Kitabı oxu: «The Kitchen Diaries II»

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

Also by Nigel Slater

Tender Volumes I and II

Eating for England

The Kitchen Diaries

Toast – the story of a boy’s hunger

Thirst

Appetite

Nigel Slater’s Real Food

Real Cooking

The 30-Minute Cook

Real Fast Food

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

A few notes on television

A few words of introduction

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

List of recipes by month

Just one more…

Copyright

About the Publisher

For James Thompson

Acknowledgements

Thank you, as always, to Louise Haines, my editor for over twenty years, for your endless encouragement, guidance and patience. Without you there would be no book.

To Jonathan Lovekin for taking beautiful pictures of so much I have cooked over the years. Thanks, Jonnie. I am grateful to Harry Borden for kindly allowing my publishers to use his thoughtful portrait of me.

To James Thompson, producer, kitchen genius and confidant. He who holds it all together. James, thank you for everything, but especially for your sure hand with the recipes, guiding their journey from diary to table, published page and television screen. For your inspiration, enthusiasm, hard work and friendship, I can never thank you enough.

To my literary agent Araminta Whitley and my television agent Rosemary Scoular, to Harry Mann, Sophie Hughes, Wendy Millyard and everyone at LAW, United Agents, Breckman and Company and Mishcon de Reya for dealing with all the really important stuff that I don’t understand.

To everyone at Fourth Estate, especially Victoria Barnsley, Michelle Kane, Georgia Mason and Olly Rowse. To David Pearson for helping to make this second volume of the diaries so beautiful and, as always, my thanks to Jane Middleton and Annie Lee for their eagle eyes and endless patience.

To everyone at the Observer, especially the wonderful Allan Jenkins, Ruaridh Nicoll, Martin Love, Gareth Grundy and John Mulholland. To Leah, Debbie, Helen and Caroline. And to Sarah Randell and Helena Lang. Thank you for your continued support.

To William, Sean and Mark and everyone at Fullers for all your hard work on the kitchen and to Steve Owens and everyone at Benchmark.

To Katie Findlay for helping to keep the garden in great shape; to Rob Watson at Ph9 for looking after www.nigelslater.com; to Dalton Wong and everyone at twentytwotraining for their endless encouragement and support and to Tim and Asako d’Offay and Takahiro Yagi for their wisdom and kindness.

And thank you to all the bookshops and those who work in them for their continued enthusiasm. And to everyone who enters their local booksellers and discovers the magic that lies on those creaking shelves and gets to know that there is nothing so beautiful as the feel and smell of a book in the hand.

A few notes on television

I had no real intention to present a television series. I had enough on my plate with a long-running weekly newspaper column and my books, and, however much I enjoy watching ‘celebrity chefs’, had no wish to be part of that world. The idea of filming a cookery series was suggested to me by Jay Hunt, at the time controller of BBCI. She gently persuaded me that there was room for a series with calm and gentle presentation and understated and simple food.

Not only did the series turn out to be a success beyond our wildest dreams, I ended up rather enjoying myself, and as a result there have now been four of the ‘Simple’ series. I owe a huge debt to Jay and to Ian Blandford, to Alison Kirkham and Tom Edwards and of course to Danny Cohen. To the production team and everyone at BBC Bristol, especially Pete Lawrence, Simon Knight, Jen Fazey, Michelle Crowley, James Thompson and Gary Skipton. And to my awesome crew who have made the shows what they are: Richard Hill, Sarah Myland, Robbie Johnson, Conor Connolly, Cheryl Martin, Simon Kerfoot, Sheree Jewell, Sam Jones and Archie Thomas. And thank you to Rudi Thackeray and his team. A big shout out also to the guys at Kiss My Pixel and to Mark Adderley and Nadia Sawalha. Thank you all.

This book is not a traditional television ‘tie-in’ but versions of many of the recipes in Simple Suppers and Simple Cooking can be found between these pages. (Others are in The Kitchen Diaries volume I and Tender Volumes I and II.) Thank you to the millions of you who watch each programme, and send such heartwarming letters, emails and tweets. I cannot tell you how much the entire team appreciates it.

And to that vibrant, warm and encouraging community at Twitter @realnigelslater. You are a joy.

Nigel Slater, London, September 2012

www.nigelslater.com

Twitter @realnigelslater

www.4thestate.com

A few words of introduction

I cook. I have done so pretty much every day of my life since I was a teenager. Nothing flash or showstopping, just straightforward, everyday stuff. The kind of food you might like to come home to after a busy day. A few weekend recipes, some cakes and baking for fun, the odd pot of preserves or a feast for a celebration. But generally, just simple, understated food, something to be shared rather than looked at in wonder and awe.

Sharing recipes. It is what I do. A small thing, but something I have done for a while now. As a cookery writer, I find there is nothing so encouraging as the sight of one of my books, or one of my columns torn from the newspaper, that has quite clearly been used to cook from. A telltale splatter of olive oil, a swoosh of roasting juices, or a starburst of squashed berries on a page suddenly gives a point to what I do. Those splodges, along with kind emails, letters and tweets, give me a reason to continue doing what I have been doing for the past quarter of a century. Sharing ideas, tips, stories, observations. Or, to put it another way, having a conversation with others who like to eat.

That is why, I suppose, each book feels like a chat with another cook, albeit one-sided (though not as one-sided as you might imagine). It is a simple premise. I make something to eat, everyone, including myself, has a good time, so I decide to share the recipe. To pass on that idea, and with it, hopefully, a good time, to others. For twenty years I have shared many of those ideas each week in my column in the Observer and in my books. They might also come dressed up a little nowadays, in the form of the television series, but it is still the same basic premise.

The diaries

For years now I have kept notebooks, with scribbled shopping lists and early drafts of recipes in them. These are not, I hasten to add, a set of exquisitely bound Kitchen Chronicles, but a scruffy hotchpotch, a salmagundi, of anything and everything I need to remember, from shopping lists and baking temperatures to whether it was two or three eggs that went into the cake. The books also contain the endless lists that I have written, almost obsessively, since childhood.

The notes, sometimes carefully annotated, sometimes not, vary from neat essays in longhand in black fountain pen to a series of almost illegible scribbles on any bit of paper that was handy at the time. The notebooks have recently been replaced, unromantically, by notes typed on an iPad. A decision I now rather regret. These notes form the basis of this second volume of The Kitchen Diaries. More than a diary, this is a collection of small kitchen celebrations, be it a casual, beer-fuelled supper of warm flatbreads with pieces of grilled lamb scattered with toasted pine kernels and bloodred pomegranate seeds or a quiet moment contemplating a bowl of soup and a loaf of bread. We can either treat food as nothing more than fuel or relish its every quality. We can think of preparing it as something to get done as quickly and effortlessly as possible or as something to find pleasure in, something to enrich our everyday life, to have fun with.

I have always written about the minute details of cookery, the small pleasures that can make it enjoyable and worth our time. (The bigger picture, the science and politics of food, its nutrition, provenance and chemistry, I leave to others who can do it better.) What intrigues me about making something to eat is the intimate details, the small, human moments that make cooking interesting. Whilst I never forget that most cooking is about getting something on the table at the end of a working day, I see no reason why it can’t be something to celebrate. The craft of making something with our hands, something for ourselves and others.

Between the pages of this book there are those days, hours and moments spent in the kitchen that I enjoyed enough to make notes about. The dish of quinces baking in the oven on a winter’s day; a hastily assembled salad of chicken, fresh peas and their new shoots; a bowl of brilliant-orange sweet potato soup for a frosty evening; a steak tossed with chilli sauce and Chinese greens; little cakes of crab and fresh coriander to eat with a friend, straight from the frying pan. It is also a collection of jottings about kitchen kit, a shout-out to the pieces of equipment that have become old friends: the favourite knife for peeling vegetables, the wooden spatula or spoon that feels more comfortable in the hand than any other. The bits and pieces we gather together over the years for our kitchen tasks that have become a pleasure to use. Their place in my life, like the most comfortable trainers that have seen better days, or the pullover with holes in it that you can’t bear to get rid of, is something I felt needed celebrating. These small pieces of equipment are part of my kitchen life.

The recipes

I am not a chef and never have been. I am a home cook who writes about food. Not even a passionate cook (whatever one of those is), just a quietly enthusiastic and slightly greedy one. But, I like to think, a thoughtful one. Someone who cares about what they feed themselves and others, where the ingredients come from, when and why they are at their best, and how to use them to give everyone, including the cook, the most pleasure. Whilst a bit of cookery is simply magic (some of the food being produced by professional chefs at the moment is extraordinary, exciting and wonderful), most of it is essentially craft, a subject that holds great interest for me. The art of crafting something by hand – a sandwich even – for others to enjoy is something I can always find time for. Making a dish over and over again till it is how you want it, whether a loaf of bread or a pasta supper for friends, gives me a great deal of pleasure. As does making an economical one-off dish from the ‘bits in the fridge’.

I’m neither slapdash nor particularly pedantic in the kitchen (I haven’t much time for uptight foodies; they seem to have so little fun). Neither am I someone who tries to dictate how something should be done, and I am never happier than when a reader simply uses my recipe as an inspiration for their own. If we follow a recipe word for word we don’t really learn anything, we just end up with a finished dish. Fine, if that’s all you want. Does it really matter how you get somewhere? I don’t think it does. Short cuts are fine, rule breaking is fine. What matters is that the food we end up with is lick-the-plate delicious.

I have never held the idea that a recipe should merely be a set of instructions (if that is what you want, there is plenty of it out there). I want more. The cookbooks dearest to me are those where the author has been more generous, adding notes and observations from their own kitchen. I like more than just an author’s fingerprint on a recipe.

What can be of particular value is when a previous reader’s notes come alongside those of the author. In a secondhand bookshop opposite Kew Gardens, I once came across a baking book by a well-known cookery writer. There were notes pencilled in the margin, alterations and occasional exclamation marks. A chocolate cake got three stars, the author’s ‘Moist Fruit Cake’ had the terse note, ‘No it isn’t’, scribbled across it.

Encouraging as it is when I find a well-used copy of one of my books in the kitchen, I am just as happy when readers tell me my book spends as much time on the bedside table. (‘There are three of us in this marriage, Nigel,’ is a sentiment I have heard more than once.) A good cookbook should be a good read, too. And that is what I hope this book will be to you. Recipes, yes, but also a collection of notes, suggestions and tips (though never, ever instructions or diktats) that I would like to pass on to others. All I want to do is share a good time through the medium of a recipe.

Let us never forget that we are only making something to eat. And yet, it can be so much more than that too. So very much more.

A note on the chronology

The first volume of The Kitchen Diaries was a chronological record of what I had cooked and eaten over the course of a single year. This second volume is slightly different in that it is compiled from a collection of my notes taken over several years, so a piece dated June 3 or November 5 could be from one of two or even three years.

The specific dates are relevant because they give a clear and essential link between what I cook and the seasons, a way of eating that has long been dear to my heart, but also because of the structure they bring to the disparate and somewhat chaotic form in which the jottings in my kitchen diaries tend to appear.

January

JANUARY 1
A humble loaf and a soup of roots

The mistletoe – magical, pagan, sacred to Norsemen and the Druids – is still hanging over the low doorway to the kitchen. Part of the bough I dragged back from the market the Sunday before Christmas, my hands numb from the cold. Its leaves are dull now, the last few golden-white berries scattered over the stone floor. Like the holly in the hearth, its presence was a peace offering to the new kitchen that still awaits its work surface, cupboards, sink, taps.

There is an English mistletoe fair at the market in Tenbury Wells each Saturday throughout December. Vast, cloud-like bunches are cut from local cider-apple orchards and sold along with holly and skeins of ivy. Mine came from an oak tree in Hereford, though nowadays much of the folklore-laden evergreen arrives by less-than-romantic truck from northern France. It is only the mistletoe grown on oak that is imbued with magical powers.

Empty glasses are scattered around the room, perched on shelves and window ledges from where we toasted the new, albeit unfinished kitchen. And there is just enough Champagne left in a bottle in the fridge for me to celebrate, in secret, the first morning of the New Year.

This January 1st is no different from all the others, in that I will make soup and a loaf in what is now an annual ritual. Kneading is a good way to start the year. Tactile, peaceful, creative, there is something grounding about baking a loaf on New Year’s Day. We have baked bread since the New Stone Age.

There has been a decade of New Year’s loaves in this house: a simple white bun, its surface softened with a bloom of flour; a dimpled foccacia that left our fingers damp with olive oil; a less than successful baguette, as thin as a wand; a brown, seeded loaf we ate for days like fruit cake; a flatbread; a crispbread; and once a craggy cottage loaf, its top slid to one side like a drunk in a top hat. I forget the others.

This year’s bread is the simplest of them all, a single, hand-worked loaf of strong white flour and spelt – the ancient cousin of wheat that is currently enjoying a renaissance. (This is less considered than it sounds: they are simply the flours I happen to have left in the cupboard after making mince pies.) Modern spelt is a hybrid of the emmer wheat and goat grass grown since the Iron Age, and has found favour with those who consider modern, commercial wheat heavy on the gut. I like it for the faintly nutty quality it brings to the party.

Making a loaf is cooking at its most basic – a bag of flour and a pinch of salt, some warm water and something to make it rise (baking powder, yeast, a home-made leaven). Yet there is more to it than that. There is something therapeutic about kneading live, warm dough. We do it in order to make the dough softer and more elastic, but the feel of dough in the hand makes you consider yourself a craftsman of some sort, which of course you are. I often knead my bread dough every twenty minutes or so, rather than the customary twice. Each kneading only lasts for about a minute. I do it gently too, without bumping or slapping. I am not sure any good can come from treating our food like a punch-bag.

I will attempt to achieve the yeasty sourness I want by using a glass of cider in place of some of the usual water and will get the crust crisp by punching the oven up to almost its highest setting. I want a crackling crust that shatters over the table when you break it, and a soft wholemeal crumb within. A good plain loaf that smells slightly sour and faintly lactic, yeasty, with a subtle fruitiness to it – a quiet and humble loaf with which to start a new year.

A cider loaf

Makes one medium-sized round loaf that will keep for two days and is still good for toast after four.

wholemeal spelt flour: 250g

strong white bread flour: 250g

sea salt: a lightly heaped teaspoon

whole milk: 150ml

honey: a teaspoon

fresh yeast: 35g

dry cider: 250ml

Warm a large, wide mixing bowl (I pour in water from the kettle or hot tap, leave for a minute, then drain and dry). Weigh the flours into the bowl – there is no point in sifting – then stir in the salt. Warm the milk in a small saucepan. It should be no hotter than your little finger can stand. Stir in the honey until it dissolves. Cream the yeast with a teaspoon in a small bowl, slowly pouring in the warm milk and honey. When it is smooth and latte coloured, pour it on to the flours together with the cider and mix thoroughly. I use my hands, though the mixture can be sticky at this point, but a wooden spoon will work too. When the dough has formed a rough ball, tip it out on to a lightly oiled or floured surface. Knead gently for one minute by firmly but tenderly pushing and stretching the dough with the heel of your hand, turning it round and repeating. Lightly flour the bowl you mixed the dough in and place the kneaded dough in it. Cover with a clean, preferably warm cloth and leave in a warm, draught-free place for an hour. Close proximity to a radiator will do, though not actually on it, as will the back of an Aga, a shelf in the airing cupboard or indeed anywhere the yeast can work.

Remove the dough, scraping off any that has stuck to the bowl, and knead lightly for one minute. Return to the bowl, cover and replace in the warm for twenty-five to thirty minutes, until the dough has risen once again.

Set the oven at 240°C/Gas 9. Knead the dough once more, this time forming it into a ball, then place it on a floured baking sheet and dust it generously with flour. Cover with a cloth and keep warm for a further fifteen to twenty minutes.

Put the dough in the oven and bake for twenty-five minutes. If it is nut-brown and crisp, remove it from the oven, turn it upside down and tap the bottom. Does it sound hollow, like banging a drum? Then it is cooked. Cool on a wire rack.

A soup of bacon and celeriac

Celeriac has long been part of the European kitchen, most notably in celeriac remoulade – a classic accompaniment to thinly sliced meats (a few slivers of air-dried ham, a couple of gherkins and a mound of mustardy remoulade is often a winter lunch in our house). The knobbly, ivory root has taken longer to find friends in this country, and we still have no classic British recipe that exploits its clean, mineral qualities. I use it for cold-weather soups, setting it up with bacon, mustard and either thyme or rosemary. The result is deceptively creamy.

medium onions: 2

butter: a thick slice, about 25g

smoked bacon: 120g

celeriac: 800g (1 large root)

thyme: the leaves from 3 small sprigs

chicken or vegetable stock: 500ml

water: 1 litre

grain mustard: 4 teaspoons

parsley: a small bunch

Peel the onions and roughly chop them. Melt the butter in a large, heavy-based saucepan and add the onions. Let them cook for ten to fifteen minutes or so, till translucent. As they cook, cut the bacon into short strips or dice and add them to the pan. Leave over a moderate heat, stirring occasionally, till the bacon fat is pale gold and the onions are soft.

While the onions and bacon are cooking, peel and coarsely grate the celeriac. Stir it into the onions, add the thyme leaves and a little salt, then pour in the stock and water. Bring to the boil, lower the heat and cover with a lid. Leave to simmer for thirty minutes, then stir in the mustard. Chop the parsley and add it to the soup with a seasoning of salt and black pepper. Simmer for five minutes, then remove from the heat.

Remove half the soup and blitz in a blender or food processor till almost smooth. You may need to do this in several batches, so as not to overfill the blender jug. Return the liquidised soup to the remaining soup in the saucepan. You will probably find the result is creamy enough, but if you wish to add some cream, then this is the point at which to do it. Check the seasoning and serve.

Enough for 6

JANUARY 2
A bunch of parsley

Few herbs have much to offer in winter, save bay. Even that is more aromatic when it is dried. They need the heat of the sun to concentrate the aromatic oils that lurk in their leaves and, sometimes, their stems. Parsley, though, has plenty of flavour even in the dead of winter, unless it has frozen in the ground. Parsley heals (John Gerard, the sixteenth-century herbalist, used it to quell stomach complaints) and has a high vitamin C content. Where basil stirs the senses, parsley brings us back to earth.

There is much talk about parsley stems and where they are useful. I don’t mind them in a leaf salad if they are fine and young, no thicker than a needle, but I don’t include them in ‘chopped parsley’, rough or otherwise. The stem occasionally carries an inherent bitterness and can be string-like too. Fastidiously stripping the leaves from their stems is something worth doing.

The stalks add a pleasing mineral quality to stock and soup (they possess a long tap root, like horseradish, that can stretch a foot or more into the earth) but you might prefer to add them towards the end of cooking, otherwise they will introduce a cabbagy note. Twenty minutes is time enough.

Wasted in its usual role as a garnish, if not downright pointless, this biennial, slow-germinating herb prefers rich soil, ideally slightly alkaline. Liking a little shade and winter shelter, it does well in my dampest bed, under the medlar tree. You can grow it from seed if you have the patience. I ‘rescue’ large pots of it from the supermarket and plant it in the garden just as others rescue battery hens.

There is little of interest in the cupboards and the fridge is as bare as I have seen it. But there is a granite-like lump of Parmesan in an airtight box in the fridge, a packet of rice in the cupboard and therefore the possibility of risotto. Parsley makes a surprisingly luxurious addition to rice as long as you are generous with the butter and cheese.

A parsley risotto with Parmesan crisps

Timing wise, you can manage to give the risotto its last ladle of stock, then start on the crisps. They will stay warm and crisp(ish) for long enough.

flat-leaf parsley: a good 50g

hot stock (chicken, turkey, vegetable at a push): a litre

a shallot or very small onion

butter: a thick slice

Arborio rice: 300g

a small glass of white wine or vermouth

To finish:

butter and grated Parmesan

For the Parmesan crisps:

finely grated Parmesan: 4 heaped tablespoons

Prepare the parsley. Pull the leaves from their stems, crack the stems with the back of a knife – their mineral scent is worth inhaling – then put them in a pan with the stock and bring to the boil. As the stock boils, turn the heat down to a low simmer. Finely chop the parsley leaves.

Peel and very finely chop the shallot and let it cook in the butter in a saucepan, without taking on any colour. Add the rice, turn the grains briefly in the butter till glossy, then pour in the wine and let it cook for a minute or two. Add a ladle of the stock. Stirring almost constantly, add another ladle of stock and continue to stir until the rice has soaked it all up. Now add the remaining stock, a ladle at a time, stirring pretty much all the time till the rice has soaked up the stock, the grains are plump and the texture creamy.

Stir in the chopped parsley, a thick slice of butter and a couple of handfuls of grated Parmesan. Season carefully.

For the Parmesan crisps, simply put heaped tablespoons of the grated Parmesan into a warm, non-stick frying pan. Press the cheese down flat with a palette knife and leave to melt. As soon as it has melted, turn once and continue cooking for a minute or so. Lift off with the palette knife and cool briefly. They will probably crisp up in seconds. Place on top of the risotto and serve.

Enough for 4

JANUARY 3
A crisp salad for a winter’s day

There are some pears and cheese left from Christmas, a couple of heads of crisp, hardy salad leaves still in fine fettle, and a plastic box of assorted sprouted seeds in the fridge. I put them together almost in desperation, yet what results is a salad that is both refreshing and uplifting, clean tasting and bright.

A salad of pears and cheese with sprouted seeds

Crisp, mild, light and fresh, this is the antidote to the big-flavoured salad. I prefer to use hard, glassy-fleshed pears straight from the fridge for this, rather than the usual ripe ones. Any sprouted seeds can be used, such as radish seeds, sunflower or mung beans. The easy-to-find bags of mixed sprouts are good here, too. The cheese is up to you. Something with a deep, fruity flavour is probably best, though I have used firm goat’s cheeses on occasion too. Rather than slicing it thickly, I remove shavings from the cheese with a vegetable peeler. A sort of contemporary ploughman’s lunch.

crisp pears: 2

bitter leaves such as frisée or trevise: 4 handfuls

firm, fruity cheese such as Berkswell: 150g

assorted sprouts (radish, alfalfa, sunflower, amaranth, etc.): a couple of handfuls

For the dressing:

natural yoghurt: 150ml

olive oil: 2 tablespoons

herbs, such as chervil, parsley, chives: a handful

Put the yoghurt into a bowl and whisk in the olive oil and a little salt and black pepper. Chop the herbs and stir them into the yoghurt.

Halve the pears, remove the cores and slice the pears thinly, then add them to the herb and yoghurt dressing.

Put the salad leaves in a serving dish. Pile the pears and their dressing on top. Using a vegetable peeler, shave off small, thin slices of the cheese and scatter them over the salad with the assorted sprouted seeds.

Enough for 2

JANUARY 5
Twelfth Night

The day that precedes Twelfth Night is often the darkest in my calendar. The sadness of taking down The Tree, packing up the mercury glass decorations in tissue and cardboard and rolling up the strings of tiny lights has long made my heart sink. Today I descend further than usual.

The rain is torrential and continuous. I clean the bedroom cupboards, make neat piles of books and untidy ones of clothes ready for the charity shop and make a list of major and minor jobs to do in the house over the next few months.

The local council collects discarded Christmas trees and recycles them for compost. I keep mine at home, cutting every branch from the main stem with secateurs and packing them into sacks. Over the next few weeks, the needles will fall and end their days around the blueberries and cloudberries in the garden. There is much that appeals about this annual cycle of the tree going back into the earth.

You would think that this day of darkness would be predictable enough for me to organise something to lift the spirits – dinner with friends or a day away from home. But the consequences of evergreens left in the house after Twelfth Night is too great a risk, even though this superstition is quite recent. So a day of dark spirits it is.

JANUARY 6
Epiphany

After yesterday’s darkness and self-indulgence, I open the kitchen door to find the garden refreshed after the rain. The air is suddenly sweet and clean, you can smell the soil, and the ivy and yew are shining bright. The dead leaves are blown away, the sky clear and white. There is a new energy and I want to cook again.

Today is an important day for those who grow their vegetables bio-dynamically, when the Three Kings preparation – a stir-up containing gold, frankincense and myrrh – is ground for an hour, then made into a paste with rain or pond water and offered to the land. Jane Scotter at Fern Verrow, the Herefordshire farmer from whom I buy the vegetables I cannot grow for myself (for which read most), says it smells ‘like a fine fruity Christmas cake’. ‘We do this to invite elemental life forces to help and guide us for the coming growing season. We ask for good things to happen and give the preparation as an offering to the earth and to give thanks for what the universe provides. It is a lovely thing to do and a chance to walk around the farm on a route not usually taken, holding thoughts of thanks and wishes to the farm on a spiritual level.’

Hippy-dippy hocus-pocus it may sound, but I have far less of a problem believing in this than I do many of the religious ceremonies practised by millions. Actually, much less so.

My energy and curiosity may be renewed but the larder isn’t. There is probably less food in the house than there has ever been. I trudge out to buy a few chicken pieces and a bag of winter greens to make a soup with the spices and noodles I have in the cupboard. What ends up as dinner is clear, bright and life-enhancing. It has vitality (that’s the greens), warmth (ginger, cinnamon) and it is economical and sustaining too. I suddenly feel ready for anything the New Year might throw at me.

Chicken noodle broth

chicken pieces and wings: 400g

black peppercorns: 8

star anise: 2

half a cinnamon stick

palm sugar: a scant teaspoon

fresh ginger: a small lump

fine, rice noodles: 200g

greens: about 400g

Thai or Vietnamese basil: a small handful

Make the chicken broth: put the chicken pieces and wings in a deep pan with the whole peppercorns, star anise, cinnamon stick and palm sugar. Peel the ginger, cut it into coins and add to the pan. Pour in a litre of water and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and leave to simmer, at a gentle bubble, for twenty-five minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the packet, then drain and set aside. Trim, wash and lightly steam the greens, then refresh under cold running water.

Divide the hot broth between four bowls, add the noodles and greens and finish with the basil.

Enough for 4

JANUARY 9
An old-fashioned ham, a new sauce

We have never been what you might call a ‘close’ family. A mother and father dead by the time I reached my late teens; a brother who emigrated; an uncle distanced by his obsession with religion. The family member I was closest to was a mischievous, twinkly-eyed aunt whose diet consisted solely of Cup-a-Soup, Bailey’s Irish Cream and a regular swig of Benylin. She lived to be a hundred, which puts the healthy-eating lobby firmly in its place.

When I was a child, she would take me to see my grandmother, a tiny, bent woman (I have inherited her shoulders), whose curtains were permanently drawn. My grandmother’s kitchen always had a pot on the stove and condensation running down the windows. The room was dark and smelled of boiling gammon and the smoke from the coal fire in the parlour. Yet despite the suggestion of food on its way, the scene was less than welcoming. No jolly granny with a laden tea table here, just a tired old lady, exhausted from a hard life spent bringing up five children on her own.

The smell of a ham puttering away in my own kitchen still reminds me of her – I suspect it always will – but now comes with a welcome. Thinly cut ham, warm from its cooking liquor, is a dish I too bring out to feed the hordes. Reasonably priced, presented on a large, oval plate with a jug of bright-green sauce, it seems to go a long way. A piece weighing just over a kilo will feed six, with leftovers for a winter salad the following day.

Parsley sauce is the old-school accompaniment to a dish of warm ham, but far from the only one. This week I put a bag of knobbly Jerusalem artichokes to good use, serving them roasted as a side dish to the ham and to add interest to the accompanying parsley sauce. Artichokes and parsley have an affinity with pork and with each other – I like to add bacon and the chopped herb to the roasted tubers, and snippets of crisp smoked streaky often find their way on to the surface of a bowl of parsley-freckled artichoke soup.

Any large lump of ham will do for slow cooking in water (I sometimes use apple juice). A ‘hand’ of pork, which comes from the top of the front legs and is what the French call jambonneau, is a sound cut for those who want to cook theirs on the bone. A piece of rolled and tied leg is easier to carve for a large number. A cut cooked on the bone shouldn’t give any trouble after an hour and a half on the stove. The meat should fall away with just a tug from a fork.

This is an unapologetically old-fashioned dish and the best accompaniments are those of a gentle nature: a quiet, cosseting sauce, some floury steamed potatoes and possibly the inclusion of some mild mustard, either in the sauce or on the edge of the plate. The recipe can be energised a bit in summer, when it will benefit from a bright-green, olive-oil-and herb-based sauce. But on a day as bone chilling as this, it needs an accompaniment as comforting as a goose-down duvet. We passed round a plate of apples and a lump of milky Cotherstone afterwards.

Ham with artichoke and parsley sauce

Some cooks like to soak their ham before cooking – a precaution against a salty ham. Overly salted hams seem to be a thing of the past, so I don’t bother. It is worth doing if you are unsure of your ham. I’m not convinced the sauce needs any cream but, should you wish to soften it further, 3 tablespoons of double cream will be enough. Serve with the roast artichokes below and large chunks of steamed potato.

a piece of boiling ham weighing about 1.5kg

onions: 2

bay leaves: 2

thyme: 4 short sprigs

black peppercorns: 15 or so

parsley stalks: 6–8

For the sauce:

Jerusalem artichokes: 250g

butter: a thin slice, about 20g

the onions from the ham liquor

parsley: a small bunch, about 15g

grain mustard: a tablespoon

a squeeze of lemon juice

Put the ham in a very large pot. Peel and halve the onions, then tuck them around the meat with the bay leaves, thyme sprigs and peppercorns (reserve the parsley stalks for adding later). Pour in enough water just to cover the meat – a good 2 litres. Bring to the boil, skim off the froth that rises to the surface, then leave to boil for a few minutes before turning down the heat to a simmer. Keep the liquid just below the boil (at a gentle simmer), partially covered with a lid, for an hour. Add the parsley stalks, then let it cook for a further half hour.

About half an hour or so before you are due to serve the ham, make the sauce (timing is not crucial here; both ham and sauce can keep warm without harm). Scrub and chop the artichokes. Warm the butter in a medium saucepan. Remove the onions from the ham pot with a draining spoon and put them into the butter with the artichokes. Let the artichokes cook for three or four minutes, then pour in 750ml water (you could add some of the ham cooking water if you wish, but no more than a third) and bring to the boil. Add a little salt, then turn the heat down and continue to let the artichokes simmer enthusiastically for twenty minutes or until they are on the verge of falling apart.

Roughly chop the parsley and add just over half of it to the artichokes, holding back the rest for later. Grind in a little black pepper. Simmer for five minutes or so, then remove from the heat. Whiz the sauce in a blender (never more than half filling it) till smooth and pale green. Check the seasoning, adding salt, pepper, the mustard, the reserved chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon juice, if you wish (if you are adding cream, then you can add it now). Set aside till needed. It will take just a few minutes to reheat.

Remove the ham from its cooking liquor. Slice thinly and serve with the sauce and the roast artichokes below.

Enough for 6

Roast artichokes

You only need a couple of artichokes each. Trust me.

Jerusalem artichokes: 12 (about 800g)

olive oil

the juice of half a lemon

About an hour before the ham is due to be ready, set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Scrub the artichokes, slice them in half lengthways and put them in a baking dish. Pour over about 4 tablespoons of olive oil – just enough to moisten them – squeeze over the lemon, then grind over a little salt and black pepper. Toss gently and settle the artichokes cut-side down. Place in the preheated oven and bake for fifty minutes or until the outsides of the artichokes are golden and the insides meltingly soft.

JANUARY 12
Juniper – a cool spice for an arctic day

I consider leftovers as treasure, morsels of frugal goodness on which we can snack or feast, depending on the quantity. A few nuggets of leg meat from Sunday’s roast chicken are likely to be wolfed while standing at the fridge, but a decent bowlful of meat torn from the carcass could mean a filling for a pie (with onions, carrots, tarragon and cream). Today there is a thick wodge of leftover ham, its fat as white as the snow on the hedges outside, still sitting on its carving plate. A little dry round the edges from where I forgot to seal it in kitchen film, it is nevertheless going to be a base for tonight’s supper. On a warmer day, I might have eaten it sliced with a mound of crimson-fruited chutney and a bottle of beer, but the temperature is well below freezing and cold cuts and pickles will not hit the spot.

I am probably alone in holding juniper as one of my favourite spices. Its clean, citrus ‘n’ tobacco scent is both warming and refreshing. Where cumin, cinnamon and nutmeg offer us reassuring earthiness, juniper brings an arctic freshness and tantalising astringency. Growing on coniferous bushes and trees throughout the northern hemisphere and beyond, the berries, midnight blue when fresh, dry to an inky black. I delighted in finding them growing in Scotland amongst the heather. In a stoppered jar in a dark place, they keep their magic longer than almost any other spice.

The gin bottle aside, the berries are best known for their appearance in the fermented cabbage dish, sauerkraut (though I first met them in a dark, glossy sauce for pork chops). Their ability to slice through richness has led them to a life of pork recipes, from Swedish meatballs to pâté. I sometimes add them to a coarse, fat-speckled terrine for Christmas, dropping them into the mixture instead of the dusty-tasting mace. But their knife-edge quality makes them worth using with oily fish too, as in a marinade for fillets of mackerel (with sliced onions, cider vinegar, salt and dill) and a dry cure for sides of salmon (sea salt, dill and finely grated lemon zest).

Juniper berries are best used lightly squashed rather than finely ground. Crush them too much and they will bite rather than merely bark. Something you learn the hard way. A firm pounding with a pestle or the end of a rolling pin is all they need to release their oil. Their affinity with rich flesh is not confined to fat pork and oily fish. The berries have long been used to season game birds, especially towards the end of the season, when pigeon and partridge toughen and are brought to tenderness in a stew.

This (freezing) evening, as I crush the coal-black beads with the round end of a pestle, the piercing citrus notes come off the stone in cold, Nordic waves. They will invigorate my leftover ham, ripped into thick shards and tossed with onions and shredded white cabbage. Seasoned with sharp apples, brown sugar, cloves and white vinegar, my quick ham and cabbage fry up has its roots in the altogether more sophisticated sauerkraut.

A ham and cabbage fry up

A bottle of very cold beer would be appropriate here, if not downright compulsory.

butter: 30g

an onion cloves: 4

juniper berries: 15

a large, sharp apple: about 250g

white wine vinegar: 2 tablespoons

demerara sugar: a tablespoon

a hard, white cabbage: about 800g

leftover cooked ham: 250g

balsamic vinegar: a tablespoon

parsley: a small handful, roughly chopped

Melt the butter in a large, heavy-based pan over a low to moderate heat. Peel the onion and thinly slice into rounds, then add it to the butter. Throw in the cloves and the lightly crushed juniper berries (squash them flat with the side of a kitchen knife or in a pestle and mortar) and cover with a lid. Leave to cook, still over a low to moderate heat, with the occasional stir, for seven to ten minutes. The onion should be soft and lightly coloured.

Halve, core and thickly slice the apple. There is no need to peel it. Add it to the pan, then pour in the white wine vinegar and the sugar. Season with salt and pepper.

Shred the cabbage, not too finely, add it to the pan and mix lightly with the other ingredients. Cover with a tight lid and leave to soften over a lowish heat for about twenty minutes. The occasional stir will stop it sticking.

Tear or chop the ham into short, thick pieces. They are more satisfying if left large and uneven. Fold them into the cabbage, continue cooking for five minutes, then pour in the balsamic vinegar and toss in the chopped parsley. Pile into a warm dish and serve.

Enough for 2

JANUARY 13
The cook’s knife

There have been surprisingly few kitchen knives in my life. One, a thin, flexible filleting knife, has been with me since my cookery-school days; another from that era, its thin tang having come loose from the handle, is now used to gouge grass from between the garden paving stones. There is a fearsome carving blade from Sheffield, long the home of British knife making; a medium-sized, much-used Japanese knife that I regard as the perfect size and weight for me; and a tiny paring knife with a pale wooden handle that I hope stays with me to the grave.

The most used blade in my kitchen belongs to a heavy, 20cm cook’s knife. Thicker than is currently fashionable, its blade is made from carbon steel rather than the more usual stainless, which immediately marks me out as something of an old-fashioned cook. So be it. The blade, a mixture of iron and carbon, is the dull grey of a pencil lead, and heavily stained from years of lemon juice and vinegar. Its biggest sin is its habit of leaving an unpleasant grey streak on apples or tomatoes I have sliced with it, and occasionally on lemons too, but that, and the need to dry it thoroughly to prevent it rusting, is a small price to pay for a tool that is so ‘right’ it actually feels part of my body.

Picking up the right knife is like putting on a much-loved pullover. It may well have seen better days but the odd hole only seems to add to its qualities – like the wrinkles on a close friend. Price has little to do with it. My trusty vegetable peeler cost less than a loaf of bread and has dealt with a decade of potatoes and parsnips. And even if an expensive top-of-the-range Japanese knife is a pleasure to hold in the hand, it may not work any better for you than something as cheap as chips from the local ironmonger’s.

A strong, long-bladed implement is the only way to gain entry to tough-skinned squashes such as the winter pumpkins, though I have been known to take a garden axe to the odd Crown Prince variety. You need a strong blade to get through celeriac too, and sometimes the larger, end-of-season swede. A serrated bread knife might just stand in its stead, but it is rarely man enough for the job.

I brought the 20cm cook’s knife back from Japan a while ago. It is the tool I use for slicing vegetables, chopping herbs, dicing meat. I know every nick and stain on its blade. It seems inappropriate to say that the right knife is like a comfort blanket, you feel safe with it in your hand, but that is how it is.

I do, though, find it mildly disturbing to find comfort in something with which you could so easily kill someone.

Hot, sweet baked pumpkin

Initially, this was a side dish to go with a flash-fried steak. But its sticky, sweet-sharp qualities led me to serve it as a dish in its own right. In which case there is a need for a dish of steamed brown rice to go with it. This is a genuinely interesting way to combat the sugary, monotonous note of the pumpkin. The colours are ravishing.

pumpkin or butternut squash: 1.5 kg (unpeeled weight)

butter: 50g

For the dressing:

caster sugar: 4 tablespoons

water: 200ml

ginger: a thumb-sized lump

large, medium-hot red chilli: 1 limes: 2

fish sauce: 2 capfuls

coriander: a small bunch, finely chopped

Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Peel the pumpkin, discard the seeds and fibres and cut the flesh into small pieces about 3cm in diameter. Put them in a roasting tin with the butter and bake for about an hour, turning them occasionally, till soft enough to take the point of a knife. They should be completely tender.

Put the sugar and water in a shallow pan and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and leave to simmer enthusiastically till the liquid has reduced by about half. Meanwhile, peel and roughly chop the ginger and put it in a food processor. Halve the chilli lengthways and chop roughly, removing the seeds if you wish for a less spicy seasoning (I tend to leave them in for this recipe). Add the chilli to the ginger, then grate in the zest of the limes. Squeeze in the juice from the limes, then process everything to a coarse paste, pushing the mixture down the sides of the bowl from time to time with a spatula.

Stir the spice mixture into the sugar syrup and continue simmering for a minute. Add the fish sauce and coriander and remove from the heat.

When the pumpkin is fully tender, spoon most of the chilli sauce over it, toss gently to coat each piece, then return to the oven for five to ten minutes. Toss with the remaining dressing and serve.

Enough for 6 as a side dish

JANUARY 15
A slow-cooked bean hotpot. And a quick version

A dry day, warm enough to garden without a jacket. The earth, dark and moist from the week’s rain, crumbles in textbook fashion under the garden fork. There is still a scattering of bronze leaves and here and there the odd medlar that melts in your hand, leaving behind the ghost of wine dregs in a glass. Anyone with a scrap of land will value January days like these for getting the earth turned, roses pruned and stray leaves collected.

I spend a couple of hours tugging out the last of the borlotti beans, their dried stems still twisted around the hazel poles. This should have been done in December and both the bean stems and precious hazel supports snap like icicles. The odd purple-skinned potato and (useless) radish come to the surface as I fork the soil. Before I go in, I move a patch of soggy brown leaves from under the medlar tree and find three rhubarb tips poking teasingly through the soil. Their carmine rudeness against the chocolate-brown soil at first startles, then delights.

Technology excites me (be it Japanese Shinkansen trains or the next thing that Apple throws our way) but so does the celebration of slow, time-honoured rituals. The way of living that hasn’t changed in centuries. Houses built or restored using traditional methods, treading grapes to make wine (yes, a tiny number of vineyards still do it) and anything hand made. Last night I soaked beans for a hotpot. I could have opened a can of course, and sometimes I do, but the idea of doing something just as it has been done for thousands of years appeals to me. So I soak them, a mixture of small white haricot and black-eyed beans. You can soak different varieties of bean together if they are the sort that enjoy the same cooking time (long, oval flageolet take less than the rounder beans). Covering the beans with an equal volume of water is usually enough. But they should be drained and rinsed the following day. This will effectively reduce the oligosaccharides, those complex, indigestible sugars that make us fart. More importantly, it cuts down the cooking time.

A crisp-crusted hotpot of aubergines and beans

If you haven’t soaked beans the night before, or simply can’t be bothered, then use canned haricot or black-eyed beans for this. You will need three 400g cans, drained and rinsed.

dried haricot or black-eyed beans: 450g

bay leaves: 2

aubergines: 2 (about 500g in total)

olive oil

onions: 2

garlic: 3 cloves

rosemary: 3 stems

dried oregano: 1 tablespoon

chopped tomatoes: two 400g cans

For the crust:

white bread, not too crusty: 125g

a clove of garlic, peeled and crushed

grated Parmesan: 30g

a lemon

rosemary: 2 or 3 sprigs

dried oregano: 1 teaspoon

olive oil: 3 tablespoons

Put the beans into a deep bowl, cover with cold water and leave overnight. In the morning, drain off any remaining water, rinse the beans, then tip them into a large saucepan and cover with at least 2 litres of water. Bring to the boil, then skim off the froth that rises to the surface. Lower the heat to a jolly simmer, add the bay leaves and partially cover the pan with a lid. Leave the beans to cook for forty-five minutes, till almost tender. They should give a little when squeezed between finger and thumb. Drain the beans and set aside.

Cut the aubergines in half lengthways, then cut each half into about 8 thick slices. Warm 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a casserole. Fry the aubergines, in two or three batches, till pale gold on both sides and soft in the middle, then remove and drain on kitchen paper. Add more oil to the pan and lower the heat as necessary for each batch. The pieces of aubergine must be soft and tender.

Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Peel and roughly chop the onions. Add to the empty casserole with a tablespoon or two of olive oil and leave over a moderate heat till they have softened. While the onions are cooking, peel and thinly slice the garlic and finely chop the needles from the rosemary stems. Add to the onions with the oregano and leave to soften. The onions shouldn’t colour.

Add the tomatoes to the onions and garlic and bring to the boil, then stir in the drained beans and the aubergines. Fill an empty tomato can with water and pour it into the pan. Once the mixture has returned to the boil, turn off the heat. Cover the pan, transfer to the oven and bake for 45 minutes.

Make the crust by reducing the bread to coarse crumbs in a food processor. Add the garlic and the Parmesan cheese, then season with black pepper and a little salt. Finely grate the lemon zest and add it to the crumbs. Remove the rosemary needles from their stems and chop them finely. Stir into the crumbs with the dried oregano. Pour the olive oil into the breadcrumbs and toss gently; you want them to be lightly moist.

Remove the bean dish from the oven and spoon the crumbs on top. Return to the oven, uncovered, and bake for twenty to twenty-five minutes or until the crust is crisp and the colour of a biscuit.

Enough for 4

JANUARY 18
Cheating with puff pastry

There are two ways of making a savoury puff pastry crust. I sometimes take a quiet afternoon to blend flour and butter and roll, fold, chill, roll and roll again. With Radio 4 on in the background, making puff or rough puff pastry is as much therapy as cooking. I use the ready-made stuff from the freezer, too. It’s a cop out, a cheat, but really, who cares? The brands made with butter have a good flavour, are crisp and light and often, helpfully, come ready rolled into sheets. It means I can have a pie such as tonight’s chicken and leek without making my own pastry.

A hearty pie of chicken and leeks

chicken thighs on the bone: 350g

chicken breasts: 350g

half an onion

peppercorns: 8

a bay leaf

milk, to cover

butter: 30g

smoked streaky bacon: 6 rashers

leeks: 2 medium

plain flour: 3 lightly heaped tablespoons

Dijon mustard: 3 teaspoons

puff pastry: a 375g sheet

a little beaten egg and milk

grated Parmesan

Put the chicken pieces into a large saucepan, together with the half onion, peppercorns, bay leaf and enough milk just to cover the chicken. Bring to the boil, then, just when it starts to bubble, lower the heat and leave to simmer, partially covered by a lid, for twenty minutes. Remove the chicken, reserving the milk, and pull the meat from the bones. Cut it into small, plump pieces.

Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Melt the butter in a large saucepan, add the bacon, cut into small pieces, and let it soften without colouring over a moderate to low heat. Slice the leeks into pieces roughly 1cm thick. Wash them very thoroughly, then add them to the bacon and continue cooking for about fifteen minutes, till they are totally soft.

Stir the flour into the leek and bacon, continue cooking for a couple of minutes, then gradually strain in enough of the warm milk to make a thick sauce. Fold in the chicken and check the seasoning, adding the mustard and a generous grinding of salt and pepper.

Roll one half of the pastry out into a rectangle 27cm x 37cm and transfer it to a baking sheet. Spoon the filling on to the pastry, leaving a wide rim all the way round. Brush the rim with beaten egg and milk. Roll out the second piece of pastry to the same size as the base and lower it over the filling. Press and crimp the edges together firmly to seal them. It is worth making certain the edges are tightly sealed, otherwise the filling may leak.

Brush the pastry all over with the beaten egg wash and scatter a handful of grated Parmesan over the surface. Bake for thirty-five minutes or till golden.

Enough for 6

Poached apples with ginger and anise

Warm apples in a gently spiced syrup are useful as both a breakfast dish and a dessert. Sweet but refreshing, and pleasingly simple, these poached fruits are also good served thoroughly chilled. A nice change from creamy desserts. Odd as it seems, we ate this outside in the snow. The ginger-scented warmth and clarity of the juice encouraged us to eat it standing up in the garden, marvelling at the tall hedges weighed down with snow and the slowly darkening sky.

small to medium dessert apples: 3

the juice of half a lemon

unfiltered apple juice: 400ml

golden caster sugar: 2 tablespoons

star anise: 2

ginger preserved in syrup: 40g

syrup from the ginger jar: 4 tablespoons

Peel the apples, halve them and remove their cores. Toss gently in the lemon juice. Pour the apple juice into a pan large enough to accommodate the apples, then add the caster sugar, star anise, the ginger, sliced into coins, and the ginger syrup. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat so the liquid simmers gently.

Lower the fruit into the simmering syrup and leave, partially covered with a lid, until they are tender. They are ready when a skewer will glide effortlessly through their flesh – fifteen to twenty minutes or so.

Lift the fruit from the syrup with a draining spoon and place on a serving dish or in smaller individual dishes. Turn up the heat and bring the syrup to the boil. Serve warm, three halves of fruit per person, in little dishes or glasses with some of the apple- and spice-scented syrup spooned over.

Enough for 3

JANUARY 20
A golden fruit

A need for something sweet so I walk along London’s Edgware Road, with its Lebanese grocer’s and pastry shops. On a winter’s afternoon, this road north of Marble Arch is where I go to stock up on what we used to call sweetmeats – the tiny, sugary fruits and pastries that mark the end of a meal. Though I should add that they come out with coffee too, mid morning.

Today there are boxes of darkly sticky dates, powdery lokum, the Turkish delight whose chewy translucency comes scented with rose, pistachio and lemon, and crates of fat, gritty figs. Any of these will signify the full stop at the end of dinner as effectively as a slice of pie (though I would rather have the latter, if I’m honest). There are crimson pomegranates too, lemons on the twig, and tangerines sold with their leaves. There are pale and milky walnuts in their shells, sugared almonds and sultanas the colour of Sauternes.

Today I come back with a small box of honey-soaked pistachio pastries, a bag of fudge-textured dates, some thick, snow-white Lebanese yoghurt and a polystyrene tray of lamb chops the size of a baby’s fist. They will be grilled and dipped into hummus. Almost absentmindedly, I also pick up a handful of golden, pear-shaped quinces.

Despite its delicate fragrance, the quince is a harsh taskmaster. You need a strong wrist and a good knife to get through its hard flesh, and patience to see it cook through to tenderness. Your efforts will be rewarded though. Cooked slowly, this rock-hard fruit will be transformed into one of glowing colour and gently honeyed flavour. If you leave one to simmer with sugar and water, it will eventually turn a deep, translucent crimson.

Just two quinces in an apple pie are enough to imbue the entire filling with their scent and flavour. The quince’s flesh is considerably drier and more grainy than the apple, and needs additional moisture and time in which to cook. I put them on first, adding the apples only once the quince is showing signs of softness. In Tender, I used them in a pickle, a crumble and to sweeten a dish of slow-cooked lamb, but I spent today working them into a pie. Instead of a pastry crust, I have enclosed them in a loose form of crumble, so that the amber fruit shows through.

This tart needs a good hour or more of our time, but is really rather good. Serve it with a jug of cream or a scoop of crème fraîche.

Quince and apple tart

a lemon

quinces: 500g

caster sugar: 2 tablespoons

maple syrup: 3 tablespoons

sweet apples: 750g

For the top:

plain flour: 150g

butter: 75g

demerara sugar: 75g

an egg, lightly beaten

For the crust:

butter: 100g, at room temperature

caster sugar: 80g

an egg, lightly beaten

plain flour: 200g

Make the pastry crust: dice the butter and put into a food mixer or processor with the sugar. Cream till light and fluffy, then add the egg and mix thoroughly. Spoon in the flour, bring the dough into a ball – it will be quite soft – then place on a generously floured work surface or board. Knead briefly; this will make it easier to work. Roll out the dough to fit a 22cm tart tin with a removable base, pushing it carefully into the corners and up the sides, patching any tears as you go. Refrigerate for twenty minutes.

Put a baking sheet in the oven and set it at 200°C/Gas 6. To make the filling, squeeze the lemon into a mixing bowl. Peel and core the quinces, then chop them into small pieces, tossing them in the lemon juice as you go to stop them browning. Place them in a deep saucepan, add the sugar and maple syrup, cover with a lid and leave over a low heat for fifteen minutes, until tender enough for you to insert a metal skewer into them easily. Check regularly and lower the heat if necessary, particularly towards the end of cooking when the syrup has reduced.

Meanwhile, core and dice the apples – there is no need to peel them. Stir them into the quinces as soon as the quinces are almost tender. Continue cooking, covered, for five to ten minutes or until the apples are just soft. Set aside.

Make the topping: put the flour and butter into a food processor and blitz till they resemble fine breadcrumbs. Alternatively, rub the butter into the flour with your fingers. Add the sugar and the egg and mix briefly to a moist, crumbly texture.

Fill the uncooked tart case with the apple and quince mixture, setting aside any juice, then scatter the crumble topping over. Some of the fruit will show through. Lift on to the hot baking sheet and bake for thirty minutes, till the crust and pastry are crisp and golden. Allow to settle a little before serving with a trickle of the reserved juices and some cream or crème fraîche.

Enough for 6–8