruits, the ‘Christmas pudding fruits’, to make drinks that will shine a light on the dark nights.

The suggestions that follow are meant for any cold night but are particularly useful at Christmas. I also include uses for the fruits that remain after the liquor has been drunk. Fat, alcohol-soaked little fruits, each one pissed as a newt, that can be served as dessert.

Three dried fruit drinks for winter

Apricot, orange and anise

Deep, golden fruit notes here. Rather delightful after dinner, with crisp, dark chocolate thins.

Enough for 20 small glasses

dried apricots – 500g

an orange

whole star anise – 4

brandy – 300ml

granulated sugar – 150g

sweet white wine – 300ml

Put the apricots into a stainless steel saucepan. Using a vegetable peeler, slice thin strips of zest from the orange and drop them into the pan. Add the star anise, brandy and sugar and bring to the boil. Stir until the sugar has dissolved.

Into a sterilised preserving jar, spoon the apricots and star anise, then pour in the liquor (breathing in at this point is highly recommended) and top up with the sweet white wine. Seal and place in a cool, dark place for a good fortnight (better still, a month) before pouring the golden liquor into glasses.

The fruit

Once the ravishing, honey-hued liqueur is finished (and you have dried your tears) you will no doubt want to use the plumped-up fruits for something. My first suggestion is to serve them, whole and fat with alcohol, in a beautiful glass with a jug of cream at their side. Even better, perhaps, is to serve a thick, strained yoghurt with them and a scattering of toasted, flaked almonds.

Figs with maple syrup and anise

Christmas pudding in a glass. Though perfect for Guy Fawkes too if you start it early enough. The remaining fruit – little bundles of joy, soft as a pillow, juicy as a xiaolongbao dumpling – should not be wasted.

Enough for 20 small glasses

granulated sugar – 250g

maple syrup – 100ml

dry white wine – 750ml

dried aniseed – ½ teaspoon

dried figs – 500g

vodka – 250ml

Put the granulated sugar into a medium-sized, stainless steel saucepan and add the maple syrup, white wine and aniseeds. Cut half the figs in half, then put all the figs into the pan. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and let the figs simmer for twenty minutes, until soft and plump and bloated with wine.

Spoon the figs into a sterilised storage jar, then pour over the liquor. Pour in the vodka, then seal and store in a cool, dry place for three or four weeks, or better still, until Christmas.

The fruit

Later, once the liquid is gone, you would be wise to use the alcohol-laden figs for something. Two or three hidden in the depths of an apple crumble are fun, as they would be in an apple pie. (I often have one or two, straight from the jar, as a treat when I have finished the ironing.) They also make a fine addition to a slice of plain cake, taken with coffee, mid-morning, and served as a dessert with a spoonful of deepest yellow clotted cream. The thick sort you can cut with a knife.

Muscat prunes

You can most certainly drink the mahogany-coloured liquor here, but I really make these marinated fruits as a little extra, something to serve alongside chocolate mousse or milky panna cotta.

Serves 6

prunes – 250g

golden sultanas – 125g

muscat or moscatel – 750ml

Put the prunes and sultanas into a sterilised jar, then pour over the muscat or moscatel. Seal tightly and leave for a month before drinking.

A treat in store

Once you have poured the liquor into glasses, you are left, happily, with a jar full of delicious detritus. You could put the sultanas and prunes into an elegant glass and serve them with a spoonful of vanilla-scented whipped cream and a tiny silver spoon. Or you could spoon the fruit over vanilla ice cream, or frozen yoghurt, letting its syrup trickle down the frozen ice. I wouldn’t exactly say no to finding a pile of these sodden fruits sharing a plate with some fluffy ricotta cakes hot from the frying pan on a Sunday morning.

We can get more adventurous with our little fruit bon-bons, using them to shake up a dish of stewed apple for breakfast; serving them alongside a slice of sugar-crusted sponge cake or with home-made vanilla custard. The wine-drenched fruits can be tucked into the almond filling for a frangipane tart or used in a trifle of layered crumbled amaretti, custard and mascarpone.

Possibly the best idea of all came about quite by accident. After a long day of photography for the book, James and I sat down with a glass of the apricot and fig liqueurs, accompanied by the plumped-up fruits. On the table was some blue cheese – a Gorgonzola, though it could just as well have been Stilton, Stichelton or any of the other blues. We nibbled. The marrying of the blue cheese and the velvety, wine-filled fruits was quite simply gorgeous.

4 NOVEMBER

The joy of stuffing

Goose-fat roast potatoes aside, I consider stuffing to be the most delicious of all accompaniments to the Sunday roast. A sausage meat stuffing made with browned onions, bacon, thyme and dried apricots; a couscous version with red onion, rosemary and raisins; another with minced turkey, lardo – the cured, herbed strips of pork fat from Italy – fennel seed and cranberries. I like my stuffings rough-edged, generously seasoned and deeply savoury. A little sweetness from dried fruits perhaps, but onions and herbs, much lemon zest and black pepper are essential.

There are two ways of cooking stuffing: inside and outside the bird. Each way has its disciples. Roasting the mixture inside the cavity of the turkey or goose means that the juices of the meat trickle down through the forcemeat as it cooks, imbuing the stuffing with the essence of the bird. The downside is that in order to cook the stuffing properly, it may mean overcooking the bird, and, should you pack it in too tightly, the heat will never penetrate fully, thus risking neither the inside of the bird nor the stuffing cooking thoroughly. Dare I mention salmonella?

Cooking the stuffing outside the roast, in the same roasting tin, means there won’t be enough of it, and its presence interferes with the gravy and roast potatoes. It’s pretty much a non-starter. The third way is to cook it separately in another dish. It works from a safety point of view, and you will get tantalising, crusty nuggets on the stuffing’s surface, but this method loses the opportunity of soaking it with the juices from the bird as it cooks. I get round this by spooning some of the fat and flavouring from the roasting tin over the stuffing as it cooks.

Stuffings, forcemeats, call them what you will, have gone out of fashion. I suggest that this is a disgraceful state of affairs. Imagine the flavour in a ball of sausage meat that you have seasoned with sweet golden onions, thyme and rosemary, lemon zest, chopped bacon and juniper, then spooned goose fat over as it roasted. Or a tray of stuffing made with minced turkey, bacon, lemon, parsley and Parmesan you have left rough on top, so the ridges and furrows brown crustily.

I would give up the sprouts, the chestnuts, even the little sausages and bacon of the extended family roast rather than go without generous amounts of stuffing. It is also the icing on the big fat cake that is Christmas dinner. The bit which, if I am completely honest, I prefer to the meat itself.

And, of course, there should be plenty, that goes without saying. But this is not gluttony – there should be enough so that we can eat it cold the next day, cut like a cake and layered with sliced chicken, goose or turkey in a sandwich on chewy bread. And further, I need some to eat with slices of cold roast meat, a potato and spring onion salad and bright purple pickles.

Turkey, lardo and fennel seed stuffing, cranberry orange sauce

On this late autumn night, wet and cold from sweeping up leaves from the garden paths, I make plump rissoles of minced turkey with lardo and chilli flakes for supper. As we tuck in around the kitchen table, we decide that they would make an excellent stuffing too, to be baked around the bird or, more conveniently, in a separate tin. We bought the lardo, the silky white fat that is such a treat served on rough toast with a trickle of olive oil and some crumbled rosemary, from an Italian grocer’s. It’s not difficult to track down. Buy it in a block so you can grate it. Failing that, get it in thin slices and chop them finely. The gorgeous fat will melt and moisten the turkey meat, which has no real fat of its own.

Enough for 4

fennel seeds – 2 teaspoons

minced turkey – 500g

dried chilli flakes – 2 teaspoons

dried breadcrumbs – 60g

lardo – 150g

olive oil – 2 tablespoons

For the sauce:

cranberry jelly or sauce – 3 heaped tablespoons

orange juice – 50ml

orange zest – 2 teaspoons

cranberries, fresh or frozen – 100g

Toast the fennel seeds for a couple of minutes in a dry frying pan, then tip them into a large mixing bowl. Put the turkey mince, chilli flakes and breadcrumbs into the bowl, then coarsely grate in the lardo. Season generously with both salt and black pepper, then mix thoroughly.

Shape the stuffing mixture into 8 large balls, then place them on a tray and refrigerate for twenty-five minutes. Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4.

To make the sauce, put the cranberry jelly or sauce into a small saucepan and place over a moderate heat, then add the orange juice and zest and the cranberries and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat so the mixture simmers gently and leave for five or six minutes, until the berries have softened a little. You should be able to squash them easily between thumb and forefinger. Remove from the heat and leave to settle.

Warm the olive oil in a shallow pan and fry the stuffing balls, moving them round as each side browns, until they are golden brown all over. Transfer the balls to a baking dish, sitting them snugly together, then spoon over the cranberry sauce. Bake for thirty minutes.

Pears, clove and orange granita

Carried away with their quiet beauty, I seem to have bought rather a lot of pears. I do this with peaches too. And avocados. Damsons as well. Fruits or vegetables caught at a perfect moment. Sometimes, I simply cannot resist. (We will be feasting on pears for a week.)

Today, a refreshing dessert, scented with sweet spices. The timing is tricky, with pears often taking anything from fifteen to fifty minutes to soften. I check them regularly with a skewer as they cook. Pears are often at their most delicious when on the edge of collapse. So tender they require a careful hand to transfer them to the serving plate.

Serves 4

orange juice – 1 litre

caster sugar – 100g

cloves – 4

half a cinnamon stick

pears, large – 2

Pour the orange juice into a non-reactive saucepan, add the caster sugar, place over a moderate heat and leave until the sugar has dissolved, stirring occasionally. Add the cloves and cinnamon stick and bring almost to the boil.

Peel the pears, slice each one in half from stem to base, then scoop out the cores using a teaspoon or, if you have one, a melon baller. Lower the pears into the juice in the pan and simmer gently until soft. Ripe pears will take about twenty minutes, hard fruit considerably longer. They are ready when they will easily take the point of a knife or skewer.

Lift the pears carefully from the pan with a draining spoon and place on a plate. Spoon over a little of the orange juice to keep them moist, then cover and refrigerate.

Chill the seasoned juice as quickly as possible. (Pouring the juice into a bowl, then resting it in a large bowl of ice cubes will speed up matters.) When the juice is cold, remove the cloves and cinnamon, pour into a shallow plastic freezer box and freeze for at least four hours.

When the juice is almost frozen, pull the tines of a table fork through it, roughing up the surface, then digging a little deeper, making large ice crystals in the process. Take care not to mash the crystals too much, leaving them as large as possible. Put the granita back into the freezer.

To serve, put a pear half on each dessert plate or shallow dish, pile some of the granita into the centre and serve immediately. You should have enough granita over for the next day.

5 NOVEMBER

Fire and baked pears

We have been lighting fires around this time for centuries. Since ancient times Celtic people have gathered around bonfires on October 31 and November 1 to celebrate Samhain, the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter. We burn candles in hollowed-out pumpkins on All Hallows, and since 1605 we have celebrated the failure of Guy Fawkes’s attempt to blow up the House of Lords and the protestant King James by lighting fires and setting off fireworks.

The celebrations have changed since I was a kid. Hallowe’en has turned into a pantomime of extortion and petty vandalism dressed up as ‘Trick or Treat’. The rickety piles of branches that stood quietly throughout the countryside, ready to be lit on November 5, are fewer. The back-garden firework parties have very much disappeared too. Spectacular displays and vast communal bonfires are now more organised and often run by local councils and bonfire societies. Traditional effigies are still displayed and burned, occasionally of Pope Paul V, head of the Catholic Church in the time of Guy Fawkes, but more often than not it is images of contemporary villains, Savile, Trump and Farage, which we now set alight. (There are so many I don’t know which to choose.)

The climate seems different too. The remains of childhood fireworks, black with soot, were regularly rescued from spiky grass white with frost. Yet I can’t remember the last time frost coincided with Bonfire Night.

In my part of London the fireworks start mid-afternoon. Barely visible against the milky grey sky, their startling beauty is wasted. At twilight, the cascades of pink, silver and green explode high above, sometimes to cheers of delight. I have never quite understood the draw of fireworks, it all seems a bit of a waste of money to me, but a bonfire is a different matter. The smell and crackle of dry twigs, the flames, smoke and glowing embers have always held a certain magic for me, and I am never happier than when there is a fire in the hearth.

There is no party tonight, no fire lit in the garden, just the occasional glances at a particularly extravagant cascade of lights over the East End. Instead, we sit round the fire eating fat Italian sausages, creamed leeks and beans, and to follow, a bowl of ice cream with searingly hot marmalade pears, whose glowing bittersweet sauce tastes like cinder toffee.

Leeks, beans and Italian sausage

This is one of those good-natured recipes that can be multiplied successfully for large parties, or made earlier and reheated as necessary.

Serves 2

leeks, medium – 3

butter – 30g

water – 100ml

olive oil – 2 tablespoons, or a little pork fat

plump sausages – 4 (400g)

vegetable stock – 250ml

cannellini or haricot beans – 1 × 400g tinned

parsley, chopped – a handful

Cut the leeks into rounds about 1cm in length and wash them in plenty of cold water. Bring the butter and water to the boil in a wide pan with a lid, then add the leeks. Cover with a piece of greaseproof paper, or baking parchment, and a lid. The paper will encourage the leeks to steam rather than fry.

Warm the oil or a little pork fat in a frying pan and cook the sausages, slowly, over a moderate heat. Let them brown nicely on all sides.

Leave the leeks to cook for eight or nine minutes, until they are tender enough to take the point of a skewer with little pressure. Pour the vegetable stock into the pan and continue cooking for two minutes, then tip the leeks and their cooking liquor into a blender and process until almost smooth. (It is important not to fill the blender jug more than halfway. You may need to do this in more than one batch.)

Return the leeks to the pan, then drain and rinse the beans and fold them into the leeks. Stir in the parsley, and spoon on to plates with the sausages.

Marmalade pears with vanilla ice cream

This truly gorgeous recipe is, I suppose, a new take on my baked pears with Marsala (Tender, Volume II) but with a deep, syrupy bitter-sweetness, reminiscent of old-fashioned black treacle toffee. The hot, translucent pears and the glossy apple and marmalade sauce are wonderful with vanilla ice cream. There is a point, after about forty-five minutes, when you need to watch the progress of the sauce carefully, lest it turn to toffee. A non-stick roasting pan is essential.

Serves 4

pears – 3 medium

apple juice – 200ml

orange marmalade – 150g

Marsala, sweet or dry – 1 tablespoon

honey – 1 heaped tablespoon

vanilla ice cream, to serve – 8 scoops

Set the oven at 190°C/Gas 5. Peel the pears (I think you should because the skin can be tough, but it is up to you), cut them in half, and scoop out their cores. Cut each half into three, then place them in a non-stick roasting tin. In a small saucepan, bring the apple juice, marmalade, Marsala and honey to the boil, then remove from the heat and pour over the pears.

Bake the pears in the preheated oven for twenty minutes, then turn them over. At this point they will look decidedly uninteresting, but carry on anyway. Let the pears bake for a further twenty minutes, then watch them carefully. The sauce will be bubbling now, the colour of amber and rising up the pears, almost covering them. Test them for tenderness – a small knife should slide through them effortlessly. They should be translucent and butter-soft. If they aren’t quite ready or if the sauce isn’t syrupy, give them a further five minutes.

Let them rest for five minutes. Serve them with the vanilla ice cream.

6 NOVEMBER

Making gnudi

I sweep up the leaves, most of which I recognise. My parents’ gift of The Observer Book of Trees was clearly not lost on me. There are those of the fig, like giants’ hands; the feather-like golden robinia; the oval greengage and the smaller Ouillins gage, whose tiny leaflets are brown-freckled, like its fruit. There are the green leaves of the Doyenne du Comice pear, with their lichen-like splodges of rust, and those of the Discovery apple that somehow manage to be larger than its fruit. The honeysuckles are crisp already, like the tiny pieces of pork crackling I used to find in a bowl on the butcher’s counter as a kid. And the horse-chestnuts have already found their way over the rooftops from the lane in front of the house. Heaven knows how. Others will stay put for a while – those of the jasmine and rose and white lacecap hydrangeas.

Sweeping the leaves is a thankless task – there will be just as many tomorrow. But better that than the boredom of a lawn. They go into net sacks to rot down. Soaking them, just occasionally with the watering can, helps to speed up the process. Once crumbly, they will be put on to the beds. Leafmould is treasure to a gardener, a bag of gold with which to treat his plants. There is a little science to it, and a wee bit of gardener’s law. Hornbeam, oak and birch, lime and cherry leaves will rot down within eighteen months; horse-chestnut, beech, magnolia, hawthorn, maple and sycamore will take longer because of their high fibre content. A shredder would speed up the composting process, but I really don’t have the room.

After Christmas, there will be the tree to get rid of. Pines and conifers take a good couple of years to rot down and so shouldn’t be mixed with the others. They need to be left in the open and turned regularly with a garden fork. That done, they are best used only to mulch other acid-loving plants such as heather. Having not an inch of garden to spare, it might be more prudent to leave my tree out for the council, who collect and compost them for us.

It is too early, but I have been mulling over what to give the vegetarians for Christmas lunch when we are tucking into our grilled scallops. (I know it’s going to be that because I did it last year, with pancetta and a smooth pea purée, and everyone loved its lightness and savour.) The vague plan is to serve a light pasta dish first, the little pillows of ricotta and Parmesan known as gnudi. My vegetarian friends are not hardcore, so I don’t have to worry about mixing up their Parmesan with my Parmesan.

The gnudi take minutes to make, but absolutely must be dried on a tray in the fridge overnight, snuggled down in a deep snowdrift of fine cornmeal. Skip that stage (always a temptation) and they will dissolve in the cooking water. You will have no gnudi, no dinner. I choose them because they are light, simple and special. They are not hard to make but they do require a light hand. I make them myself because I enjoy shaping them and lowering the flattened balls into the cornmeal almost more than anything else, and anyway, you can’t buy a decent commercial version of them for love nor money.

Gnudi require the hands of an angel. You must treat the mixture of fresh, white ricotta and grated Parmesan as delicately as if it were a Christmas bauble, which in this case I suppose it is. This is cooking with the utmost respect and care, and I love it.

The usual accompanying sauce is something with cheese and cream, though I have had others. My thought is that such a recipe is too rich and heavy for purpose, so I am keen to have a go at something else. In my head are ideas for both a creamy spinach sauce and a sort of avocado sauce, made with lemons, basil and olive oil. The Hass variety of avocado – the one with the crocodile skin – is at its best in the winter. I shall make the gnudi today and have a go at the sauce tomorrow.

Gnudi

My heart sinks when I see a recipe that takes two days, but this is an exception. We are talking minutes of work rather than hours. My gnudi recipe is based on that of the wonderful April Bloomfield, whose own version has become a permanent and much-loved part of her menu at the Spotted Pig in New York. Mine have a little more Parmesan to ricotta than is the norm, and my impatience means they get only twenty-four hours in the fridge. April leaves hers for at least thirty-six (and in the quest for perfection, I’m sure she’s right).

Makes 20 small gnudi, serves 4

ricotta – 250g

a little nutmeg

Parmesan – 40g

fine semolina – 250g or more

Put the ricotta into a bowl. Grate a little nutmeg finely over, then add a very little salt. Grate the Parmesan finely and gently stir in. Have a baking sheet ready, covered with a thick layer of the semolina.

Using a teaspoon, scoop up a generous heap of mixture and make it into a small ball, rolling it in your hands. (A dusting of semolina on your hands will help.) You can leave the gnudi round if you like, but I prefer to press them into a slightly oval shape. Drop the ball on to the semolina-lined tray, then roll it back and forth until it is coated. Continue with the rest of the mixture. You will have roughly 20 little gnudi.

Once they are all rolled, shake the remaining semolina over them, then put the tray in the fridge. Don’t be tempted to cover them. Leave overnight.

None of this solves our own dinner situation. So we go out. I feel somewhat blessed (not to say a wee bit smug) that so many good restaurants seem to be opening up on my doorstep. A dozen cracking places to spend an evening and all within walking distance.

7 NOVEMBER

A trip to the forest, and those gnudi

A couple of Novembers ago I was asked to choose the Christmas tree for Trafalgar Square. Well, I helped. We filmed the occasion for television. We had taken the train to Flåm, in Norway, a small village and port at the end of Sognefjord, the world’s deepest fjord. It is easy to worship this landscape, with its crags, forests and crashing waterfalls. By turns lush with forest, or stark in tones of charcoal, grey and white, it is both somehow melancholy and invigorating. The latter especially when you poke your head (stupidly) out of the carriage window and feel the bite of icy air on your face.

By the time we got to Myrdal snow had started to fall. The first that year, each flake as soft and white as goose fat. As the little train arrived in Flåm, the snow turned to heavy, wretched sleet. The crew unpacked their kit with rapidly numbing fingers and filmed for what seemed like hours. They filmed me trudging endlessly through the driving sleet; soaked through to the skin; slipping clumsily on the icy track; barely able to see two feet in front of me; my lips almost unable to move with cold. But mostly they filmed me getting quietly more and more pissed off. Snow is one thing. But driving sleet, especially when you wear glasses, is another thing altogether. I should add that none of that footage ever saw the light of day. Such are the joys of television.

Next morning, we woke to find most of the snow gone, the sun peeping shyly over the mountains, the sky as clear as iced water. We set off for the forest, to find the rangers and, hopefully, our tree. There is nothing accidental about choosing The Tree. You don’t just stumble upon it and think, ‘Oh, that’ll do for Trafalgar Square.’ This is an important tree, an annual gift from the people of Norway each year since 1947, a token of gratitude for our support during the Second World War. Possible candidates are marked when little more than saplings, then monitored for decades. The tree, a Norway spruce, must not be crowded, so lesser examples that get too close are removed, allowing the chosen tree’s branches access to even light, the chance for all sides to grow symmetrically, its trunk to grow straight. As we walk through the forest we spot the trees that might grace Trafalgar Square in 2030 or 2035.

‘Which one do you think is best?’ I am asked. We pick one of the right age, height and girth. It’s a tree casting session. I am given a choice from three or four that have been shortlisted, having been spotted like child prodigies and nurtured towards stardom. The chosen fir has been growing for about seventy years – this we check by drilling a long, pencil-thin sample from its trunk, as a cheesemaker might check the blueing progress of a truckle of Stilton. We count the growth rings one by one.

Next, there follows a phone call to the mayor for permission – a courtesy – then the rangers set about felling. Next time I see it, on the first Thursday in December, the vast tree has been shipped and manoeuvred into position outside the National Gallery and carols are being sung around it by the choir from St-Martin-in-the-Fields, barely a cassock’s throw away. The Norwegian Ambassador is there, as are the mayors of Oslo and Westminster. The tree is lit in traditional Norwegian style, with five hundred simple white lights, its base now garlanded, delightfully, with poems specially commissioned by the Poetry Society.

A few weeks later, just before Twelfth Night, my beloved tree is removed, chipped and composted.

And two sauces for the gnudi

I rescue yesterday’s gnudi from the fridge. I pat them, tenderly, to check their firmness.

Watercress and avocado pesto

avocados, ripe – 2

a lemon

pine kernels – 50g

basil leaves – a handful (about 10g)

olive oil – about 8–10 tablespoons

watercress – 50g

Parmesan (if you wish. I don’t.)

gnudi – 20, small

Halve, stone and peel the avocados. Halve and juice the lemon. Put the pine nuts into a food processor and blend briefly, until they are coarsely crushed, then add the avocados and basil leaves and process, adding as much olive oil and lemon as you need to produce a loose, bright green paste.

Wash the watercress and remove any tough stalks. Grate the Parmesan finely if you are using it.

Bring a pan of water to the boil, deep and generously salted, as you would to cook pasta. Carefully lower the gnudi, a few at a time, into the boiling water. When the balls float to the surface they are ready. This is generally between three and five minutes.

Add the watercress to the sauce, folding it gently through the green paste, then spoon into a serving dish. Lift the gnudi from the water with a draining spoon, place them on the avocado sauce and serve, should you wish, with grated Parmesan on the side.

Spinach and pecorino

spinach – 150g

double cream – 350ml

pecorino romano – 100g, grated

pea shoots – a handful

Wash the spinach and soften it briefly in a large pan with a lid, letting the leaves cook for a minute or two in their own steam, turning them once or twice. When the spinach is bright green and wilted, remove from the pan, squeeze almost dry, then chop it quite finely.

Warm the cream in a saucepan, add the finely chopped spinach and the grated pecorino, then spoon over the gnudi and serve with a scattering of pea shoots.

8 NOVEMBER

A seat at the pantomime

There are lads in tights, girls in breeches, elderly men with pancake make-up, and bare-chested boys in baggy pants. There are dwarfs and giants, fairies and wizards, a puss in boots and babes in a wood. There are death threats and dreams, genies in lamps, a witch, a princess, and pumpkins that turn into stagecoaches. Pantomime is a gorgeous cacophony of comedy, music, cross-gendering and high jinks.

As a child I was mesmerised by the slightly sinister, dream-like quality that runs through pantomime. I revelled in being slightly scared while all the time knowing I was in a safe place. The cross-dressing, the psychedelic costumes and the sexual innuendo appealed to a boy sitting in the company of the straightest of parents. The colours, comedy and costumes were more of a draw than the stories, which I always found slightly confusing. Take Aladdin. Is it South East Asian, Middle Eastern or East End? Answer, all three.

Most of the political and satirical references were there to amuse the accompanying adults, but not much went over my head. I often found the music terrifying. Especially in Aladdin. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade has always sent shivers up my spine. I always went accompanied by adults, Mum and Dad, an aunt or uncle. I adored the way that pantomime, like fairy tales, made me comfortably uncomfortable. It has an effect on the imagination no television or film ever could. Although I have to say the slapstick didn’t appeal then, just as it doesn’t now. I have never found people falling over terribly funny.

Pantomime has been with us, in various forms, since the sixteenth century. The version familiar to us is influenced by the Italian Commedia dell’Arte, a style of travelling comedy that moved around Italy and France during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Much of the act was improvised, a comedic performance that involved characters, often masked, always in costume, which we would recognise today. The form took hold in Britain to become Harlequinade, with its main characters being a harlequin, a clown and a pair of lovers.

Panto in Britain was originally, as its name suggests, a mime. Silent comedy performed by mostly French actors escaping their own country’s clamp-down on unlicensed theatres, initially at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the long-departed Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre. During the nineteenth century, as stage machinery became more sophisticated, the shows became increasingly spectacular. Trapdoors and trick scenery became an essential part of the story, and the slapstick element took hold. Pantomime developed into a cleverly synchronised tapestry of comedy, song, slapstick, mime and satire loosely based around a well-known fairy story.

The titles are firmly established, though new ones come up all the time. Aladdin, Cinderella, Dick Whittington, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Puss in Boots, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Mother Goose and Peter Pan are as popular now as they were a hundred years ago, though each performance will have its own signature. No two versions are alike.

The season for pantomime is short, and tickets sell out like chocolate cake at a village fête. It is now, well before a single mince pie is baked, that you might like to sit down, go online and search what pantos are coming up this year. This may seem all very early, but once word gets round that something is going to be special, seats suddenly disappear.

Tonight, I make a dish of lentils with cream and basil. Essentially a frugal autumn dish, a baked aubergine with a knubbly mound of creamed lentils heady with basil.

Aubergine with lentils and basil

Serves 4

aubergines – 2 large or 4 small

olive oil – 6 tablespoons

a lemon

onions, medium – 2

garlic – 4 cloves

thyme sprigs – 8

rosemary – 6 sprigs

chestnut mushrooms – 200g

Le Puy or other small lentils – 400g

double cream – 250ml

parsley, chopped – 3 tablespoons

basil – a good handful of leaves

Parmesan, grated – 75g

Halve the aubergines lengthways, then score the cut surfaces in a lattice fashion, slicing deeply into the heart of the flesh but without piercing the skin. Place them skin side down on a baking sheet, trickle generously with some of the olive oil, and season lightly. Halve the lemon and squeeze over the juice. Place under a hot grill, a good way from the heat source, and cook until deep golden-brown. The flesh should be soft and silky.

Peel and roughly chop the onions. Warm the remaining olive oil in a shallow pan, then add the onions, stir, and leave them to cook over a moderate heat. Peel and crush the garlic, then stir into the onions. Pull the leaves from the thyme sprigs. Remove the needles from the rosemary, chop finely, then stir, together with the thyme leaves, into the softening onions.

Quarter the mushrooms, combine with the onions and leave to soften and colour. Season with salt and a little black pepper, then leave to simmer, very gently, over a low heat, partially covered with a lid.

Cook the lentils in a saucepan of boiling water for about fifteen minutes, until tender but with a slight nuttiness to them, adding salt about five minutes from the end of cooking. Drain the lentils, then stir into the onion and mushrooms. Pour in the cream, bring to the boil, then fold in the parsley, torn basil leaves and grated Parmesan and check the seasoning. It might need a little more pepper.

Serve the lentils in shallow bowls or plates, with a halved aubergine on top, or two if they are small.

9 NOVEMBER

The Christmas list and a fig tart

The row of notebooks, black, brown, indigo, fat with bookmarks and held together with tape, gets ever longer. The handwritten books where I scribble not just notes and recipes, but my endless, obsessive lists. This morning, while it is still dark, I sit at the kitchen table, get out the current little black book and start this year’s Christmas list.

I have never felt Christmas should be run like a military operation, but I do need some sort of order at this time of year. Life isn’t all art and poetry. There is so much to do and so many details to consider if the season is to be a joy rather than a chore. Occasionally, just occasionally, I need to put my practical hat on. Anyway, I actually like making lists, I have done it all my life. No need to stop now.

There are cards to be bought, gifts to consider, food to prepare and events to be scheduled. No, I don’t know what sort of cheese is going to be on my kitchen table until I go shopping, but I do need to know I have remembered to buy sticky tape. Anyone who has wasted an hour of their life trying to find the bloody Sellotape will know what I mean.

A list, not only written but actually referred to, constantly, like a recipe, will make my Christmas easier. A present list (who will get what). A food and drink list (what will be on the table). The domestic list (is there enough Champagne and coffee beans?). A list of events, teas, and visits to the theatre. Do I need another row of Christmas lights or more candles? If you are the sort of person who makes lists but never looks at them again, fine, it is still worth doing. It will jog your memory. I envy those who feel they don’t need to make any sort of plan and still don’t find themselves short of matches to light the pudding. There is no delight in setting the family’s plum pudding aglow on Christmas Day with a cheap plastic lighter.

Nothing sucks the joy out of receiving a gift than to have been asked, ‘What do you want for Christmas?’ If you know them well enough to ask that question, then you should probably know what they would like anyway. Yes, it’s a practical idea, in as much as you don’t risk disappointing the recipient with the wrong present, but I would rather somebody take that risk than be asked what I want.

My lists will develop slowly over the next couple of weeks, with details added as I think of them. Right now, it’s the basics. I also decide to try out a couple of recipes that may be good to have around over Christmas, and certainly to enjoy over the winter. I start with a sweet tart.

Note to self: buy candles.

Dried fig and Marsala tart

There are two tricky moments in the preparation of any sort of upside-down tart and both involve the caramel. First the making of the sugar and butter sauce without burning or crystallising it, and second, restraining said hot sauce from pouring out over your fingers as you upend the tart on to its serving plate.

The caramel is something I have been playing with, on and off, for years. I have finally decided not to make it in the traditional manner. It is far easier, I find, to make one from sugar and a little sweet wine (in this case Marsala), then drop cubes of butter into it and let everything come together in the oven. The fruit helpfully soaks up most of the caramel, leaving just the right amount of buttery stickiness. Use a tarte Tatin mould or a metal-handled frying pan, or, as I do, a shallow-sided tart tin.

Serves 8

dried figs – 500g

golden sultanas – 50g

dry Marsala – 100ml

golden caster sugar – 100g

butter – 50g

For the pastry:

cold butter – 175g

plain flour – 225g

golden caster sugar – 2 tablespoons

large egg yolks – 2

To serve:

double cream

ice cream

crème fraîche

You will also need a 24cm round Tatin tin or shallow, non-stick cake tin with a fixed base.

Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Put the figs and sultanas into a mixing bowl, pour over the Marsala and leave to stand for forty-five minutes, stirring occasionally.

Make the pastry: cut the cold butter into small cubes and rub into the flour, either with your fingertips or using a food processor. Work until you have what looks like coarse, fresh breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar.

Add the egg yolks to the butter and flour. Mix together until you have a soft dough, then turn out on to a floured board and knead briefly, for just a minute. Shape the dough into a smooth, fat cylinder. Wrap it in greaseproof paper or clingfilm and leave to rest in the fridge for thirty minutes.

Make the caramel: place the Tatin mould or a frying pan over a moderate heat. (If you will be baking the tart in a cake tin, use a frying pan to make the caramel, otherwise you will damage your tin.) Add the Marsala from the dried fruit, leaving the fruit behind in the bowl, then add the sugar. Bring to the boil and leave to form a thin caramel. If you are using a Tatin mould, remove from the heat. If you are using a cake tin, pour the caramel from the frying pan into the tin.

Cut the butter into small cubes and scatter it over the caramel. Place the plumped-up figs on the base of the tin in a single layer (neatly or not, as you wish), then scatter over the sultanas, pushing them into any gaps.

Roll out the pastry a little larger than the Tatin mould or cake tin. With the help of the rolling pin – it is very fragile – lift the pastry into the mould or tin, pressing it gently into place over the figs. Tuck in any overhanging pastry.

Bake in the preheated oven for about thirty minutes, until the pastry is golden. Remove from the oven and leave to settle for ten to fifteen minutes. Place a large serving plate on top of the tart, then, using oven gloves, hold the tin and plate firmly and carefully turn them over, leaving the tart to slide out on to the plate. Serve warm with cream, ice cream or crème fraîche.

10 NOVEMBER

A sweet preserve with a savoury past

A glossy paste of currants and raisins, brown sugar and cinnamon, mixed spice and citrus zest. There is candied peel, and the comfort of Bramley apples and suet. A preserve, sweet, spicy, fruity, whose history goes back to the Middle Ages, and whose smell is redolent of the happiest moments of my childhood.

One of the more pleasing aspects of social media is learning just how many people still make their own mincemeat. I enjoy seeing (and, if I’m honest, am slightly envious of) their proud results after an afternoon spent stirring dried fruits, apples, cinnamon and cloves in the kitchen. Rows of glossy jars, plump as Friar Tuck, are displayed complete with handwritten labels. Presumably so that, come July, the contents won’t be mistaken for chutney.

Disclosure: I don’t always make my own mincemeat. The romanticism appeals, but in practice I often end up buying it, usually from a posh shop or a village fête. A jar whose contents lie somewhere between the syrupy offerings of commerce and something I could have made myself. The years I do have a go are memorable, not only for the day itself, the smell, the bubbling pot of stickiness, but for the lavishness with which I use the results. Mincemeat for cakes, for sandwiching between slices of hot toasted panettone, for steamed puddings and for baking in crumbly biscuits to be eaten mid-morning with a pot of coffee.

Mincemeat hasn’t always been sweet. The clue is in the name. Early recipes, some of which go back to the sixteenth century, contain minced beef and its fat, vinegar and spices. Our little mince pie seems, at one time, to have been almost entirely savoury. A pasty.

The earliest recipes also bring with them a warm breeze from the Middle East, with their familiar marriage of sweet fruits and meat. Thomas Tusser, chorister, poet, musician, author and farmer, lists a recipe (1557) for mince or ‘shred’ pies that was considered standard Christmas fare. Lady Elinor Fettiplace (1570–1647) describes them in more detail, showing them to be more akin to a pasty, listing mutton and beef suet as well as orange peel, raisins, ginger and mace (a spice I have only ever used in meat terrines: Heaven only knows how old my glass jar in the larder is) and rosewater.

The Good Housewife’s Jewel by Thomas Dawson (1598) tempts its readers with a recipe using deer offal (the ‘umbels’ that gave their name to the phrase ‘to eat umble pie’), salt, cloves, currants, almonds, dates and fat. The mince is baked, then boiled with sugar and spices. A long way from the syrupy jam in the present-day Robertson’s jar.

Mincemeat takes a turn away from its savoury route in the seventeenth century. The writer and poet Gervase Markham, whose most famous work is The English Huswife Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues which ought to be in a Complete Woman (a title for which he surely deserves a bat round the head with a frying pan), has a recipe that is almost entirely devoid of meat. As the preserve continues its journey, it ditches not only the mutton, beef and salt, but also the passing whiff of the Middle East.

By the beginning of the twentieth century the minced meat had departed from most recipes, but the practice of adding beads of grated suet lives on to this day, though most used in commercial preparations is made from hydrogenated fat. As sugar becomes less of a luxury, the filling gets steadily sweeter until we arrive at today’s sugar-laden, glistening goo. Most modern recipes have even ditched the tiny pearl-like nuggets of suet that twinkled in their dark, syrupy depths.

For those of us making our own mincemeat, the difficulty is getting our hands on a decent lump of fresh suet to grate. (Go for the whitest, creamiest beef fat your butcher can offer you.) My feeling is that if you use the packet stuff, creamy white specks in a nostalgic blue, red and yellow box, you might as well buy your mincemeat ready-made.

A classic brandy mincemeat

Today, November 10, I make this year’s batch. It’s a bit late, according to Mary Berry, who recommends a maturing time in the jar of six months. (Delia has kept hers for three years with no ill-effects, as I’m pretty sure my mum did.) Six glistening jam jars sit on the counter, each having had a ride in the dishwasher, then ten minutes in the oven at 180°C/Gas 4 to sterilise them. Their labels are already written, in fountain pen, waiting patiently for my Christmas jam.

Despite the long ingredients list, mincemeat is a doddle. I spend more time weighing the dried fruits, spices and sugar than I do cooking. Even then, the task takes barely an hour. I spin it out because I like the smell that is filling the kitchen. The scent of Christmases, past. Better than that, of Christmas to come.

Makes about 1.5kg, enough for 36 (ish) mince pies

shredded suet – 200g

dark muscovado sugar – 200g

sultanas – 200g

currants – 200g

prunes, stoned – 200g

dried apricots – 200g

cooking apples – 750g

skinned almonds – 50g

a lemon

ground cinnamon – 1 teaspoon

ground cloves – ½ teaspoon

nutmeg, grated – ½ teaspoon

brandy – 100ml

Put the suet, sugar, sultanas and currants into a large saucepan. Roughly chop the prunes and apricots and stir them in. Peel and core the apples, cut them into small dice, then add them to the other fruits. Place over a moderate heat and bring to the boil. Finely chop the almonds, finely grate the zest of the lemon, then stir both into the fruit with the cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. Squeeze the lemon juice into the mixture and continue cooking for about fifteen minutes. Allow to cool, then stir in the brandy.

Spoon the mincemeat into the sterilised jars, seal with a tight lid and label.

Quince and cardamom mincemeat (without suet)

I feel a little sorry for those impervious to the charm of a mince pie. I want to offer them something. Calling the recipe that follows ‘mincemeat’ is stretching it a bit, but it still contains the fruits and spices of the original (many early recipes include quince in place of apple), and it smells like the classic as it cooks. But it has another appeal, that of no suet, or indeed fat of any kind. Think of it as Christmas jam. The colour is gold rather than black. It is rather good with cheese too, in the way a slice of Cheshire is good with fruit cake. Oh, and can I suggest grinding the cardamom seeds at the last minute – the ready-ground stuff loses all its magic.

Makes 3 × 400g jars

caster sugar – 100g

water – 1 litre

the juice of a lemon

quinces – 500g

green cardamom – 8 pods

mixed spice – 1 teaspoon

ground cinnamon – ½ teaspoon

golden sultanas – 200g

raisins – 200g

currants – 200g

dried apricots – 200g

light muscovado sugar – 100g

brandy or quince liqueur – 100ml

You will also need 3 × 400g jam jars, sterilised.

Put the caster sugar into a medium-sized saucepan, add the water and bring to the boil. Pour the lemon juice into the syrup. Peel the quinces, cut them into quarters, remove the core, then lower them into the pan. As soon as the syrup comes back to the boil, lower the heat to a simmer, partially cover the pan with a lid and leave for forty minutes, or until the quinces are soft but far from collapsing. Take off the heat.

Break open the cardamom pods, scrape out the seeds and crush them quite finely, using a pestle and mortar or spice mill. Put them into a capacious saucepan with the mixed spice and ground cinnamon. Add the golden sultanas, raisins and currants, then roughly chop the dried apricots and stir them in. Pour in 400ml of the quince cooking liquor and add the brown sugar. Simmer, stirring from time to time, for twenty minutes. Cut the quinces into small dice and add to the mincemeat. Pour in the brandy or liqueur, simmer for a further five minutes, then spoon into sterilised jars and seal.

11 NOVEMBER

Martinmas, a ham dinner and a citrus cake

For centuries this has been a feast day. The date marked the end of the agricultural year, the harvest was well and truly in, the livestock were ready for slaughter, wine was ready for drinking. It is officially the beginning of winter. In medieval times, such an important feast was celebrated by eating a goose for those who could afford it, duck or chicken for those who couldn’t.

The celebration began in France, then spread to the Low Countries, Eastern Europe and then to Britain. It is still celebrated in Germany, with goose, dumplings and red cabbage. In parts of Scandinavia too, though to a much lesser extent, with lantern processions and singing, church services and, of course, feasting. In Britain we have traditionally eaten our goose on Michaelmas Day, September 29. But reading Martinmas in my diary does get me thinking about Christmas dinner and what will be on the table.

By now, many a working-class Victorian family like mine would have had a healthy collection of coins in their local Goose Club. This was a way of saving up for your festive food by stashing away as much as you could afford each week during summer, autumn and early winter, to help dilute the horror of the cost of Christmas. Each member of the clubs, which were run by publicans, groups of friends and butchers, would eventually get a goose and possibly some other treat into the bargain. Goose Clubs live on in the form of Christmas Clubs, though one usually only hears of them when they go bust, and everyone loses their hard-saved cash.

Today is, of course, Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, when we remember those who have died in the line of duty. I have breakfast at the Wolseley in London’s Piccadilly, where, on the dot of eleven, a full minute’s silence is observed by staff and customers. Hush falls on the enormous, high-ceilinged room; the staff stands still, not so much as a teaspoon tinkles in a saucer. I am moved almost to tears.

I have cooked a ham around this time of year for as long as I can remember. A practice run for the ham I will need over Christmas, that eternally useful cut-and-come-again joint for lunch, supper, sandwiches.

I usually take the route of simmering the rolled and tied joint in water or apple juice with peppercorns, cloves, celery, carrots and onions, then draining and baking it. The poaching keeps it moist, and the baking ensures a sticky crust, the surface of the ham usually having been spread with marmalade, apricot jam or honey.

This year I take the same route, but decide on quince paste – membrillo – as the sweet spread for the crust. The quince jelly is a good idea; it stays put in the oven, which is more than you can say for maple syrup or apricot jam, which you painstakingly paint over the meat only to find it slides off into the tin. The fruity-tartness is welcome with the sweet pink ham.

Ham with quince paste, cauliflower and dill

Serves 6 hot (with enough for a further 6 cold)

gammon, rolled and tied – 2.5kg

quince paste – 250g

dry Marsala or medium dry sherry – 4 tablespoons

For the stock:

an onion

cloves – 5

a cinnamon stick

black peppercorns – 10

bay leaves – 3

For the cauliflower:

cauliflower – 1.3kg

dill – 25g

Put the gammon into your largest saucepan or stockpot. Peel and halve the onion, then add it to the water along with the cloves, cinnamon stick, peppercorns and bay leaves. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and remove any froth from the surface of the liquid with a draining spoon. Partially cover with a lid and leave to simmer, gently, for an hour and a half. After an hour’s cooking, turn the meat over.

When the ham is ready, remove it from the cooking liquor and place it in a roasting tin, reserving the stock. Heat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Mix the quince paste and the Marsala or sherry in a small saucepan, letting it bubble briefly until it melts. Spread the paste over the ham. Bake for twenty-five to thirty minutes, or until the glaze has set. Remove and loosely cover with foil to keep warm.

While the ham bakes, break the cauliflower into florets and place in a saucepan. Ladle enough of the hot ham stock into the cauliflower pan to cover the florets, then bring to the boil – no need to add salt. Let the florets simmer until tender, about twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Remove half the cauliflower with a draining spoon and place in a warm, shallow dish. Put the remaining cauliflower and 200ml of the cooking stock into a blender with the dill (do not overfill – you may need to do this in two lots). Pour the cauliflower and dill purée over the cauliflower florets.

Serve the ham, carving it thinly, with the cauliflower. You will have plenty of ham left for tomorrow. Serve it with the apricot and tomato chutney recipe (see December 12, here).

Orange poppy seed cake

It is also useful to have a cake that will keep in fine condition for several days. This soft, moist, citrus-scented loaf cake has the crunch of poppy seeds running through it.

Serves 8

soft butter – 225g

golden caster sugar – 225g

grated zest of an orange

grated zest of a lemon

plain flour – 110g

baking powder – generous ½ teaspoon

ground almonds – 115g

eggs – 4

poppy seeds – 20g

For the topping and syrup:

candied orange and citron peel

juice of the orange and lemon above

caster sugar – 75g

poppy seeds and golden sugar – 1 tablespoon of each

You will need a deep-sided, rectangular cake tin, 22cm × 12cm × 7cm deep, lined on the base and sides with baking parchment.

Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Cut eight thin slices of the orange and citron peel, no thicker than 5mm, and the right size to sit on top of the cake, and set them aside. Put the butter into the bowl of a food mixer, add the caster sugar, and cream for a good five minutes until soft and fluffy. Add the orange and lemon zest. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then stir in the ground almonds.

Break the eggs into a small bowl and beat lightly with a fork to combine. With the beater at a moderate speed, add the eggs, a little at a time, to the butter and sugar. If the mixture appears to curdle slightly, add a spoonful of the flour and almond mixture. Continue adding the flour until thoroughly creamed. Mix in the poppy seeds.

Transfer the mixture to the lined cake tin, gently smoothing the surface flat. Place the slices of citrus peel on top of the cake. Bake for forty-five to fifty minutes, until a skewer, inserted into the cake, comes out without any raw cake mixture attached. Leave the cake to cool for ten minutes.

Make the syrup: put the orange and lemon juice into a saucepan and add the sugar. Bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Still in its tin, pierce the cake in about twenty places with a metal skewer or a fine knitting needle. Spoon the citrus syrup over the surface, letting it trickle through the holes. Scatter the surface with poppy seeds and, if you wish, golden sugar crystals.

12 NOVEMBER

A pot roast partridge

We never had Champagne. At least not the real stuff. All that mattered was that a cork went pop and there were bubbles in our glasses. No one minded that what we drank was tummy-twistingly acidic and had bubbles the size of Maltesers. The point was noise and fizz. Asti Spumante had it with brass knobs on.

For a family on the quieter side – Mum, softly spoken as ever, with her calming there-there tone; Auntie Fanny, deaf as a post, who just sat and hummed to herself; and me, the little boy too scared to speak lest he upset his father – we nevertheless managed to make quite a bit of noise at the Christmas table. Dad was unusually loud, Mum got the giggles, brothers and aunties and grandmas were animated and chatted excitedly. Even the docile, flatulent golden retriever would run in circles around everyone’s legs. It never occurred to me that the table came to life because everyone was slightly pissed. We appeared, for once a year at least, like any other vast, happy family.

The year I was seven, Dad opened a bottle of the Italian fizz at the table, the cork flew across the room – a trajectory aimed at nowhere special – and contrived to hit one of my mother’s precious painted birds that lived on the wall over the fireplace, knocking the poor thing into an explosion of blue and yellow feathers. Mum laughed, yet I could see she was quietly fuming. The dog was coughing up feather-balls for weeks afterwards.

Birds pepper my winter eating like currants in a garibaldi. The goose or turkey at Christmas, of course, but weeks before that, the pheasants, grouse, a roast duck with apple sauce, maybe a quail or two. I like the deep flavours of game birds, the toasty bits in the bottom of the roasting tin; the accompaniments of redcurrant jelly, bread sauce and tiny sausages. I also relish the chance to tear my food apart with my hands. Much has to do with the shooting season, but the flavours are appropriate to the time of year, particularly when small birds are roasted with suitable vegetables, onions, mushrooms, parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes. And that medlar jelly you didn’t make, well, that is just the accompaniment for a roast pheasant or partridge too.

The most expensive of the birds is grouse and is something I tend to leave to restaurants. But the partridge does it for me. Expensive without being prohibitive, neat, lean and sweet-fleshed, they have a sense of jollity to them that I suspect comes from the carol. (There are no songs about a guinea fowl.) It is too early to think of partridges in pear trees but it is almost impossible to think of them without the rumbustious little tune coming into my head. The idea that one should be served on the first day of Christmas doesn’t really work, as we need a bigger bird for the attending family, so they are better pre or post Christmas.

The rhyme, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, starts with a modest bird on Christmas Day and carries on through French hens and milking maids, getting grander with each of the twelve verses until we get to the leaping lords on Twelfth Night. An accumulative song – each verse builds on the previous ones – it was first published in Britain in 1870 and is thought to be of French origin. No one really knows how it started but it is generally considered to be a children’s game of memory and forfeit. I love the idea that the best-known version appeared in a children’s book called Mirth without Mischief (oh, for simpler times).

I have a pear and partridge recipe in Tender, Volume II. I take a more savoury route today, browning parsnips and onions before cooking them with a pair of little partridges and some chicken stock.

The clever trick and indeed the point behind pot-roasting is the small amount of liquid added to the casserole. Under a tight lid, the moisture produces steam that keeps the flesh of the birds juicy, circumnavigating the lack of fat that can make a traditionally roast bird dry. The roast partridge, by the way, is a tidy little dinner for one, and carries with it a faintly festive air. I eat them from early September (they come into season from the 1st) until early February (last shoot is the first day of Feb), often as a plain roast. Covered with bacon and smeared with dripping, they will roast to rose-tinted perfection in twenty-five minutes at 230°C/Gas 9. I tend to remove the bacon after ten minutes to give the breasts a chance to burnish. I throw in a chipolata or two if I’m feeling frivolous, or a slice or two of black pudding for the final ten minutes of cooking. Cabbage is a splendid accompaniment.

Pot-roast partridge with parsnips and smoked garlic

I am pot-roasting today’s birds with parsnips, juniper and smoked garlic.

Serves 2

banana shallots or small onions – 3

parsnips, medium – 2

smoked garlic – 4 cloves

olive oil – 3 tablespoons

partridges – 2

chicken stock – 250ml

thyme – 6 sprigs

juniper berries – 10

double cream – 125ml

Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Peel the shallots and slice them in half lengthways. Peel the parsnips and cut them into chunks the length of a wine cork. Peel the garlic.

Warm the olive oil in a casserole for which you have a lid, lightly brown the shallots, parsnips and garlic in the hot oil, then remove. Season the birds with black pepper, then brown lightly in the oil. Remove the birds, pour in the stock and bring to the boil, scraping at any delicious debris in the pan and stirring it into the stock.

Return the birds and vegetables to the pot, tuck in the sprigs of thyme, and season with a little salt. Lightly crush the juniper berries and add them too. When everything returns to the boil, cover tightly with a lid and place in the oven for forty minutes. Remove the partridges, wrapping them in foil to keep them warm, then place the pot over a high heat and reduce the volume of liquid by half – it won’t thicken but will instead give you sweet, creamy juices. Stir in the cream, check the seasoning, then make sure all is thoroughly hot. Serve the birds in shallow bowls or deep plates, spooning over the vegetables and the juices. You will need a spoon as well as a knife and fork, and something with which to wipe your fingers.

13 NOVEMBER

Maple syrup and fig terrine

The garden has skeletons – hydrangea, hornbeam and beech – holding their leaves even now. The pale walnut browns are smart and crisp against the green of the high yew hedges. Blue tits feast. Leaves, yellow, grey, black, lie frozen to the garden table, silver with frost. The space is tidy, but beneath the neatness lie worries. Two much-loved trees in the garden require major surgery, a third lost its leaves in the summer. The white jasmines, normally survivors in any garden, have suffered from a mysterious fungus. (This could well be due to their location, a curiously warm, damp courtyard where frost gets no hold, an enclosed space warm enough for pelargoniums to spend their winter unprotected.)

The garden needs a fierce snap of cold and so do I. The frost adds a touch of fairy-tale sparkle to the hedges and trees but it is still warm enough to venture out without a coat. I long for snow, for frost-ferns on the windows, for ice on the water butt.

I have been gardening long enough to know that there is much happening underground. Narcissi and tulips sprout, muscari and crocus are waking up. I feel this happening too. I feel in need of a prolonged cold patch to stir my own energy. Where some see a garden in repose, a sleeping beauty, I see what lies beneath, the garden’s hidden spirit, waiting to emerge.

This morning, after a couple of hours at my desk, I take out the secateurs and cut back the white roses, removing their spindly growth and confusion of crossed stems. Standing back to admire my work, I feel the roses can breathe once more. I come in, make coffee and set about sorting the larder – discarding and tidying. A sort of culinary pruning and removing of dead wood.

There is method in my madness. Even though this is the busiest time of year, I like to spend a day sorting out the food cupboards. A seasonal stock-take. A snapshot of what I have a little too much of (lentils, beans, coconut milk, maple syrup) and what I don’t have at all (light soy sauce, hoisin, honey and, crucially, dried yeast.) An inventory now means a slow picking up of necessities over the next few weeks rather than the horror and panic of a ‘big shop’ during Christmas week, when the rest of the country will be at it too.

There is only one way to tidy a kitchen cupboard and that is to take everything out. Everything. Moving things around from shelf to shelf and side to side doesn’t work. You need to see what you have, so I spend the rest of the morning with bottles, cans and storage jars spread over the floor. The shelves get cleaned, then everything goes back (or at least most of it), starting with the top shelf (dried beans and lentils), then working down.

I rather enjoy finding the oldest sell-by date, but the haul is a disappointment this time. A jar of chestnuts from two Christmases ago, a twelve-month over-the-date bag of prunes and a bottle of oyster sauce that seems magically to have escaped at least three previous stock-takes isn’t enough to satisfy me. I genuinely relish finding that box of coconut-flavoured sugar or jar of piccalilli that is old enough to have gone down on the Titanic.

A surfeit of maple syrup annoys me, though. It is one of the most expensive ingredients in the kitchen and I cannot imagine how I have ended up with three bottles. I put it down to the bottles being slim and stored sideways, thus becoming almost invisible, like a book in a bookshop with the spine facing out. This find does, however, give me the opportunity to try out an ice that may well end up on the table at Christmas.

Fig, maple syrup and Marsala ice cream

If you have an ice cream machine, churn the custard, syrup and yoghurt mixture first, then stir in the chopped fig and chocolate at the end. To prevent the custard from curdling, keep the heat low and, as it starts to thicken, remove from the heat, pour into a chilled bowl over ice or in a sink of cold water and beat firmly and continuously until most of the steam has gone and the custard is smooth. I like to serve the ice in chunks, like fudge, rather than in one large slab.

Serves 6

egg yolks – 4

caster sugar – 2 tablespoons

double cream – 450ml

vanilla extract – a few drops

maple syrup – 240ml

figs – 3

dark chocolate – 100g

thick, strained yoghurt – 200g

figs and physalis, to serve

Put the egg yolks and caster sugar into the bowl of a food mixer and whisk until light and fluffy. Warm the cream in a saucepan, switching the heat off just before it comes to the boil, then stir in the vanilla. Pour the warm cream on to the eggs and sugar and stir to mix. Rinse the saucepan, then pour in the egg and cream mixture and return to a low to moderate heat. Warm the custard, stirring regularly, until it starts to thicken slightly on the spoon, then pour into a cold bowl and stir or beat with a whisk to remove some of the heat. Leave to cool a little.

Pour in the maple syrup and combine. Chop the figs into small pieces, crushing them slightly as you go, then chop the chocolate into small, thin shards with a large knife. Stir the yoghurt, figs and chocolate pieces into the custard, then tip into a plastic freezer box and freeze for a good four hours, or overnight. Turn the ice cream out, then cut into large chunks and pile on to a chilled serving plate, perhaps with a few physalis and more slices of fig.

Dinner is a green and humble soup. The flavours are simple, the method is straightforward and the ingredients are everyday. Recipes like this, gentle, warming, unshowy and, it should be said, meatless, are the backbone of my eating. Yes, there is plenty to dazzle both plate and palate, but sometimes it is this sort of food I need, food without frills or fuss, calming, restorative and just a little bit nannying. Oh, and it has a flotilla of cheese and toast on top.

Cauliflower and leek soup with toasted cheese

I use whatever cheese is around for this sort of thing. Tonight, it is a mixture of Gorgonzola and Taleggio that needs using up, the two melting harmoniously over the pieces of toast. Use whatever you have.

Serves 4

leeks, medium – 3

butter – 30g

olive oil – 2 tablespoons

cauliflower – 1kg

vegetable stock – 1 litre

bay leaves – 2

parsley leaves – a good handful (10g)

sourdough bread – 4 slices

cheese (any good melting type) – 100g

Discard the coarse part of the green leaves from the leeks and roughly chop them. Warm the butter with the olive oil in a deep pan. Add the leeks and cover with a lid. Cook over a low to moderate heat, stirring and checking their progress regularly, until the leeks are soft but without browning them.

Trim and thickly slice the cauliflower and add to the leeks. Stir briefly, then pour in the vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Add the bay leaves and a little salt, then lower the heat and leave the leeks and cauliflower to simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes, until soft. Process half the mixture in a blender until really smooth. Add a handful of parsley to the remainder and process in the blender to a thick, rough-textured consistency. Mix the two together and check the seasoning, adding salt and ground black pepper as you think fit.

Spread the sourdough bread with a little butter or olive oil and place under a hot grill, toasting one side to a light crispness. Turn the bread over and cover the other side with thick slices of cheese, then return to the grill until melted. Divide the soup between shallow bowls and float the cheese toasts on top.

14 NOVEMBER

Candlelight and roast cabbage

I wake early, sit at my desk and write. A daily ritual which if missed sets my world briefly off its axis. For the best months of the year, it will still be dark, a prickle of cold in the air, the slightly-too-long arms of my sweater (my writing jumper, a dear old friend) slipping softly over my fingers as I type, as if I was wearing fingerless gloves.

I do most of my early morning writing by candlelight. There is a warmth to the light given by a single flame that no electric filament bulb can ever match, and shadows that flicker grey on white. Occasionally, in winter, the candles will gutter, the flame weaving a little as it burns, a flash, a hiss and a spit, as if someone has walked past, and then it steadies itself once more.

My love of candlelight has its history in the light given by a particular candle that would be burned at home, unfailingly, over Christmas, then put away again until the following year. A heavy, square, rough-sided candle, each side framing a paper stained-glass window. To this seven-year-old child, it seemed like a magic lantern, each window a door to a world in which wonderful things happened, but also a place of safety and warmth. A hollow in which to disappear, like a rabbit-hole or a wardrobe with a magical world past the fur coats.

There were other candles too, including those which, once lit, sent tiny brass horses spinning round a pole, and others huddled in a bunch whose wax slowly welded together as they melted, achieving a glowing island. The candles disappeared from our Christmas under the instruction of my stepmother, who thought they were dirty things, producing smoke and dripping wax on her lovingly polished tables. A somewhat strange decree, coming, as it did, from a lifelong chain-smoker.

A candle is not just for Christmas. Turn the lights off on a winter’s night and light a candle or two instead. Instantly, the smell of cordite, and soon the scent of beeswax. Shadows to feed the imagination, flickers of flame, perhaps the scent of woodsmoke by which to read a book. None of this would I wish to live without. At home, we light them even during summer, though they tend to be in tall glass jars on the long garden table, lit as the night starts to fall.

Whale sperm and beeswax

The heart and soul of a candle is the wax from which it is made; it is what glows and produces a pillar of warm light in the room, but this hasn’t always been so. The fat from nuts and trees, from bay berries and even rice was used long before the introduction of wax. In the West it was tallow, basically rendered beef fat, which is softer than the wax we know today and gave off much dark, acrid smoke, rather like beef fat on a griddle. There is evidence that candle makers – chandlers – went from house to house, making saved beef fat into useable candles.

In the Middle Ages, we progressed to beeswax. Cleaner and with a warming, honeyed fragrance, they were more expensive to make and initially the preserve of the wealthy and of churches, where they were an integral part of religious ceremonies. Cheaper candles were made from spermaceti, a waxy substance obtained from the spermaceti organ found in the head of a sperm whale. Spermaceti candles, also known as standard candles, were the ones used for measuring candlepower, the unit, no longer used, that measures the luminous intensity of a candle. You can get 500 gallons of spermaceti from a large whale. Is this book useful or what?

Wax for candles is obtained from a variety of sources, stearin (purified animal fats), paraffin, cinnamon, soya and palm being among the most common, but the most valued is the traditional beeswax. Even unscented they are capable of creating, almost instantly, an atmosphere of calm, welcome and humble bonhomie.

The wick

The wick that lies at the heart of the candle is made of braided cotton or linen. Occasionally a stiffener, in the form of copper wire, is used. As the wick burns, the heat travels downwards, melting the wax that supports it. The wax vapours rise around the wick, catch light and burn, feeding the flame. The wax is fuel to the burning wick. The thicker the wick, the larger the flame. The liquid pool of wax around the wick is known to some as the bishop, though I have absolutely no idea why.

Trimming your wick

Candle wicks are treated to encourage them to burn more slowly. The wick should be kept trimmed – snip off any burned cotton with scissors before lighting. Too long a wick will encourage the candle to smoke. In some cases a long wick can collapse back into the wax. No one wants that. I often pinch the burned cotton between my fingers when I can’t be bothered to go and fetch the scissors. If my fingers aren’t covered in fountain pen ink, they are sporting smudges of candle soot.

A life lived by the light of a candle

This is an old house, and candlelight suits it. The wobbly walls, the floorboards that creak even when you are still, the draughts that seep from every window and door. Most rooms have a fireplace; three of them, including the kitchen, have two. The space comes alive when candles are lit, shadows are exaggerated, corners deepen, here and there walls show the outline of doors long blocked up. These rooms have stories to tell. In daylight or under electric lights, the house is like any other, a closed book.

At the table

Candlelight has the extraordinary ability to make any meal into a special occasion, even when it is simply a bowl of soup and some bread and cheese. The light it gives welcomes and warms, soothes and calms. Faces glow, details are accentuated. Our lines, scars and wrinkles are more beautiful than ever.

Scented candles for Christmas

Much as I appreciate the purity of an unscented beeswax candle, scented candles can be interesting. They can be charming or hideously overpowering, depending on the type of scent used.

Scents come in every possibility, from wet cloisters to toasted brioche, wax floorboards to freshly ironed linen, and every imaginable flower, leaf and spice. I have to hold my hands up here and admit that I may not be a food snob but I am most certainly a candle snob. Cheap scented candles are simply disgusting. They smell of air freshener. Here are a few I recommend for burning at Christmas. All are subtle, and I promise they are not going to make your house smell like a cheap gift shop or a massage parlour.

Carmelite by Cire Trudon

A favourite of mine, often to be found burning in my basement kitchen, and whose ‘wet’ scent seems appropriate for the old stone floors, low ceilings and rough white walls. A deeply peaceful scent, of mossy stone and water. Not for Christmas Day, but for quiet moments before everyone gets up. There are the faintest notes of orange and clove, with heart-notes of violet and cardamom. Or, as the creator puts it, ‘the black and white silhouettes of nuns, walking through the silence of a ritual mass’. Which is probably why it seems so appropriate in this house.

Spiritus Sancti by Cire Trudon

‘Splinters of crimson, gold and olibanum,’ says the creator, ‘under the nave of a cathedral, the jubilant choir and holy scents rise into the souls.’ There is magic in this scent, the perfect candle for Christmas Day. A fleeting note of incense too.

Santa Maria Novella

In 1221 Dominican friars built a monastery, just outside the city gate in Florence, and began to experiment with herbs grown in their gardens. Initially intended for the monastery’s infirmary, the pharmacy opened to the public in 1612, and the Dominicans officially started selling their ‘curative and ephemeral products’. To this day they sell their fragrances around the world. Their Melograno soap has been a permanent feature of my bathroom for many years. Their pale ivory Melograno candle is said to bring good luck and fortune for the coming year.

Ash by Perfumer H

A mixture of carde (a relative of the juniper plant), frankincense and amber. This is the candle I have burning pretty much permanently in my house on winter mornings. Understated, like the company that makes it, gentle and haunting, a scent as old as time.

Diptyque produce some fine fragances too, especially Ivy and Bay, both perfect for winter. And yes, they all cost a small fortune but let’s be honest, the ‘Christmas candles’ that smell of cinnamon and mulled wine are particularly unpleasant. I will walk a mile to save a penny, but when it comes to candles, I think we should go for broke.

Candle myths and tips

Storing

There is a candle shelf in the larder, next to my collection of balls of string. (I have string for every occasion, some as fine as cotton thread, and some for the garden that smell of tar. It’s a borderline obsession.) Like Christmas pudding, I buy candles one year for the next. I have been led to believe that the older and drier the wax, the longer they will burn. If you keep the lid on the box, the scent will not disappear for a good year or more. Aged candles seem to last longer. Candle experts disagree. This is distinct from curing, ageing a candle for a few weeks before it is first used, a process by which the wax and the perfume bond. Maybe I just like storing candles.

Bloom

Candles that have been in store sometimes develop a powdery coat, like a damson. This can be wiped off with a soft, dry cloth.

Burn rate

Look for candles with a long burn rate. It is usually marked on the box. This will tell you roughly how long a candle should burn for if burned continuously. Burning the candle in a draught will reduce its life.

A smoking candle

Occasionally a candle will produce plumes of black smoke. This is usually because the flame is being disturbed by a draught, causing the natural teardrop of light to distort and flicker. Rather appropriate if you happen to be reading a ghost story on a winter’s night. Annoying if not. Which is why candles on window ledges often burn less evenly than those on a table in the centre of a room.

Chilling your candles

I was brought up to believe that candles should be stored in the fridge, as a cold candle burns more slowly. Sadly, although based on truth, the wax warms so quickly once lit that the practice is somewhat pointless.

Incidentally, Fortnum & Mason department store, one of the capital’s prettiest Christmas sights, is, as Tom Parker Bowles says in The Cook Book, ‘a company built on spent wax’. William Fortnum, footman to Queen Anne, was allowed to keep the spent candles, which he then successfully sold on, before eventually teaming up with Mr Mason to open their eponymous Piccadilly store. Their selection of dinner candles remains dazzling to this day.

Roast cabbage with cheese sauce

Happy tweets and emails have been coming in today about my recipe for roast cabbage. There is something particularly heart-warming about this, especially as I wasn’t initially sure about the idea. I make it again, tonight, and sure enough, the readers are right, it is really good for a cold night. The Parmesan and old-fashioned sauce ensure its frugality goes unnoticed.

Serves 4

garlic – 2 cloves

olive oil – 2 tablespoons

lemon juice – 2 tablespoons

a small cabbage

Parmesan – 55g

milk – 500ml

bay leaves – 2

half an onion

butter – 30g

plain flour – 30g

bread, open-textured, such as ciabatta – a thick slice

smoked paprika – a pinch (optional)

sprouted seeds

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Peel the garlic and crush to a paste with a little salt. Put the paste into a small mixing bowl and stir in the olive oil and lemon juice. Season with a generous grinding of black pepper.

Slice the cabbage into discs about 3cm thick and place them, just touching, on a baking sheet. Spoon the garlic and lemon juice dressing over the cabbage and roast for twenty-five to thirty minutes. Turn the cabbage over, dust the top of each piece with a heaped tablespoon of grated Parmesan, and continue cooking for fifteen minutes.

While the cabbage cooks, bring the milk to the boil with the bay leaves and onion, then remove from the heat and leave to infuse. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour and cook over a moderate heat for a couple of minutes. Add the milk, strained through a sieve, stir until smooth, then leave to simmer over a very low heat for fifteen minutes, barely bubbling, while the cabbage roasts. Tear the bread into small pieces and grill or fry until crisp, brushing or trickling them with a little oil as they cook.

Finely grate the remaining Parmesan into the sauce and season to taste with a little salt (you won’t need much), some black pepper and, if you like, a little smoked paprika. Lift the cooked cabbage on to plates, spoon over some of the cheese sauce, and finish with the fried bread and some green sprouted seeds.

15 NOVEMBER

Frost fairs and braised brisket

I ache for snow. The last generous fall in this garden was in January 2013, when the yew hedges tilted drunkenly with its weight. I ache for silence, for the sound of my own muffled footsteps as I walk up the garden path. But most of all I ache for icicles. When I was seven or eight, icicles hung from every gutter on the house. Long glass stalactites hung down from the greenhouse roof like trickles of icing on a gingerbread house. They shone in the late afternoon sun. I snapped off the longest as a rapier for a mock fight with an imaginary friend, and galloped across the snow-covered lawn in a one-man jousting match. Before I went in for tea the other icicles met their fate, as a unicorn’s horn, a fencer’s épée and lastly a shimmering javelin.

I remember a winter in Paris when the fountains froze. One close to my tiny attic room near the Sorbonne had set into a vast, sparkling ice sculpture that stopped me in my tracks on the treacherous walk to cooking school. How I would have loved to be in London for the frost fairs on the River Thames.

Frost fairs were held on the river on several occasions – the Thames froze over twenty-six times between 1408 and 1814. In 1536 King Henry VIII travelled along the river from London to Greenwich by sleigh. Queen Elizabeth I practised shooting on the ice in the winter of 1564, and carnivals were held on the frozen river. The first recorded frost fair was in 1608 but it was the last one, held in 1814, that saw an elephant led across the frozen river near Blackfriars Bridge, and stalls, shops and funfairs set up on the ice. There was bull-baiting and horse-racing, carousels and puppet shows, skating and football matches. The fair held in the winter of 1683–4 saw the Thames frozen over for two months, complete with a shopping street built on the eleven inches of ice.

The cold winters were far from one big carnival. The ice on the river thawed unexpectedly on several occasions and many drowned. In January 1789 the melting ice dragged a riverside public house into the water, crushing five people. The winters were unimaginably cold, animals and birds died, plants and trees froze solid, people choked on the smoke trapped by the cold air and the homeless froze to death.

There is little likelihood of the Thames ever freezing again. The river was shallower then and flowed more slowly, the winters were considerably colder and any idea of global warming inconceivable. Yet the notion of a vast frozen river on which one could skate, roast a whole pig and travel downstream on a sleigh is still something I dream of seeing. Just as I dream of climbing through the back of my wardrobe into a snow-covered wood.

No sign of snow yet, but I need something warming today. A dark braise of a favourite cut of beef.

Braised brisket with porcini and onion gravy

You’ll need a spoon. The broth surrounding the beef has been in the oven for four hours, along with a handful of caramelised shallots, black peppercorns, thyme sprigs and bay leaves. I could have used beef stock, but preferred to make a broth out of dried mushrooms. A dark-coloured, bosky liquor in which to coax a cheap cut of meat towards tenderness. The brisket was bargain enough, as you would expect from a cut situated at the front of the belly, a piece of meat that works hard throughout the animal’s life. I asked the butcher to leave the fat on my brisket in place, so that it would soften to a quivering mass and slowly enrich the gravy during its long sojourn in the oven.

I cut the meat into thick, wobbly slices and laid them in wide, shallow dishes, the sort you might use for pasta, then spooned the shiny, mahogany-coloured broth round the meat. There was a temptation to add soft, pale dollops of creamed parsnips or mashed butter beans, but instead I voted for swede, mashing it to a cream with a ridiculous quantity of butter and black pepper. Ideally, there would have been a thick fog outside, or better still a howling storm crashing at the windows. But you can’t have everything.

What we did have was enough silky brown meat for the next day, which I pulled into jagged strips and tossed with vinegar-crisped cabbage, finely shredded kale (yes, that again) and some sprouted radish seeds from the wholefood shop. I dressed it with a cool dill and mustard-seed-flecked cream dressing. If you want a quick fix, eat an expensive cut of meat, but if you crave homely warmth and bonhomie, the feeling that all is well with our world (especially when it isn’t), it’s the cheap, fat-rich cuts you should head for. The ones that enrich their cooking liquor to a point where you can feel the goodness seeping through to your soul with every mouthful. You’re going to need that spoon.

The dried porcini will add about three quid to the cost of this dish, but you get a lot of flavour for your money.

Serves 6–8

dried porcini – 25g

beef brisket, rolled and tied – 1.5kg

banana shallots – 6

small carrots – 350g

black peppercorns – 12

bay leaves – 4

thyme sprigs – 6

mashed swede, to serve (see here)

Put the kettle on. Set the oven at 230°C/Gas 9. Put the dried porcini into a heatproof bowl, then pour boiling water over them, cover with a plate and leave to soak for twenty-five minutes. This will give you a deeply flavourful broth.

Place the rolled and tied brisket in a large casserole, then put it into the oven and roast for twenty-five minutes. Peel and trim the shallots and halve them lengthways. Scrub the carrots and halve them lengthways. Add them both to the casserole together with the porcini and their broth, the peppercorns, bay leaves and thyme, then cover with a lid. Lower the heat to 160°C/Gas 3 and bake for four hours.

Remove the brisket from its broth and leave to rest for ten minutes. Put the casserole over a high heat, bring the contents to the boil, and leave until reduced by about one-third. Slice the brisket into thick pieces, dividing it between deep plates, then spoon over the broth and vegetables.

And mashed swede to serve

Peel a large swede and cut it into large chunks, then pile them into a steamer basket or colander and cook over a pan of boiling water for twenty minutes, until soft. Tip into a bowl and crush thoroughly with a potato masher. Add a thick slice of butter (about 30g) and lots of quite coarsely ground black pepper. Beat firmly with a wooden spoon until fluffy. Serve in generous mounds, in the broth that surrounds the beef.

17 NOVEMBER

Pork and panforte

Just as I might eat a wedge of butter-soft panettone with shudderingly bitter coffee on a winter’s morning, or break a marzipan-scented slice of stollen after an afternoon spent sweeping up leaves in the garden, I too get a fancy for a tiny triangle of chewy panforte. Looking forward to the gentle slap of sweet spice as much as I do that of Lebkuchen or gingerbread, I am more than a little ashamed that I had yet to warm to its honeyed tone when I visited its rust-red hometown, Siena. With hindsight, I probably thought the slim, white packages piled high in every shop were soap.

Night-time, after dinner, is when this treat comes out in our house. My version of my parents’ habit of bringing out a box of After Eight mints. Except the mints got more takers. The chewy disc of nuts and dried figs, honey and spice is best consumed in a room glowing with candlelight and served in a tiny wedge at the foot of a small glass of equally glowing vin santo. To eat it straight from its white paper wrapper in daylight is to indulge only in its curiously chewable compounded figs and nuts. You need a certain sense of occasion to understand its charm, which is probably why it only really comes out at Christmas. Much the same could be said of advocaat.

Panforte has been made in Siena for centuries. Think of it as compressed fruit cake. And made to a secret recipe. I can’t imagine anything like as much gets eaten as is brought back in suitcases. Tradition has it that panforte must be made of seventeen ingredients, one for each of the small districts, the contrade, of Siena. Panforte means strong bread, referring to the spices in the recipe. Dating from the early thirteenth century, it once contained so much pepper it was known as ‘panpepato’. References to the Crusaders carrying it with them for sustenance are probably true, as it is a compact way of carrying high-energy, imperishable survival food. Like a medieval Kendal mint cake.

Between its compacted icing sugar crust or sheets of snowy rice paper are sugar, honey, hazelnuts, almonds, candied peel, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, salt, cocoa powder, cloves, dried figs, raisins, flour and occasionally walnuts. Recipes abound – it is a doddle to make despite the everlasting shopping list – and many of them are worth making, but none seem to have quite the same chewy, seed- and nut-laden texture as that commercially made in Siena. There is also something ancient about this shallow, fudge-coloured sweetmeat. As if you are chewing a medieval manuscript.

After all the sweetness, something for dinner that has brightness and spirit, a welcome antidote.

Pork, miso and pickled pears

Strips of pork belly, sold without the bone, will work nicely here. I look for those with plenty of fat to meat. I use white miso for the dressing. Use dark miso if that is what you have, but expect the flavour to be saltier and more intense.

Serves 4

pork belly strips, without bones – 700g

liquid honey – 2 tablespoons

white miso paste – 3 tablespoons

grain mustard – 2 tablespoons

salad leaves – a handful

For the pears:

white wine vinegar – 4 tablespoons

black peppercorns – 8

caster sugar – 1 tablespoon

salt – 1 teaspoon

pears – 2

Put the vinegar, black peppercorns, caster sugar and salt into a saucepan with 100ml of water and bring to the boil. Peel the pears, halve them, then cut out the cores with a teaspoon. Lower the pears into the pickling liquid, lower the heat and leave the pears to cook until tender to the point of a knife. Remove from the heat, cover with a lid and leave to rest. Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6.

Place the strips of pork on a shallow grill pan, season with salt and black pepper, and roast for thirty minutes, until golden and sizzling. In a large shallow pan, warm the honey, white miso paste and mustard until you have a thick paste.

Tear the pork into short, finger-width strips, then toss with the hot dressing. Return the dressed meat to the oven for seven to ten minutes, until the surface is sizzling and starting to caramelise. Wash and dry the salad leaves and place them on a serving plate, then pile the pieces of hot pork on top. Place half a pickled pear on each plate.

Toasted mincemeat sandwich

I am not going to make my own panforte. That would feel a bit like doing something just to prove you can. The stuff in the shops, straight from Siena, is what the Italians eat. And if it’s good enough for them…

Instead, James has an idea to make a mincemeat-stuffed panettone, the soft cake sliced and stuffed with mincemeat, then toasted. We eat it, slightly too hot for everyone’s lips, with vanilla ice cream. A jug of old-fashioned double cream would no doubt have hit the spot too.

mincemeat – 10 heaped tablespoons

panettone – 2 thick slices, 2cm thick, from an 18cm diameter cake

butter – 40g

icing sugar – 2 tablespoons

Warm the mincemeat in a small saucepan, stirring regularly. Place a slice of panettone on the work surface. Cover it with the mincemeat, then place the second piece on top and press gently to make a large, round sandwich.

Melt the butter in a small, non-stick frying pan. Place the sandwich in the pan and let it cook over a low heat for two minutes, checking the underside is turning gold by lifting it occasionally with a palette knife. As soon as it smells warm and buttery and the underside is golden and toasted, place a plate over the pan, turn the pan and plate over, firmly and confidently, let the sandwich turn out on to the plate, then slide it back into the pan to cook the underside.

Lift out, dust with icing sugar and cut, cake-like, into slices.

18 NOVEMBER

Surf and turf

It is a rare day when I don’t make something to eat. If I am going out to dinner then I will make lunch, because I can’t get all the way through to eight in the evening. My fishmonger has pieces of hot-smoked salmon cut from the thick end of the fillet. I bake them with new potatoes and dill.

While the oven is on, I test a quick recipe that I feel might be fun. A sort of toad in the hole for two, with chubby cocktail sausages and a handful of sour red cranberries from the freezer to offer a sharp contrast. A keeper.

Hot-smoked salmon, potatoes and dill

Serves 2

new potatoes – 300g

dill fronds – 2 heaped tablespoons

white wine vinegar – 2 tablespoons

olive oil – 4 tablespoons

hot-smoked salmon – 2 × 200g pieces

Set the oven at 200ºC/Gas 6. Bring a deep pan of water to the boil, and salt it generously. Wash the new potatoes, cut in half lengthways, then cook them in the boiling water for fifteen minutes, until they are tender. Drain them.

Finely chop the dill fronds and put them into a small mixing bowl. Stir in the white wine vinegar, olive oil and a little salt and pepper. Put the potatoes in a roasting tin or baking dish, then add the dill dressing and toss them together. Bake in the preheated oven for fifteen minutes, until they turn pale gold. Place the hot-smoked salmon on top of the potatoes, spoon some of the dressing from the dish over the fish, then return to the oven for ten minutes and serve.

A new toad-in-the-hole

A nod, perhaps, to Thanksgiving. My butcher always uses the same herb-flecked recipe for his cocktail sausages as he does for his breakfast bangers. This isn’t always the case when shopping in supermarkets, and the smaller the sausage the less likely it is to be of interest. If you can’t find a decent one, use larger breakfast sausages cut into short lengths.

Serves 2

eggs – 2

full-fat milk – 300ml

plain flour – 125g

thyme – 5 sprigs

cocktail chipolatas – 350g

a little oil or bacon fat

marmalade – 2 tablespoons

cranberries – 100g

groundnut oil or dripping – 3 tablespoons

Make a batter by beating together the eggs and milk. Beat in a little salt and the flour. Don’t worry about any small lumps. Pull the leaves from the thyme and stir them into the batter, then leave to rest for twenty minutes. Set the oven at 220°C/Gas 7.

Evenly brown the cocktail chipolatas in a little oil or bacon fat. When they are done, add the marmalade and the cranberries to the pan and toss the sausages in it to coat them evenly. Pour the fat, together with the groundnut oil or dripping, into a 22cm round metal dish or similar baking tin, add the marmalade-coated sausages and place in the oven to get hot.

When the oil and sausages are really hot, add the batter and return to the oven immediately. Bake for twenty-five to thirty minutes, until the batter is golden and puffed around the edges. Serve immediately.

19 NOVEMBER

Planting bulbs and a lamb boulangère

I have spent winters deep in the Worcestershire countryside, on the Cornish coast, the Yorkshire moors and in the Black Country. I have trudged through the snow in the Italian Alps, the Norwegian forests and the Icelandic lava fields. I have run from saunas to freezing ice pools in Finland and rolled in the snow after many a steaming hillside onsen in Japan. And yet it is still winter in the city that I find most entrancing.

London in the snow is breathtaking, especially if you can catch it before others wake. Ghostly footprints there will always be – a fox, a postman or a clubber returning home – but if you can rise before six after snow has fallen during the night you will see the city differently. A scene straight from Dickens. Amsterdam, Vienna, Kyoto and Bergen are enchanting blanketed by snow, as if made for deepest winter, but it is London that becomes a different city after a fall of snow.

People say that you only appreciate the cold if you are in the warm. They insist a snowy garden is at its best when viewed from the window of a toasty kitchen. I must disagree. Waking up on an icy morning, I can’t wait to be outside. Showered, cup of coffee in hand, I am out of the kitchen door before a single word is written. My boots crunching on frosty gravel, the piercing air stinging my sinuses, the icy chill brings with it a sudden shot of energy.

As a teenager I had more than enough time to walk in the cold. The school bus couldn’t make it up the hill on snowy mornings, and there was no choice but to walk an hour either way. I revelled in it, even then. Each branch, every snowdrift, each frozen puddle held a secret. Mittens were made to be frozen stiff. Wellingtons were invented to be filled with snow. Serene fields had to be stamped through. Frozen water, a pond, a stream, the water in a bucket all had to be shattered. (I was furious that the ice on the garden pond had to be thawed slowly, using hot kettles from the Aga, so as not to shock my Dad’s precious goldfish.)

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