The Christmas Chronicles: Notes, stories & 100 essential recipes for midwinter. Nigel Slater

for weeks afterwards.

      Birds pepper my winter eating like currants in a garibaldi. The goose or turkey at Christmas, of course, but weeks before that, the pheasants, grouse, a roast duck with apple sauce, maybe a quail or two. I like the deep flavours of game birds, the toasty bits in the bottom of the roasting tin; the accompaniments of redcurrant jelly, bread sauce and tiny sausages. I also relish the chance to tear my food apart with my hands. Much has to do with the shooting season, but the flavours are appropriate to the time of year, particularly when small birds are roasted with suitable vegetables, onions, mushrooms, parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes. And that medlar jelly you didn’t make, well, that is just the accompaniment for a roast pheasant or partridge too.

      The most expensive of the birds is grouse and is something I tend to leave to restaurants. But the partridge does it for me. Expensive without being prohibitive, neat, lean and sweet-fleshed, they have a sense of jollity to them that I suspect comes from the carol. (There are no songs about a guinea fowl.) It is too early to think of partridges in pear trees but it is almost impossible to think of them without the rumbustious little tune coming into my head. The idea that one should be served on the first day of Christmas doesn’t really work, as we need a bigger bird for the attending family, so they are better pre or post Christmas.

      The rhyme, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, starts with a modest bird on Christmas Day and carries on through French hens and milking maids, getting grander with each of the twelve verses until we get to the leaping lords on Twelfth Night. An accumulative song – each verse builds on the previous ones – it was first published in Britain in 1870 and is thought to be of French origin. No one really knows how it started but it is generally considered to be a children’s game of memory and forfeit. I love the idea that the best-known version appeared in a children’s book called Mirth without Mischief (oh, for simpler times).

      I have a pear and partridge recipe in Tender, Volume II. I take a more savoury route today, browning parsnips and onions before cooking them with a pair of little partridges and some chicken stock.

      The clever trick and indeed the point behind pot-roasting is the small amount of liquid added to the casserole. Under a tight lid, the moisture produces steam that keeps the flesh of the birds juicy, circumnavigating the lack of fat that can make a traditionally roast bird dry. The roast partridge, by the way, is a tidy little dinner for one, and carries with it a faintly festive air. I eat them from early September (they come into season from the 1st) until early February (last shoot is the first day of Feb), often as a plain roast. Covered with bacon and smeared with dripping, they will roast to rose-tinted perfection in twenty-five minutes at 230°C/Gas 9. I tend to remove the bacon after ten minutes to give the breasts a chance to burnish. I throw in a chipolata or two if I’m feeling frivolous, or a slice or two of black pudding for the final ten minutes of cooking. Cabbage is a splendid accompaniment.

      Pot-roast partridge with parsnips and smoked garlic

      I am pot-roasting today’s birds with parsnips, juniper and smoked garlic.

      Serves 2

      banana shallots or small onions – 3

      parsnips, medium – 2

      smoked garlic – 4 cloves

      olive oil – 3 tablespoons

      partridges – 2

      chicken stock – 250ml

      thyme – 6 sprigs

      juniper berries – 10

      double cream – 125ml

      Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Peel the shallots and slice them in half lengthways. Peel the parsnips and cut them into chunks the length of a wine cork. Peel the garlic.

      Warm the olive oil in a casserole for which you have a lid, lightly brown the shallots, parsnips and garlic in the hot oil, then remove. Season the birds with black pepper, then brown lightly in the oil. Remove the birds, pour in the stock and bring to the boil, scraping at any delicious debris in the pan and stirring it into the stock.

      Return the birds and vegetables to the pot, tuck in the sprigs of thyme, and season with a little salt. Lightly crush the juniper berries and add them too. When everything returns to the boil, cover tightly with a lid and place in the oven for forty minutes. Remove the partridges, wrapping them in foil to keep them warm, then place the pot over a high heat and reduce the volume of liquid by half – it won’t thicken but will instead give you sweet, creamy juices. Stir in the cream, check the seasoning, then make sure all is thoroughly hot. Serve the birds in shallow bowls or deep plates, spooning over the vegetables and the juices. You will need a spoon as well as a knife and fork, and something with which to wipe your fingers.

      13 NOVEMBER

      Maple syrup and fig terrine

      The garden has skeletons – hydrangea, hornbeam and beech – holding their leaves even now. The pale walnut browns are smart and crisp against the green of the high yew hedges. Blue tits feast. Leaves, yellow, grey, black, lie frozen to the garden table, silver with frost. The space is tidy, but beneath the neatness lie worries. Two much-loved trees in the garden require major surgery, a third lost its leaves in the summer. The white jasmines, normally survivors in any garden, have suffered from a mysterious fungus. (This could well be due to their location, a curiously warm, damp courtyard where frost gets no hold, an enclosed space warm enough for pelargoniums to spend their winter unprotected.)

      The garden needs a fierce snap of cold and so do I. The frost adds a touch of fairy-tale sparkle to the hedges and trees but it is still warm enough to venture out without a coat. I long for snow, for frost-ferns on the windows, for ice on the water butt.

      I have been gardening long enough to know that there is much happening underground. Narcissi and tulips sprout, muscari and crocus are waking up. I feel this happening too. I feel in need of a prolonged cold patch to stir my own energy. Where some see a garden in repose, a sleeping beauty, I see what lies beneath, the garden’s hidden spirit, waiting to emerge.

      This morning, after a couple of hours at my desk, I take out the secateurs and cut back the white roses, removing their spindly growth and confusion of crossed stems. Standing back to admire my work, I feel the roses can breathe once more. I come in, make coffee and set about sorting the larder – discarding and tidying. A sort of culinary pruning and removing of dead wood.

      There is method in my madness. Even though this is the busiest time of year, I like to spend a day sorting out the food cupboards. A seasonal stock-take. A snapshot of what I have a little too much of (lentils, beans, coconut milk, maple syrup) and what I don’t have at all (light soy sauce, hoisin, honey and, crucially, dried yeast.) An inventory now means a slow picking up of necessities over the next few weeks rather than the horror and panic of a ‘big shop’ during Christmas week, when the rest of the country will be at it too.

      There is only one way to tidy a kitchen cupboard and that is to take everything out. Everything. Moving things around from shelf to shelf and side to side doesn’t work. You need to see what you have, so I spend the rest of the morning with bottles, cans and storage jars spread over the floor. The shelves get cleaned, then everything goes back (or at least most of it), starting with the top shelf (dried beans and lentils), then working down.

      I rather enjoy finding the oldest sell-by date, but the haul is a disappoint­ment this time. A jar of chestnuts from two Christmases ago, a twelve-month over-the-date bag of prunes and a bottle of oyster sauce that seems magically to have escaped at least three previous stock-takes isn’t enough to satisfy me. I genuinely relish finding that box of coconut-flavoured sugar or jar of piccalilli that is old enough to have gone down on the Titanic.

      A surfeit of maple syrup annoys me, though. It is one of the most expensive ingredients in the kitchen and I cannot imagine how I have ended up with three bottles. I put it down to the bottles being slim and stored sideways, thus becoming