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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 (#u302ab708-c487-51d3-8aa2-fb4e3dab942b)
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
