The Royal Chef At Home: Easy Seasonal Entertaining

By New Year’s Eve, my internal batteries are running low. Unless I’m catering an event, it is indeed rare for me to still be awake and watch the ball drop and fireworks light up the sky. I generally disappear off to bed and I can tell you I don’t need much rocking to sleep. My last blissful thought before drifting off is that I have utterly nothing planned for tomorrow. I can sleep in late, pad about in my pajamas until lunch, FaceTime the family across the pond to wish them Happy New Year and watch sports during the afternoon. Like my fellow chef and cooks all over the world, I too utter the “chef’s prayer” wherein we give our thanks and gratitude that the holidays are over. Praise the Lord. Come January, I’ll spend a week or two catching up backlogged letters and emails. Now there will be time for recipe testing and incorporating new ingredients into the spring menu. I can even get home in time to eat dinner with my family; a real luxury. Of course, I am the one that cooks dinner! For so many reasons, winter is my favorite season. The weather is perfect and I try to enjoy every day of it, knowing that too soon the Texas heat will descend and I’ll be wistful for crisp clear mornings. The sunsets are spectacular now, glowing hot pink and turquoise and stretching out forever. Best of all, the climate is mild enough for all-seasons gardening. I’m chuffed to be outside in January harvesting bunches of kale, spinach, carrots, parsley and dill. I make a point of calling my sister back in Nottinghamshire, teasing her about ‘how the sunshine is a bit intense this morning” and she quickly responds “Oh, sod off.” She’s always had a way with words. It’s not easy being in England during the winter, living under leaden grey skies

formonths on endwith only the occasional seed catalogue to keep you going. But in the milder southern States there is an embarrassment of riches each season of the year and I’ll admit to an enduring childlike wonder every time I plant a seed that, in short order, becomes healthy food for my family. Plus, that lovely winter garden soon translates into a kitchen filled with wonderful smells of some of my favorite foods—stews, curries and braises. Deep down, I’ve always been a boy who loves a good stew. Slow braised meat in a rich sauce served over a plate of creamy mashed potatoes or soft polenta. It just doesn’t get any better. I suspect it is the smell of stew that is almost as important to me as the taste. As a child I was fed often by a mother and grandmother who were by nature and necessity frugal cooks. Winter stews meant loads of vegetables like cabbage, potatoes, rutabagas (or swedes as we called them) and carrots, combined with just a small piece of cheap meat, braised slowly to break down the fatty collagen and kept under a tight lid to hold the juices and flavors in. Winter in the town of Newark where I grew up meant dark skies by 4 PM and on the weekends after playing soccer with my friends until we could no longer see the ball, I would trudge home and walk up to our tiny back porch, my breath a visible puff of steam in the cold air and my hands freezing. Opening that kitchen door, the light and smell would hit me straight on. It was a blast of warm air filling my nose with the gamy, earthy scent of lamb and veggie stew bubbling away on the stove. My mother would be there with a glass of cider in her hand saying, “Take your boots off, wash your hands and set the table. It’s all nearly ready.” What lovely words.

166 THE ROYAL CHEF AT HOME