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

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      Marmalade pears with vanilla ice cream

      This truly gorgeous recipe is, I suppose, a new take on my baked pears with Marsala (Tender, Volume II) but with a deep, syrupy bitter-sweetness, reminiscent of old-fashioned black treacle toffee. The hot, translucent pears and the glossy apple and marmalade sauce are wonderful with vanilla ice cream. There is a point, after about forty-five minutes, when you need to watch the progress of the sauce carefully, lest it turn to toffee. A non-stick roasting pan is essential.

      Serves 4

      pears – 3 medium

      apple juice – 200ml

      orange marmalade – 150g

      Marsala, sweet or dry – 1 tablespoon

      honey – 1 heaped tablespoon

      vanilla ice cream, to serve – 8 scoops

      Set the oven at 190°C/Gas 5. Peel the pears (I think you should because the skin can be tough, but it is up to you), cut them in half, and scoop out their cores. Cut each half into three, then place them in a non-stick roasting tin. In a small saucepan, bring the apple juice, marmalade, Marsala and honey to the boil, then remove from the heat and pour over the pears.

      Bake the pears in the preheated oven for twenty minutes, then turn them over. At this point they will look decidedly uninteresting, but carry on anyway. Let the pears bake for a further twenty minutes, then watch them carefully. The sauce will be bubbling now, the colour of amber and rising up the pears, almost covering them. Test them for tenderness – a small knife should slide through them effortlessly. They should be translucent and butter-soft. If they aren’t quite ready or if the sauce isn’t syrupy, give them a further five minutes.

      Let them rest for five minutes. Serve them with the vanilla ice cream.

      6 NOVEMBER

      Making gnudi

      I sweep up the leaves, most of which I recognise. My parents’ gift of The Observer Book of Trees was clearly not lost on me. There are those of the fig, like giants’ hands; the feather-like golden robinia; the oval greengage and the smaller Ouillins gage, whose tiny leaflets are brown-freckled, like its fruit. There are the green leaves of the Doyenne du Comice pear, with their lichen-like splodges of rust, and those of the Discovery apple that somehow manage to be larger than its fruit. The honeysuckles are crisp already, like the tiny pieces of pork crackling I used to find in a bowl on the butcher’s counter as a kid. And the horse-chestnuts have already found their way over the rooftops from the lane in front of the house. Heaven knows how. Others will stay put for a while – those of the jasmine and rose and white lacecap hydrangeas.

      Sweeping the leaves is a thankless task – there will be just as many tomorrow. But better that than the boredom of a lawn. They go into net sacks to rot down. Soaking them, just occasionally with the watering can, helps to speed up the process. Once crumbly, they will be put on to the beds. Leafmould is treasure to a gardener, a bag of gold with which to treat his plants. There is a little science to it, and a wee bit of gardener’s law. Hornbeam, oak and birch, lime and cherry leaves will rot down within eighteen months; horse-chestnut, beech, magnolia, hawthorn, maple and sycamore will take longer because of their high fibre content. A shredder would speed up the composting process, but I really don’t have the room.

      After Christmas, there will be the tree to get rid of. Pines and conifers take a good couple of years to rot down and so shouldn’t be mixed with the others. They need to be left in the open and turned regularly with a garden fork. That done, they are best used only to mulch other acid-loving plants such as heather. Having not an inch of garden to spare, it might be more prudent to leave my tree out for the council, who collect and compost them for us.

      It is too early, but I have been mulling over what to give the vegetarians for Christmas lunch when we are tucking into our grilled scallops. (I know it’s going to be that because I did it last year, with pancetta and a smooth pea purée, and everyone loved its lightness and savour.) The vague plan is to serve a light pasta dish first, the little pillows of ricotta and Parmesan known as gnudi. My vegetarian friends are not hardcore, so I don’t have to worry about mixing up their Parmesan with my Parmesan.

      The gnudi take minutes to make, but absolutely must be dried on a tray in the fridge overnight, snuggled down in a deep snowdrift of fine cornmeal. Skip that stage (always a temptation) and they will dissolve in the cooking water. You will have no gnudi, no dinner. I choose them because they are light, simple and special. They are not hard to make but they do require a light hand. I make them myself because I enjoy shaping them and lowering the flattened balls into the cornmeal almost more than anything else, and anyway, you can’t buy a decent commercial version of them for love nor money.

      Gnudi require the hands of an angel. You must treat the mixture of fresh, white ricotta and grated Parmesan as delicately as if it were a Christmas bauble, which in this case I suppose it is. This is cooking with the utmost respect and care, and I love it.

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