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While the soup is cooking, bring a medium-sized pan of water to the boil. Peel the pumpkin and scoop out the seeds and fibre, then cut the flesh into fat chunks. Boil the pumpkin pieces for ten minutes, until they are tender enough to take a skewer without much pressure. Drain them and set them aside.
To make the onion topping, peel the onions and cut them into thin rings. Cook them in the oil in a shallow pan until they start to colour. Cut the chillies in half, scrape out the seeds and slice the flesh finely. Peel and finely slice the garlic and add it with the chillies to the onions. Continue cooking until the onions are a deep golden brown. Set aside.
Remove the lid from the lentils and turn up the heat, boiling hard for five minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, then add the drained pumpkin. Put the soup through the blender (for safety, a little at a time) until smooth, then pour it into a bowl. Stir in the roughly chopped coriander and check the seasoning. I find this soup likes a more generous than usual amount of salt.
Serve in deep bowls with a spoonful of the spiced onions on top.
Makes 4 good-sized bowls
A salad of fennel, winter leaves and Parmesan
tarragon vinegar – 1 tablespoon
Dijon mustard – a teaspoon
an egg yolk
olive oil – 100ml
grated Parmesan – 3 tablespoons
lemon juice – 2 teaspoons
thick slices of white bread – 2
olive oil for frying the bread
1 medium fennel bulb
small, hot salad leaves such as rocket and watercress – 4 double handfuls
a block of Parmesan for shaving
Make the dressing by whisking the vinegar, mustard, egg yolk and olive oil together with a little salt and black pepper, then beating in the grated cheese. Squeeze in the lemon juice, stir and set aside for a few minutes.
Cut the bread into small squares and fry in shallow oil till golden on all sides. Drain on kitchen paper. Slice the fennel finely; it should be almost fine enough to see through. Toss it with the salad leaves and the dressing. Pile the salad on to two plates, then shave pieces of Parmesan over with a vegetable peeler. I usually do at least eight per salad, depending on my dexterity with the peeler. Tip the hot croûtons over the salad and eat straight away whilst all is fresh and crunchy.
Enough for 2
January 4
A salad of
winter
cabbage and
bacon
We have the first porridge of the year, made with medium oatmeal and water and drizzled with heather honey and several spoonfuls of blueberries. Supper is a tightwad affair of shredded winter cabbage, steamed till just bright and almost tender, tossed with shredded bacon rashers and their hot fat spiked with a dash of white wine vinegar. What lifts this from the mundane is the fact that I keep the cabbage jewel bright and use the best, lightly smoked bacon in generous amounts. A few caraway seeds add a nutty, almost musky flavour. Not the sort of thing to serve to guests but fine for a weekday supper.
Afterwards we eat slices of lemon tart from the deli.
January 6
Grilled mushrooms tonight, slathered with some of that garlicky French cream cheese from the corner shop and stuffed inside a soft burger bun. A TV supper of the first order, especially the bit where the cream cheese melts into the cut sides of the toasted bun.
January 7
Frugal, pure
and basic
food for a
rainy night
I try to prune the raspberry patch whilst being buffeted by high winds; sacks, buckets and even the watering can being blown across the garden. It is this annual task, and that of pruning the fruit trees in the thicket at the end of the garden, that is the turning point in the year for me. Seeing the neatly trimmed canes and the newly shorn branches of the young quince, medlar and mulberry trees is what rings in the new year for me rather than the bells, whoops and popping corks of New Year’s Eve. Anyway, Auld Lang Syne always makes me want to burst into tears.
Pruning holds no fears for me. It is a job I look forward to almost more than any other. The crisp snap of secateurs slicing through young rose-pink and walnut-coloured wood brings the possibility that this year I might actually manage to control this downright wayward kitchen garden. A garden where dahlias poke through blackcurrant bushes and dark purple clematis rambles through damson trees. Pruning makes me think, however briefly, that I am in charge.
But I give up after an hour or two, the wind thrashing the swaying and heavily thorned raspberry canes across my face just once too often. I go in and toast crumpets, then make a stew and an orange-scented cake.
Stew
pot barley – 100g
onions – 3 medium
celery – 2 large stalks
a large parsnip
carrots – 2
potatoes – 4–5 medium
neck of lamb chops – 8 thick ones
a few sprigs of thyme and a couple of bay leaves
white pepper
water or stock to cover
parsley – a small handful
Boil the pot barley in unsalted water for a good twenty-five minutes, then drain it.
Get the oven hot. It needs to be at 160°C/Gas 3. Peel the onions and slice them into thick rings. Cut the celery into short lengths. Peel the parsnip, carrots and potatoes and cut them into fat chunks. That’s 2–3cm if you are measuring. Pile the vegetables into a large, deep pot, then tuck in the chops, thyme and bay leaves. Season with a little white pepper, no salt, then pour in the drained barley and enough water or stock to cover the meat and vegetables completely. Bring it slowly to the boil.
Skim off the worst of the froth that has accumulated on the surface, easily done with a ‘holey’ spoon. Cover the top of the stew with a sheet of greaseproof paper, then with a lid. Transfer the pot to the oven and leave it there, untouched or fiddled with, for a good two hours.
Remove the lid. The liquor should be thin, thickened only slightly by the potatoes. Chop the parsley and mix it in carefully, so as not to smash the vegetables, then season with salt and black pepper.
Leave overnight. Next day, skim the fat from the top, then reheat slowly on the stove till the meat is thoroughly hot and the broth gently bubbling. Check the seasoning – be generous – and serve piping hot.
Enough for 4
A frosted marmalade cake
I don’t, as a rule, like icing. Yet on a home-made cake, drizzled over so that it sets wafer thin, it adds a welcome contrast to the soft sponge. You could use water to mix the icing but I prefer to use fruit juice, occasionally adding a hint of orange blossom water to perfume each slice of cake.
butter – 175g
golden unrefined caster sugar – 175g
a large orange
eggs – 3 large
orange marmalade – 75g
self-raising flour – 175g
For the frosting:
icing sugar – 100g
orange juice – 2 tablespoons
Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Line a loaf tin about 25 x 11cm and 7cm deep. Put the butter and sugar in a food mixer and beat till pale and fluffy. Finely grate the orange. Break the eggs into a small bowl and beat them lightly with a fork. With the machine set at moderate speed, pour in the beaten egg a little at a time, beating thoroughly between each addition. Beat in the marmalade and the grated orange zest.
Remove the bowl and fold in the flour with a large metal spoon. Do this slowly, firmly but carefully, till there is no sign of any flour. Lastly, gently stir in the juice of half the orange. Spoon the mixture into the lined tin, lightly smoothing the top. Bake for forty minutes, checking it after thirty-five with a metal skewer. Leave to cool in the tin – it will sink slightly – then remove and cool completely on a wire rack.
Sift the icing sugar and mix it to a smooth, slightly runny consistency with as much of the remaining orange juice as it takes – probably just under two tablespoons. Drizzle the icing over the cake, letting it run down the sides, and leave to set.
Enough for 8
January 8
The first
rhubarb
The first rhubarb appears with impeccable timing. Just as you want a fresh start to the year, along come the pale pink stems of the most tart and clean-tasting fruit to cleanse and invigorate. I no longer cut the stems into chunks and dip each piece raw into the sugar bowl like I did when I was a kid, but I do poach it only very lightly, so that the stems retain their shape, then I eat it first thing in the morning, slurping up spoonfuls of its limpid pink juice.
Frozen yoghurt with roast rhubarb
Warm, rudely pink rhubarb and snow-white frozen yoghurt has a smart, bright flavour and is breathtakingly pretty on a cold winter’s day. The frozen yoghurt is simply a bought vanilla smoothie chucked into an ice-cream machine; the baked fruit just rhubarb bunged in a dish with a spoonful of runny honey and the juice of an orange.
thick vanilla yoghurt smoothies – 3 × 250ml
young, pink rhubarb – 500g
an orange
mild honey – a tablespoon
To make the frozen yoghurt, pour the smoothies into the drum of your ice-cream machine and churn till almost frozen. Scoop out and into a plastic freezer box, then keep in the freezer till you need it.
Cut the rhubarb into short lengths about the size of a wine cork. Lay them in a shallow stainless steel or glass baking dish, squeeze over the orange juice and drizzle with the honey. Bake for twenty-five minutes at 200°C/Gas 6, occasionally spooning the juices over the fruit. The rhubarb is done when the stalks are tender enough to crush between your fingers. Leave to cool a little.
Divide the warm rhubarb between four dishes, then place a couple of scoops of frozen yoghurt on each, though it looks rather elegant served in separate bowls.
Enough for 4
Note
To make the frozen yoghurt without a machine, pour the smoothies into a plastic box and freeze for a couple of hours till a thick layer of ice crystals forms around the edge. Whisk the frozen edges into the middle of the mixture, then freeze again for an hour or so. Repeat, again beating the edges into the middle. Now leave the mixture to freeze. The whole process will take about four hours, depending on the temperature of your freezer. Try to catch the ice just before it freezes solid. The texture will be less smooth than if you use a machine.
January 9
Rain and
an old-
fashioned
cake
This is the grey, endless drizzle that Britain is regularly accused of having, yet in truth we rarely see, even in the depths of winter. It’s the sort of day on which to light the fire, turn on the radio and bake a cake. Once the smell of baking fills the house, I find the rain suddenly matters a good deal less, if at all. I make a decent ginger cake, a love of which seems to run in our family. My Dad adored them, along with Battenburg, or ‘window cake’ as he called it, which I leave to the experts. I take mine in the afternoon with a pot of green tea.
Double ginger cake
I am rather proud of this cake. Lightly crisp on top and with a good, open texture, it is light, moist and delicately gingery. It will keep for a week or so wrapped in paper and foil.
self-raising flour – 250g
ground ginger – 2 level teaspoons
ground cinnamon – half a teaspoon
bicarbonate of soda – a level teaspoon
a pinch of salt
golden syrup – 200g
