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

with the spine facing out. This find does, however, give me the opportunity to try out an ice that may well end up on the table at Christmas.

      Fig, maple syrup and Marsala ice cream

      If you have an ice cream machine, churn the custard, syrup and yoghurt mixture first, then stir in the chopped fig and chocolate at the end. To prevent the custard from curdling, keep the heat low and, as it starts to thicken, remove from the heat, pour into a chilled bowl over ice or in a sink of cold water and beat firmly and continuously until most of the steam has gone and the custard is smooth. I like to serve the ice in chunks, like fudge, rather than in one large slab.

      Serves 6

      egg yolks – 4

      caster sugar – 2 tablespoons

      double cream – 450ml

      vanilla extract – a few drops

      maple syrup – 240ml

      figs – 3

      dark chocolate – 100g

      thick, strained yoghurt – 200g

      figs and physalis, to serve

      Put the egg yolks and caster sugar into the bowl of a food mixer and whisk until light and fluffy. Warm the cream in a saucepan, switching the heat off just before it comes to the boil, then stir in the vanilla. Pour the warm cream on to the eggs and sugar and stir to mix. Rinse the saucepan, then pour in the egg and cream mixture and return to a low to moderate heat. Warm the custard, stirring regularly, until it starts to thicken slightly on the spoon, then pour into a cold bowl and stir or beat with a whisk to remove some of the heat. Leave to cool a little.

      Pour in the maple syrup and combine. Chop the figs into small pieces, crushing them slightly as you go, then chop the chocolate into small, thin shards with a large knife. Stir the yoghurt, figs and chocolate pieces into the custard, then tip into a plastic freezer box and freeze for a good four hours, or overnight. Turn the ice cream out, then cut into large chunks and pile on to a chilled serving plate, perhaps with a few physalis and more slices of fig.

      Dinner is a green and humble soup. The flavours are simple, the method is straightforward and the ingredients are everyday. Recipes like this, gentle, warming, unshowy and, it should be said, meatless, are the backbone of my eating. Yes, there is plenty to dazzle both plate and palate, but sometimes it is this sort of food I need, food without frills or fuss, calming, restorative and just a little bit nannying. Oh, and it has a flotilla of cheese and toast on top.

      Cauliflower and leek soup with toasted cheese

      I use whatever cheese is around for this sort of thing. Tonight, it is a mixture of Gorgonzola and Taleggio that needs using up, the two melting harmoniously over the pieces of toast. Use whatever you have.

      Serves 4

      leeks, medium – 3

      butter – 30g

      olive oil – 2 tablespoons

      cauliflower – 1kg

      vegetable stock – 1 litre

      bay leaves – 2

      parsley leaves – a good handful (10g)

      sourdough bread – 4 slices

      cheese (any good melting type) – 100g

      Discard the coarse part of the green leaves from the leeks and roughly chop them. Warm the butter with the olive oil in a deep pan. Add the leeks and cover with a lid. Cook over a low to moderate heat, stirring and checking their progress regularly, until the leeks are soft but without browning them.

      Trim and thickly slice the cauliflower and add to the leeks. Stir briefly, then pour in the vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Add the bay leaves and a little salt, then lower the heat and leave the leeks and cauliflower to simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes, until soft. Process half the mixture in a blender until really smooth. Add a handful of parsley to the remainder and process in the blender to a thick, rough-textured consistency. Mix the two together and check the seasoning, adding salt and ground black pepper as you think fit.

      Spread the sourdough bread with a little butter or olive oil and place under a hot grill, toasting one side to a light crispness. Turn the bread over and cover the other side with thick slices of cheese, then return to the grill until melted. Divide the soup between shallow bowls and float the cheese toasts on top.

      14 NOVEMBER

      Candlelight and roast cabbage

      I wake early, sit at my desk and write. A daily ritual which if missed sets my world briefly off its axis. For the best months of the year, it will still be dark, a prickle of cold in the air, the slightly-too-long arms of my sweater (my writing jumper, a dear old friend) slipping softly over my fingers as I type, as if I was wearing fingerless gloves.

      I do most of my early morning writing by candlelight. There is a warmth to the light given by a single flame that no electric filament bulb can ever match, and shadows that flicker grey on white. Occasionally, in winter, the candles will gutter, the flame weaving a little as it burns, a flash, a hiss and a spit, as if someone has walked past, and then it steadies itself once more.

      My love of candlelight has its history in the light given by a particular candle that would be burned at home, unfailingly, over Christmas, then put away again until the following year. A heavy, square, rough-sided candle, each side framing a paper stained-glass window. To this seven-year-old child, it seemed like a magic lantern, each window a door to a world in which wonderful things happened, but also a place of safety and warmth. A hollow in which to disappear, like a rabbit-hole or a wardrobe with a magical world past the fur coats.

      There were other candles too, including those which, once lit, sent tiny brass horses spinning round a pole, and others huddled in a bunch whose wax slowly welded together as they melted, achieving a glowing island. The candles disappeared from our Christmas under the instruction of my stepmother, who thought they were dirty things, producing smoke and dripping wax on her lovingly polished tables. A somewhat strange decree, coming, as it did, from a lifelong chain-smoker.

      A candle is not just for Christmas. Turn the lights off on a winter’s night and light a candle or two instead. Instantly, the smell of cordite, and soon the scent of beeswax. Shadows to feed the imagination, flickers of flame, perhaps the scent of woodsmoke by which to read a book. None of this would I wish to live without. At home, we light them even during summer, though they tend to be in tall glass jars on the long garden table, lit as the night starts to fall.

      Whale sperm and beeswax

      The heart and soul of a candle is the wax from which it is made; it is what glows and produces a pillar of warm light in the room, but this hasn’t always been so. The fat from nuts and trees, from bay berries and even rice was used long before the introduction of wax. In the West it was tallow, basically rendered beef fat, which is softer than the wax we know today and gave off much dark, acrid smoke, rather like beef fat on a griddle. There is evidence that candle makers – chandlers – went from house to house, making saved beef fat into useable candles.

      In the Middle Ages, we progressed to beeswax. Cleaner and with a warming, honeyed fragrance, they were more expensive to make and initially the preserve of the wealthy and of churches, where they were an integral part of religious ceremonies. Cheaper candles were made from spermaceti, a waxy substance obtained from the spermaceti organ found in the head of a sperm whale. Spermaceti candles, also known as standard candles, were the ones used for measuring candlepower, the unit, no longer used, that measures the luminous intensity of a candle. You can get 500 gallons of spermaceti from a large whale. Is this book useful or what?

      Wax for candles is obtained from a variety of sources, stearin (purified animal fats), paraffin, cinnamon, soya and palm being among the most common, but the most valued is the traditional beeswax. Even unscented they are capable of creating, almost instantly, an atmosphere of calm, welcome and humble bonhomie.

      The wick

      The wick that lies at the heart of the candle is made