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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 (#ulink_54ba9a4a-e471-5999-8f57-e345bce373f2))
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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