Nigel Slater - The Kitchen Diaries

There is a single rose out in the garden, a faded bundle of cream and magenta petals struggling against grey boards. A handful of snowdrops peeps out from the ivy that has taken hold amongst the fruit trees. The raspberry canes are bare, save the odd dried berry I have left for the birds, and the bean stems stand brown and dry around their frames. A withered verbena’s lemon-scented leaves stand crisp against a clear, grey sky. January 1st is the day I prune back the tangle of dried sticks in the kitchen garden, chuck out anything over its sell-by date from the cupboards, flick through seed catalogues and make lists of what I want to grow and eat in the year to come. I have always loved the first day of the year. A day ringing with promise.

I bought little between Christmas and New Year, just salad and a few herbs, preferring to make do with larder stuff: white beans and yellow lentils, parsnips and a forgotten pumpkin, tins of baked beans, dried apricots and hard, chewy figs. There is still a crumbling wedge of Christmas cake, some crystallised orange and lemon slices, a few brazils to which I cannot gain entry and a handful of tight-skinned clementines. A feast of sorts, but what I need is a hot meal.

There is juice for breakfast, blood orange, the dull fruit brushed with scarlet and still sporting its glossy green leaves. It’s a bracing way to start a new year. I make a resolution to eat less but better food this year: to eat only food whose provenance I know at least a little of; to patronise artisan food producers; to increase my organic food consumption; and to shop even less at supermarkets than I do now. This should be the year in which I think carefully about everything I put in my mouth. ‘Where has this come from, what effect will this have on me, my well-being and that of the environment?’ Ten years ago this would all have sounded distinctly worthy, but today it just sounds like a blueprint for intelligent eating.

I have a tradition of making soup on New Year’s Day, too: green lentil, potato and Parmesan, noodle broth and this year red lentil and pumpkin. It is a warm ochre soup, soothing, yet capable of releasing a slow build-up of heat from its base notes of garlic, chilli and ginger; a bowl of soup that both whips and kisses.

a small onion

garlic – 2 cloves

ginger – a walnut-sized knob

split red lentils – 225g

ground turmeric – a teaspoon

ground chilli – a teaspoon

pumpkin – 250g

coriander – a small bunch, roughly chopped

For the onion topping:

onions – 2 medium

groundnut oil – 2 tablespoons

chillies – 2 small hot ones

garlic – 2 cloves

Peel the onion and chop it roughly. Peel and crush the garlic and put it with the onion into a medium-sized, heavy-based saucepan. Peel the ginger, cut it into thin shreds and stir that in too. Add the lentils and pour in one and a half litres of water. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down to an enthusiastic simmer. Stir in the ground turmeric and chilli, season and leave to simmer, covered, for twenty minutes.

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

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

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.

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.

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.