KEY POINTS:
Winter is a time to slow down and savour flavour-layered winter food.
The French say, "the best stews are cooked in the oldest pots" (in reference to the advantages of older women as lovers) to which some add, "but it is essential to have a young carrot".
There are those who long for the flippant, zingy, cheerful food and the simple, revealing clothes of summer to be over, so they can at last start cooking comfy, flavour-layered stews and wear the lush, fabric-layered clothes of winter.
Increased prosperity and time poverty has caused offal, long-cooking cuts of meat and desserts such as steamed puddings to disappear from young people's kitchens. They take too long to cook and cuts of transient pleasure such as chicken breasts and lamb racks are preferable.
Truth and memory are tricky things - they can't be trusted and often let you down. There is a difference between what is technically true and what your memory tells you is true but I think my mother used one cookbook throughout our entire childhood - the Edmonds Cookery Book - famous for such crimes against humanity as kidney soup, onion sauce and tongue mould. Fortunately she never tried any of this rubbish on us, save for gloopy white onion wallpaper glue with Christmas dinner and occasionally corned beef.
All I know is, your body is a temple with curved walls, especially in autumn and winter, and you need to put on a bit of condition to withstand those boring, rainy days.
Cooking and eating make one happy and are a form of therapy - the shopping, chopping, stirring, slurping is calming and heart-warming.
The more competent you become with food, the simpler it becomes. When you're young it's all about impressing and experimenting and as you get older it's about being at one with the universe and accessing your inner regional cook. Regional is code for easy - for example, this recipe for slow roasted pork with Vermouth.
Your family will also love you unconditionally if you cook plum pudding. Steamed puddings are really easy to cook and you can steam them in anything. The water must be boiling when the pud goes in and stay boiling till cooked. When made properly, they have a light, feathery, spongy texture.
The pudding should be served as soon as it is ready, to avoid heaviness and unhappiness.
Regarding the slow-roasted pork, don't give in to haste; it will not reward you. Cook it with steadfast devotion for the time it takes to complete many other tasks in your life. Eat it with your fingers - you will be surprised how many childhood memories flood in of eating with your hands, unpolluted by hard steel forks.
That we desperately miss slow-cooked winter food is evidenced by the popularity of the humble lamb shank, which restaurants can't even take off their summer menus, so afraid are they of the masses rising up in shank-riot.
The point of cooking is to share the love around, have people feel comfortable and go for delicious rather than death-defying.
- Detours, HoS