Olivia Potts

I’ve been cooking for a little while now: professionally for huge quantities of people for a couple of years, writing about it for the thick end of four, and teaching myself at home for over six. I’ve been to pastry school for an entire full-time academic year. None of this matters to my family: all my family wants from me is sticky toffee pudding. At Christmas, it is mandatory, and every other occasion where I fail to arrive bearing a huge tin of the stuff, its absence is quietly resented. I’m going to visit my sister soon, but will be away just beforehand, so there’s already a large pudding sitting in my freezer.

Turkey curry, as a means of using up festive leftovers, has become something of a joke: the turkey curry buffet in Bridget Jones is the true low point of Bridge’s festive calendar. The prospect can strike fear into the most Christmas-spirited of souls. But actually, on Boxing Day, or the day after, the last thing you really want is the same meal you’ve been eating for the past two days, looking a little tired and fridge-worn, all the best bits gone. Don’t get me wrong: I’ll be first to the table for cold roast meats and my fifth serving of stilton in 48 hours, and if you hesitate for a moment, you won’t see that final portion of trifle for dust.

When it comes to the ultimate showstopper for an Easter Sunday lunch, it has to be roast lamb: as Spring has now truly sprung, it’s time to start enjoying British reared lamb, and treating it properly when we cook it. My favourite – and, I think, the easiest – way to cook lamb is to slow roast a leg of it, provencal style. Effortlessly impressive, this dish is left in a low oven for several hours, needing no attention. Lamb, rosemary, anchovies and garlic is a classic match, a combo hailing from the Provence region. It won’t taste fishy (although it might smell that way as it begins cooking), just deeply savoury, and fantastically fragrant from the herbs and garlic.

There is something terribly cheering about Scotch pancakes. Even the best normal pancakes are a bit floppy, a bit (whisper it) flabby. They give the cook the choice of eating them one by one as they cook, or resigning themselves to the reality of a mostly tepid, slightly clammy pile. Scotch pancakes are not like this. So let’s get this straight: what are they? A Scotch pancake, sometimes known by its other name, a drop scone, is a leavened and griddled pancake. It is far thicker and smaller than its unscotched sister, and although on the face of it bears a strong a resemblance to its American sibling, it’s really rather different.

Finally, I almost have my kitchen back. I feel like during Christmas, we give our kitchens over to a higher power: one who insists that we fill our fridges with enough prosecco to see us through a nuclear winter, that everything is spiked with brandy, and followed with a chaser of cheese. We didn’t even host Christmas this year: we were away for Christmas-proper and bookended it with visiting various friends and relatives. There is, really, no excuse, for such a high proportion of festive leftovers. And yet, for the last week, I’ve found soggy mince pies everywhere, and brandy butter I don’t remember buying. But now, I am starting to regain control.

Sometimes I worry that I’m flighty. And not in a charming, no one can tie me down, I’m-a-free-spirit sort of way. But rather skittish, unreliable, inconstant. When I feel that way, I come home and bake spelt bread. Spelt bread is grounding. It is quick, physical work that you have to do with your hands. It doesn’t require skill, implements or fancy ingredients. I don’t need to set a timer or panic about precision. It transforms me into someone pragmatic, capable and resilient. Spelt bread turns me into the baker I wanted to be when I first started cooking. I love sourdough. I think it’s magical, in the most literal sense of the word.

Blancmange. Poor, maligned blancmange. The slimy, over-set staple of children’s birthday parties and school dinners, destined to be pushed around a plate and loathed for life. Blancmange has become shorthand for an age of blandness: the dessert equivalent of Chris de Burgh. Even its name sounds heavy on the English tongue. But we do the blancmange a grave disservice. It is, after all, essentially a panna cotta. Shouldn’t a milk jelly by any other name taste as sweet? It is slightly lighter than its Italian counterpart, yes, but that’s all to its credit. So why the bad reputation? The culprit, I think, is packet blancmange. No amount of careful preparation can mask the cornflour. In theory, English blancmange is set with cornflour and French with gelatine.