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

be wise to use the alcohol-laden figs for something. Two or three hidden in the depths of an apple crumble are fun, as they would be in an apple pie. (I often have one or two, straight from the jar, as a treat when I have finished the ironing.) They also make a fine addition to a slice of plain cake, taken with coffee, mid-morning, and served as a dessert with a spoonful of deepest yellow clotted cream. The thick sort you can cut with a knife.

      Muscat prunes

      You can most certainly drink the mahogany-coloured liquor here, but I really make these marinated fruits as a little extra, something to serve alongside chocolate mousse or milky panna cotta.

      Serves 6

      prunes – 250g

      golden sultanas – 125g

      muscat or moscatel – 750ml

      Put the prunes and sultanas into a sterilised jar, then pour over the muscat or moscatel. Seal tightly and leave for a month before drinking.

      A treat in store

      Once you have poured the liquor into glasses, you are left, happily, with a jar full of delicious detritus. You could put the sultanas and prunes into an elegant glass and serve them with a spoonful of vanilla-scented whipped cream and a tiny silver spoon. Or you could spoon the fruit over vanilla ice cream, or frozen yoghurt, letting its syrup trickle down the frozen ice. I wouldn’t exactly say no to finding a pile of these sodden fruits sharing a plate with some fluffy ricotta cakes hot from the frying pan on a Sunday morning.

      We can get more adventurous with our little fruit bon-bons, using them to shake up a dish of stewed apple for breakfast; serving them alongside a slice of sugar-crusted sponge cake or with home-made vanilla custard. The wine-drenched fruits can be tucked into the almond filling for a frangipane tart or used in a trifle of layered crumbled amaretti, custard and mascarpone.

      Possibly the best idea of all came about quite by accident. After a long day of photography for the book, James and I sat down with a glass of the apricot and fig liqueurs, accompanied by the plumped-up fruits. On the table was some blue cheese – a Gorgonzola, though it could just as well have been Stilton, Stichelton or any of the other blues. We nibbled. The marrying of the blue cheese and the velvety, wine-filled fruits was quite simply gorgeous.

      4 NOVEMBER

      The joy of stuffing

      Goose-fat roast potatoes aside, I consider stuffing to be the most delicious of all accompaniments to the Sunday roast. A sausage meat stuffing made with browned onions, bacon, thyme and dried apricots; a couscous version with red onion, rosemary and raisins; another with minced turkey, lardo – the cured, herbed strips of pork fat from Italy – fennel seed and cranberries. I like my stuffings rough-edged, generously seasoned and deeply savoury. A little sweetness from dried fruits perhaps, but onions and herbs, much lemon zest and black pepper are essential.

      There are two ways of cooking stuffing: inside and outside the bird. Each way has its disciples. Roasting the mixture inside the cavity of the turkey or goose means that the juices of the meat trickle down through the forcemeat as it cooks, imbuing the stuffing with the essence of the bird. The downside is that in order to cook the stuffing properly, it may mean overcooking the bird, and, should you pack it in too tightly, the heat will never penetrate fully, thus risking neither the inside of the bird nor the stuffing cooking thoroughly. Dare I mention salmonella?

      Cooking the stuffing outside the roast, in the same roasting tin, means there won’t be enough of it, and its presence interferes with the gravy and roast potatoes. It’s pretty much a non-starter. The third way is to cook it separately in another dish. It works from a safety point of view, and you will get tantalising, crusty nuggets on the stuffing’s surface, but this method loses the opportunity of soaking it with the juices from the bird as it cooks. I get round this by spooning some of the fat and flavouring from the roasting tin over the stuffing as it cooks.

      Stuffings, forcemeats, call them what you will, have gone out of fashion. I suggest that this is a disgraceful state of affairs. Imagine the flavour in a ball of sausage meat that you have seasoned with sweet golden onions, thyme and rosemary, lemon zest, chopped bacon and juniper, then spooned goose fat over as it roasted. Or a tray of stuffing made with minced turkey, bacon, lemon, parsley and Parmesan you have left rough on top, so the ridges and furrows brown crustily.

      I would give up the sprouts, the chestnuts, even the little sausages and bacon of the extended family roast rather than go without generous amounts of stuffing. It is also the icing on the big fat cake that is Christmas dinner. The bit which, if I am completely honest, I prefer to the meat itself.

      And, of course, there should be plenty, that goes without saying. But this is not gluttony – there should be enough so that we can eat it cold the next day, cut like a cake and layered with sliced chicken, goose or turkey in a sandwich on chewy bread. And further, I need some to eat with slices of cold roast meat, a potato and spring onion salad and bright purple pickles.

      Turkey, lardo and fennel seed stuffing, cranberry orange sauce

      On this late autumn night, wet and cold from sweeping up leaves from the garden paths, I make plump rissoles of minced turkey with lardo and chilli flakes for supper. As we tuck in around the kitchen table, we decide that they would make an excellent stuffing too, to be baked around the bird or, more conveniently, in a separate tin. We bought the lardo, the silky white fat that is such a treat served on rough toast with a trickle of olive oil and some crumbled rosemary, from an Italian grocer’s. It’s not difficult to track down. Buy it in a block so you can grate it. Failing that, get it in thin slices and chop them finely. The gorgeous fat will melt and moisten the turkey meat, which has no real fat of its own.

      Enough for 4

      fennel seeds – 2 teaspoons

      minced turkey – 500g

      dried chilli flakes – 2 teaspoons

      dried breadcrumbs – 60g

      lardo – 150g

      olive oil – 2 tablespoons

      For the sauce:

      cranberry jelly or sauce – 3 heaped tablespoons

      orange juice – 50ml

      orange zest – 2 teaspoons

      cranberries, fresh or frozen – 100g

      Toast the fennel seeds for a couple of minutes in a dry frying pan, then tip them into a large mixing bowl. Put the turkey mince, chilli flakes and breadcrumbs into the bowl, then coarsely grate in the lardo. Season generously with both salt and black pepper, then mix thoroughly.

      Shape the stuffing mixture into 8 large balls, then place them on a tray and refrigerate for twenty-five minutes. Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4.

      To make the sauce, put the cranberry jelly or sauce into a small saucepan and place over a moderate heat, then add the orange juice and zest and the cranberries and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat so the mixture simmers gently and leave for five or six minutes, until the berries have softened a little. You should be able to squash them easily between thumb and forefinger. Remove from the heat and leave to settle.

      Warm the olive oil in a shallow pan and fry the stuffing balls, moving them round as each side browns, until they are golden brown all over. Transfer the balls to a baking dish, sitting them snugly together, then spoon over the cranberry sauce. Bake for thirty minutes.

      Pears, clove and orange granita

      Carried away with their quiet beauty, I seem to have bought rather a lot of pears. I do this with peaches too. And avocados. Damsons as well. Fruits or vegetables caught at a perfect moment. Sometimes, I simply cannot resist. (We will be feasting on pears for a week.)

      Today, a refreshing dessert, scented with sweet spices. The timing is tricky, with pears often