Olivia Potts

If you’re looking for an alternative to Christmas cake (or an addition to it), then panforte is the bake for you. Sufficiently similar to our traditional Christmas cake in its flavours of Medieval spice, dried fruit and candied citrus that it can’t fail to evoke the Christmas spirit, it is still entirely distinctive. Panforte is shallower than Christmas cake, and more solid; the honey in the mix means that it is chewy rather than crumbly, and where a Christmas cake is stuffed full of vine fruits and cherries, panforte majors in dates and figs. A slim wedge of the dense, spiced bake is more than sufficient and even, whisper it, more elegant than our homegrown Christmas cake.

People are always disproportionately impressed by hasselback potatoes. Disproportionately because they are one of the easiest potato-based sides to make: just a few knife cuts, and tossed in some olive oil. They don’t require the par-boiling or roughing up of roast potatoes, and are less fragile than the simply boiled variety. As well as being handsome, they are buttery-soft inside, with crisp, taught skins, and crunchy bits where the knife has cut – and they have the added bonus of cutting faster than potatoes which remain in tact. The cuts increase the surface area, meaning greater crispness, which can only ever be a good thing when it comes to potatoes – and as they roast, the cuts force the potato to splay, to bloom.

There are all sorts of things we’re prepared to do once December rears its head, that we’d absolutely turn our noses up at in a less festive month: back to back parties, kitsch decorations, adding spices to anything that stands still long enough, engaging with relatives we normally avoid. And there are certain foods and drinks which would seem bizarre at any other time of the year, but we heartily embrace once there’s some tinsel swinging around, and chief among them is eggnog. Perhaps it is its rich, indulgent nature that means we only countenance it around Christmas, its spiced nature, or simply its surprisingly high alcohol content. Essentially a boozy, drinkable custard, eggnog is made from cream and milk, egg yolks, sugar whisked egg whites, and alcohol.

There are some dishes on which I am well aware I hold strong opinions: toast (well done but not burnt, real butter, generously spread; must be eaten hot), crumble (crunchy, not soggy, lots of it; simply must be served with custard, ideally cold), roast chicken (cooked hot and fast, with more butter than is sensible, until the skin crackles; the chicken oysters are always cook’s perks). But some catch me unawares. I don’t realise that I feel strongly about a particular recipe of foodstuff until I’m staring down the barrel of a recipe, or contemplating something that doesn’t meet my surprisingly exacting standards. I’ll find myself holding forth on the correct way to make an egg mayonnaise sandwich, or the one true way of cooking porridge.

Marble cakes are a simple concept, but such a satisfying bake, with that delightful reveal when you cut into the cake and expose the hidden pattern. They are made by dividing the base cake batter, and adding colouring or flavouring to one part of it, and then mottled by dolloping light and dark batter alternately into the same cake tin. They were a feature of my childhood, but feel a little passé now, which is a shame, as they’re well worth your baking energies. I think it’s time to bring them back. Now, many marble cake recipes will simply use a basic pound cake recipe, and introduce a couple of tablespoons of cocoa powder to half of the batter.

I must have written thousands of words about my love of stews, braises, and slow-cooked dishes, but osso bucco must be one of my longtime, unchanging favourites. Osso bucco comes from the Northern Italian region of Lombardy, and is made from braised veal shanks. It’s a cut that not only benefits from, but really needs, a low slow cook, bathing in stock and booze, until the meat is tender enough to be broken apart with the edge of a fork. The dish name literally translates as ‘hole in the bone’, which quietly points to the magic of the dish (or, you could argue, misses it entirely).

Chocolate cake comes in many different guises: from the dark and rich, to the sweet and simple. For me, it’s not like the ultimate cookie, or the perfect brownie: I don’t believe that there is one, definitive chocolate cake. I do not spend my days searching for the platonic version; trying to rank a chocolate fudge cake above or below a a cream-filled Yule log or a chocolate chunk-studded, plain loaf cake is like comparing apples and oranges. I think, instead, that there is a perfect chocolate cake for every mood. For a party, I want something crowd-pleasing, sweet and tender, with old-fashioned milk chocolate icing; it must cut cleanly, and not crumble.

According to recent reports, we might be looking down the sharp end of a turkey-less Christmas. Kate Martin of the Traditional Farm Fresh Turkey Association has warned that a lack of European farmhands means that Britain could be facing a turkey shortage this December. Turkeys have been synonymous with British Christmas dinners since the Victorian era; what do we do without them? For many, this won’t be too much of a loss: a lot of people actively dislike turkey (although they dislike it even more when you tell them that’s just because they’re not cooking it properly). I confess, I’m a turkey evangelist: I love turkey. I think it’s juicy and full of flavour, and makes fantastic leftovers.

It’s not terribly surprising that the apple Charlotte is often mistakenly attributed to French chef Marie Antoine Carême; the so-called first celebrity chef is credited with inventing everything from the chef’s tall toque hat to the taxonomic arrangement of sauces, via creating an entirely new system of dining and service. Some of these have more credence than others; the Charlotte, however, does not have Carême to thank. The first recipe for an apple Charlotte appears in 1802 in at a time when Carême was still an apprentice, in The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined by John Mollard. In fact, the apple charlotte comes from British shores, and it was likely named after George III’s wife, Charlotte.

I have always been a bit of a stew-pusher; it tends to be my answer to any of life’s dilemmas, culinary or otherwise. Friends coming round? Stew. Cold and dark outside? Stew. Feeling sad? Stew. To be honest, it doesn’t matter whether or not the weather demands it, I am always in the mood for stew. I’d eat mince and dumplings in June, a slow-cooked sticky oxtail ragu in high Summer. But once Autumn arrives, and my obsession is legitimised by the cold and the dark evenings, there’s no stopping me. In our household, it’s casseroles from now until Spring. I struggle to think of something more comforting and cosy than a big, generous dish of braised meat, tender vegetables and a beautiful sauce arriving at the table.