I started living with the seasons a few years ago. I walked out into my garden early one summer, saw it was an overgrown wreck – we hadn’t really touched it since the kid left home – and resolved to do something about it. Taking notice of the land, even my tiny piece of it, means taking notice of the seasons. Being more present in the world and in my body. I spend less time in the office, I don’t write less, but I do more in keyboard-time bursts and in notebooks, and a lot of that latter part happens outside. Or even just writing in my head while I work with the weather and the dirt.
I’m an autumn/early-winter person. I don’t really know how to eat in summer. I am English and I like my meat and root vegetables, my red wine and warming drinks rich with earth. I found this book quite by accident, while I was sitting here thinking about what to cook in a week or two when the warm weather finally passes and the air gets smoky.
I love cookbooks because I love cookery writing. It’s amongst the most lyric in publishing. I read them to read them as much as I read them for recipe inspiration. Diana Henry is a little keener on sour cream than I like, and the volumes of cream and sugar alone mark her as a cook of a certain era (the last contemporary exponent being the butter-crazed James Martin, will Satan have mercy on his arteries), but she has that lyric turn. She loves autumn and winter, its flavours but also its feel and its experiences. This is a writer who lives in the season and revels in its provision.
The pear, whether long and elegant like the Conference, or deliciously dumpy like the Williams, looks shy and drowsy in comparison. After all, practically the whole of its body is in its bottom. I won’t wake it now, I think.
I go out in the mornings now, with my enamel cup of ristretto, and test the apples hanging red with promise from the Bloody Ploughman and Christmas Pearmain. Autumn has sailed in. Soon it will tie itself to the posts of my garden and lay its bounty down for me.
ROAST FIGS SUGAR SNOW, Diana Henry, a classic autumn/winter cookbook. (UK) US+)
