Olivia Potts

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but perhaps you can teach it old tricks. When I embarked on making a Boston cream pie, I thought I knew it all when it came to sponge cakes. I’d creamed butter and sugar, using elbow grease and a wooden spoon or employing the horsepower of a stand mixer’s whisk attachment. I’ve used the all-in-one-method; I’ve melted butter and folded it into cake batters in the pursuit of sticky denseness. And I’ve folded in egg whites, holding my breath in an attempt not to knock any air out of the mix. But I had never made a Boston cream pie, and so I had never made a hot milk sponge. Could this old dog learn something new?

A pot roast is probably the antithesis of glamorous cooking. But that’s also sort of the point. For as long as we’ve been cooking meat, we’ve looked for ways to make the tougher cuts more tender and succulent. It’s the kind of cooking that every culture around the world has developed individually, a way of transforming the cheap and possibly unappetising into something delicious. The answer is simple, and relies on three elements: low heat, moisture and a lidded cooking vessel. A homely and economical way of bringing the best out of an unprepossessing joint Pot roast is the American way of slow-cooking whole joints of unforgiving meat, usually a piece of beef (although similar principles apply to pork and lamb).

When it comes to traditional food, there is always regional pride to contend with. Many recipes are intrinsically connected to the area from which they have sprung: Pontefract cakes, Chelsea buns, Lancashire hotpot, Welsh rarebit. They represent heritage and tradition – edible history. You must tread carefully to avoid offending regional heritage, or just making silly mistakes. I certainly feel on safer ground making pronouncements from my Salford home on Eccles cakes than I do on Ecclefechan tart. But when it comes to the Cornish pasty, the people of Cornwall have taken ownership a step further. In 2011, the Cornish pasty was granted Protected Geographical Indication by the EU, which dictates where – and how – a true classic Cornish pasty can be made.

There are times in the year that call for snacks. Rather than embracing the various diets and other forms of self-flagellation that sweep over us at the start of the year, we need every joy we can get during endless January, with its dark, short days and cold nights. Right now, we are in such territory. Open those posh crisps, order the triple-cooked chips, invite joy in. I have strong ideas about the platonic snack for winter: something hot, ideally, to accompany a glass of something cold as you while away the dark evenings. The ideal contrast between crisp and yielding, sweet and salty – something that can be picked up one-handed and is substantial enough to satisfy, but still leave you wanting more. Flamme-kueche fits the bill pretty well.

Cooking in January is a very different beast to cooking in December. I don’t just mean the flavours (the dried fruit and spice, and dark, boozy, rich flavours of the festive period are relegated to the backs of pantries and drinks cabinet) or even the sentiment, whereby many will look to lighter,simpler dishes to counteract the previous month’s excess. The process is different too. My January kitchen is quiet, the cooking or baking less frantic than that of the weeks that preceded it. It’s not performative, and there are no gargantuan grocery deliveries that require half an hour of fridge Tetris. There is no deadline and my days are less full, so baking is a pleasure which punctuates them, rather than an item on a to-do list. The baking becomes an end in itself.

The flavours of Christmas have changed a bit lately, haven’t they? If you wander around supermarkets right now, you’ll find peach bellini panettone, tiramisu mince pies, turkey gravy-flavoured crisps and Black Forest stollen. Even the classic Terry’s Chocolate Orange comes in a mint version this year. You could argue that Walkers crisps are standing up for tradition by selling a Christmas pudding flavour, but that might be pushing it. I’m all for innovation, but it does rather make me long for the traditional tastes of Christmas. I love peach bellini, tiramisu, and Black Forest gâteau – but I can enjoy these flavours at any time. The spice and warmth and booze that are prerequisites for our usual Christmas fare are really reserved for December.

When you’re planning Christmas, the big event is the easy bit. No, hear me out. It’s obviously a production – a feast! – more of an exercise in logistics than it is complicated cooking, making sure all the many elements come together at the correct moment. I’m not trying to underplay the amount of effort that it takes, but in terms of the constituent parts, it’s relatively straightforward. Most of us are turkey families, but if you’re a goose or rib of beef or nut-roast household, chances are that you’re fully aware of this as soon as you sit down to write your Christmas grocery list.