Felicity's perfect chicken soup. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

The problem with all the diets that are plugged at this time of year – drop a dress size by Valentine's Day! Real secrets of Cheryl Cole's blood type diet! – is that they all, without exception, involve salad. This fact dooms us all to failure from the very start; it's difficult to work up much enthusiasm for a sad plate of leaves when you've battled home through the snow. Much easier to let the lettuce rot and reach for the pizza delivery leaflet instead.

Chicken soup, however, ticks the January box on a number of counts: as Jewish mothers have always known, it's the business for colds, and, more importantly, it comes in big steaming bowls, which look a lot less depressing than a frigid side plate of salad. You can, of course, buy chicken soup, but that won't be as good for you; making your own ticks another new year box – thrift and industry. If you're eating ready meals in January, where will you be by next Christmas, except stony broke?

Jewish penicillin

Claudia Roden's recipe calls for a whole chicken to be simmered. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Chicken soup is, of course, the star of the Jewish cooking repertoire – it has, one must admit, wider crossover appeal than chopped liver and gefilte fish balls – so it made sense to turn to the Ashkenazi community for my first recipe. Claudia Roden's masterful survey of Jewish food comes up with the goods, as well a brief, but interesting gobbet of history on the goldene yoich, or golden broth, so called because of the amber globules of fat floating on top. These days, she adds, almost sadly, these are often skimmed off as unhealthy, and the colour accentuated with a pinch of saffron instead.

Traditionally, according to Roden, this wedding-party and Shabbat favourite is made with a boiling fowl, although, she admits, many people now use chicken carcasses, giblets and chicken stock cubes instead. I find myself with a dilemma; the only boiling fowl I can find down at the local market are of dubious origin, which makes me less than enthusiastic about cooking them. I decide instead to go for an organic bird, at about three times the price, and hope the extra investment will pay dividends in the flavour department. (Thankfully the recipe anticipates this very modern dilemma, and gives instructions for ordinary chicken too.)

The soup is basically a chicken stock – simmered with onion, carrot, leek, turnip, celery, parsley and white pepper for 2½ hours, although the bird itself is stripped of meat after an hour, so it doesn't overcook, and the carcass alone returned to the pan for the remaining cooking time. The broth is then strained – not much fat on this fowl – and seasoned. It's nice; very wholesome tasting, certainly, and the bird has done the business in the meat flavour stakes but, (dare I say it?) it's uncompromisingly plain. No doubt that's the point, but would it be crime to spice things up a bit?

Heston's take

Heston's chicken soup with lokshn. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

As someone who regards himself as Jewish, albeit agnostic with it, Heston Blumenthal seems the celebrity chef to trust when it comes to chicken soup. His recipe, however, is a puzzle. I put a kilogram of chicken wings in cold water and bring them to boil, skim the top, as if I'm making a stock, then lift out the wings, rinse and pat them dry – and then cook them, with butter, carrot, onion and celeriac and mushrooms for 15 minutes.

Aha, I think, stockpot at the ready – now I add the poaching liquor. But no, Heston wants white wine, followed by more fresh water. I go through more boiling and skimming, a 30 minute simmer, and then, after adding leeks, celery and fresh ginger, a final quarter of an hour to finish it off. The original water isn't mentioned again, which makes me wonder why I went to the trouble of skimming it in the first place. No matter, the soup is more robustly flavoured than Claudia's, although I find the star anise (how Heston loves his anise) and the mushrooms more obvious than the chicken, and suspect that all that butter, while undoubtedly delicious, may well counteract any health benefits.

Beefing it up

Lindsey Bareham's A Celebration of Soup is perhaps the only book anyone needs to own on the subject – so naturally, it includes 30 recipes for chicken soup: Saxon ehestandskachen, chicken with watercress, chicken and andouille gumbo, and, simplest of all, chicken with matzah balls. She prefaces this last with the reminiscences of a Polish Jew on the subject, which seems to imply that poultry feet are the secret to a rich flavour and colour – but then, somewhat disappointingly, demands only a boiling chicken, or a chicken quarter plus raw carcass.

Lindsey Bareham's chicken soup with matzah balls. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Having already tried out the whole chicken route, I opt for the latter approach. Her method is similar to Claudia Roden's, thankfully – no sautéing stage, or patting dry of half-cooked meat – but instead of covering the meat with cold water, she uses beef stock. It also cooks much more quickly than Roden's soup – just an hour's simmering, and I'm ready to add the lokshn and matzah balls. The stock has given it a richer colour, but also an undeniably beefy tang; it's more savoury, but also less chickeny, than the other two.

Flavourings

I want this soup to taste clean – the star anise, and the mushrooms, and most certainly the wine, can wait for a more decadent month. Skye Gyngell's mint, coriander and lemon juice are refreshing, but takes things too far east, and thyme and bay, the French variation given by Claudia Roden, overpower the chicken, as does tarragon, much as I like it. Saffron smacks too much of the decadence that has gone before – finally, I settle on the clean, sharp taste of parsley.

I also decide, in defiance of tradition, to add some fresh vegetables to the strained soup, in order to beef up the vitamin content. To be a true meal in a bowl, it needs some more body, though – and, after trying Claudia's egg and flour dumplings, and Lindsey's vermicelli and matzo balls, I settle on barley, inspired by Arnold Wesker's play of the same name. It feels more wholesome than dumplings or noodles, especially when I hit upon some wholegrain barley in an unusually busy health food shop.

January should be a time of financial, as well as physical belt tightening, so I've opted for Heston's chicken wings, instead of a whole bird – although the latter will, of course, make at least two meals, depending on the size of your family. They're cheaper, making it feasible to invest in a kilogram of good ones without breaking any resolutions, and easier to come by than stripped chicken carcasses, but any bony bits will do. Although purists may sneer, inspired by Lindsey Bareham's recipe, I've also added some chicken stock, to make damn sure of that flavour. Bland soup, as anyone who's ever been silly enough to try the cabbage soup diet will agree, is not conducive to healthy living.

Perfect chicken soup

Felicity's perfect chicken soup. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Serves 6

1kg chicken wings or drumsticks or a mixture, plus a leftover chicken carcass if you happen to have one
2 sticks of celery, chopped
2 onions, chopped
3 carrots, 2 roughly chopped, one peeled and more finely chopped and kept separate
3 leeks, 2 roughly chopped, 1 more finely chopped and kept separate
Small bunch of parsley, separated into stalks and leaves
750ml chicken stock, cold
200g barley, cooked (pearl or wholegrain)

1. Put the chicken in a large pan and just cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and skim off the scum from the top – this is important, as it will give the finished soup a greasy, unpleasant flavour.

2. Add the celery, onions (if they're clean, there's no need to peel these), the roughly chopped carrots and leeks, the parsley stalks and the stock. Season with pepper. Simmer gently for about 2 hours.

3. Strain the soup through a fine sieve – you can pick the meat off the bones to add to the soup if you wish, although it may be rather tough. Return the soup to the pan, add the remaining finely chopped carrot and leek and cook for 10 minutes until these are soft.

4. Stir through the cooked barley, season to taste, and serve with the chopped parsley leaves on top.

Roast potatoes

Felicity's roast potatoes. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Turkey may be the nominal centrepiece of the Christmas table, but if you get your roast potatoes right then frankly, you could serve chicken nuggets and most people would still be happy as Larry. There's no big secret to greatness here: you don't need to dust them with semolina, as Nigella does (too grainy), or toss them in seasoned flour, as recommended by Good Food magazine.

Potatoes cooked in olive oil and a la Heston (l-r). Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Don't boil them to the point of disintegration like Heston – there's no need, and half of them will fall apart – but do add some of the peelings to the pan when parboiling; believe it or not, they really do improve the flavour (just taste the cooled water for the proof). Toss the potatoes gently while draining, to rough up the edges, rather than laboriously scraping them with a fork. All you really need is hot fat, and an even hotter oven.

Goose fat roast potatoes with seasoned flour, semolina and plain (l-r). Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Beef dripping, although great with beef itself, is too heavy for turkey, olive oil is surprisingly good (although I wouldn't bother with Michael Caines' suggestion of roasting the potatoes in cold pressed extra virgin, which struck me as a waste for a distinctly average result) – but goose fat, if you dare, gives the best flavour of all. Make sure you get it nice and hot before you add the potatoes, and toss them in the fat before putting them in a good hot oven for at least 45 minutes – by the time they're ready, the turkey should have been rested and carved.

Serves 6

This recipe also works for 450g parsnips – blanch for 3 minutes instead, and cook for about 45 minutes

1.2kg floury potatoes, e.g. Desiree, King Edward, Maris Piper
Jar of goose fat or 4 tbsp olive oil

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190C. Wash and peel the potatoes, reserving the peel. Cut them in half or quarters, depending on their size. Put them in a large pan of salted boiling water, along with the peel – it's easiest if you can put this in a muslin infusing bag. Parboil for 8 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, put 2 tbsp of goose fat, or 3 tbsp olive oil in a roasting tin and put it into the oven to heat. Drain the potatoes and discard the peel, then put them back in the pan and shake gently to rough up the edges. Take the roasting tin out of the oven and put on the hob over a gentle heat. Put the potatoes in one by one – they should sizzle as they hit the pan – and baste all over. Season.

3. Roast for about an hour until golden and crunchy, keeping an eye on them and basting with a little more fat if they begin to look dry.

Brussels sprouts

Felicity's sprouts. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

There's no need to cross Brussels sprouts on the bottom, whatever Nigella or Raymond Blanc may claim – even Delia concedes that, these days, an incision is "unnecessary". It just makes them waterlogged and mushy. Instead, the most important thing is to pick small sprouts, and to watch over them like a hawk so they don't overcook. If you can only find large ones, cut them in half before cooking, a la Gordon Ramsay, or you'll end up with raw middles and soft outer leaves. I tried cooking them with chestnuts, as suggested by the Leiths Cookery Bible, but found the textures too similar; crunchy toasted almonds are a much better complement to the vegetable's nutty flavour.

500g Brussels sprouts, washed and trimmed
Large knob of butter
100g flaked almonds

1. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Put the sprouts in, and cook until just tender – depending on their size, this will take about 5 to 8 minutes, but keep checking, because overcooking will be fatal.

2. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large frying pan, and add the nuts. Toast until lightly browned. Drain the sprouts, add to the pan and toss well to coat. Season and serve immediately.

Mince pies

Felicity's mince pies. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Anyone who says they don't like mince pies simply isn't eating the right kind – it's easy to take against those oddly sweet and sour supermarket versions, with their flabby, sugary pastry, but the beauty of making your own is that you can customise the filling to your taste.

Leiths banana mincemeat. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

I tried four different mincemeat recipes, each with the usual dried vine fruits, mixed peel and apple base. Leiths mincemeat includes a chopped banana, which adds a surprisingly subtle sweetness to the mix, but means that the mincemeat has to be used immediately, so the flavours don't have a chance to really develop.

Delia's recipe has a similarly surprising addition – fresh cranberries (which I'm pleased to see don't need mincing, to add some "sharp acidity" to the mixture. Rather too much of it, in my opinion – cranberries are indeed very sharp. Her recipe also differs from the rest by gently cooking the mincemeat for 3 hours to melt the suet. This, she says, coats the apple, and stops it fermenting. It does, however, make the mixture look pretty ugly, so unless you're planning on keeping the mincemeat for a few months, it probably isn't worth it.

Mrs Beeton's mincemeat. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Mrs Beeton, of course, uses real mince in her mincemeat – lean rump steak, to be precise. It has novelty value, but I can't really see that such a small amount adds much to the pies themselves, apart from making people oddly nervous – and after it's been matured for two weeks it's impossible to distinguish it from the rest of the ingredients. The Ballymaloe Cookery Course mincemeat, matriarch Myrtle Allen's family recipe, calls for the apple to be baked before it's stirred it into the rest of the ingredients. I don't like the smoother texture this gives the mincemeat, or the breakfasty flavour that the marmalade she uses imparts, but whisky is, I have to agree, a much nicer idea than brandy – it has a more assertive booziness which seems appropriate at this time of year. Feel free to tinker with the ratio, or mix of dried fruit and nuts in the recipe below – if you often find mincemeat too sweet, for example, substitute sour cherries for the glace ones.

Nigella flaky pastry and Delia mincemeat. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

If you've made the mincemeat, then you may as well go the whole hog and knock up some pastry as well – the admiration you'll receive is utterly disproportionate to the actual work involved. Nigella's flaky pastry is too greasy for mince pies, I find – crumbly shortcrust works better, particularly if you're not going to scoff them all straight from the oven. Plain shortcrust is boring though: instead, replace some of the flour with ground almonds, as Leiths do, and add a little orange flower water, like Nigella, to make the case as tasty as the filling.

Makes 20 mince pies

50g each sultanas, raisins, currants, mixed peel
50g each dried figs and glace cherries, chopped
1 piece stem ginger, finely chopped, plus 1tbsp of its syrup
25g each almonds and pecans, chopped
200g muscovado sugar
½ tsp mixed spice
3 tbsp whisky
2 tbsp suet or cold grated butter
Zest of 1 lemon
1 small unpeeled cooking apple, grated

For the pastry:
340g plain flour
225g cold butter
85g ground almonds
100g golden caster sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tsp orange blossom water
Beaten egg or milk, to glaze
Icing sugar, to dust

1. Mix together the mincemeat ingredients and taste. Add more whisky, or spice to taste. If not using immediately, put into sterilised jars for up to a year.

2. To make the pastry, sieve the flour into a mixing bowl with a pinch of salt. Grate in the butter, and rub into the mixture until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in the almonds and sugar.

3. Mix the egg yolks with orange blossom water, and 1½ tbsp of ice-cold water. Add enough to the mixture to bring it together into a firm, but not wet dough when stirred with a knife. Shape into a ball by hand, wrap in clingfilm, and chill for half an hour.

4. Pre-heat the oven to 190C. Grease your tartlet tins with butter, and roll out half the pastry on a floured surface until about 3mm thick. Cut out bases to line the tartlet tins. Fill each ¾ full with mincemeat, then roll out the other half of the pastry and cut out lids. Dampen the edge with a little water or milk, and press down lightly on the pies to seal. Brush the tops with water or beaten egg, and prick the tops with a fork. Bake for about 20 minutes until golden, then cool on a rack and dust with icing sugar.

Brandy butter

Felicity's perfect brandy butter. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

This is a great thing to have in the fridge over Christmas; it goes with everything from Christmas pudding and mince pies to hot teacakes and apple crumble. I found Delia and Jane Grigson's recipes, which use caster and icing sugar respectively, to be a little blandly sweet: adding light brown sugar gives a lovely caramelised flavour to the butter, and works well with Grigson's lemon and nutmeg.

Brandy butter. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

If you like your butter to be slightly grainy, like tablet rather than fudge, then substitute caster for the icing sugar, as Leiths do. The clotted cream may seem an odd addition to brandy butter, but it lightens the texture slightly, which means you can have more than a sliver without feeling queasy … which may or may not be a good thing.

225g unsalted butter, at room temperature
55g icing or caster sugar, if you like a more granular texture
55g soft light brown sugar
3 tbsp brandy
Squeeze of lemon juice
2 tbsp clotted cream

Zest of ½ orange, to serve

1. Put the butter into a large bowl, and beat with a wooden spoon or electric beater until soft. Gradually add the sugars, beating well with a wooden spoon or your hands between each addition, then gradually drizzle in the brandy and lemon juice incorporate in the same way, being careful not to go too fast, or it will separate. Mix in the clotted cream.

2. Grate over nutmeg to taste, then store in the fridge, and top with orange zest just before serving.

Felicity's turkey. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Turkey and gravy

Thanks to a national fondness for tradition, turkey remains the centrepiece of most festive celebrations in this country, despite its reputation for tinder-dry blandness. A good bird does have several things going for it, apart from its immense size, however – matchless trimmings being the principle attraction as far as I'm concerned. But how on earth do you achieve that elusive combination of juicy meat and crisp savoury skin to make it worthy of those pigs in blankets?

Delia Smith claims to come from "a long line of turkey cooks", so I'm happy to put bird number one on her capable hands. Her apparently foolproof method involves basting the bird generously with melted butter, seasoning it, topping with streaky bacon and then wrapping it festively in foil, while leaving enough room for the air to circulate during cooking. My efforts look more like a Chinese takeaway swan that's been heavily sat upon than the "neat parcel" described, but it's what's inside that counts. After an initial 40 minute blast at 220C, the turkey cooks quietly at 170C for a couple of hours, before I remove the foil and turn the heat back up so it can tan for the final half hour. The meat is indeed juicy – I can see why Delia's fortunate family enjoy it right "down to the jelly and dripping" – but the skin, while tasty, falls short on the crispness front.

Looks weird, but great result - turkey under buttered muslin. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

The following day, as luck has it, I'm invited to eat an early Christmas dinner at Leiths Cookery School – who have somehow managed to produce a skin so crisp that it's served on a separate plate, rather like crackling. Their secret weapon, I discover, is a square of fine cotton rejoicing in the glorious name "butter muslin", available at most kitchen shops. I soak the material in a bowl of melted butter, season the turkey, then drape the muslin reverentially over it and pop it in the oven at 180C for three hours. So easy it almost seems to be good to be true – but it's fabulous: a crunchy cinnamon tan skin, and moist meat beneath.

I can never resist messing with perfection, however, so when I hear an American friend mention brining a turkey for Thanksgiving, I can hardly wait for them to finish their story before I ask for a recipe. They kindly point me in the direction of the excellent Cooks Illustrated magazine, which furnishes a recipe - and what a recipe.

I wash out the mop bucket, dissolve 350g table salt in 7 litres of water, and plop the turkey in it. It bobs about rather gruesomely, so I stick the bucket outside and hope it's too cold for foxes to venture out. Five hours later, I fish the bird out, rinse it and tenderly pat it dry, then stick it in the fridge for 8 hours to dry out. It's beginning to dawn on me that this is in no way a quick recipe.

Leiths recipe roast turkey. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

The next morning, I put the troublesome turkey breast-side down on a roasting rack lined with foil, brush it all over with butter, and put it in a 200C oven for 45 minutes. Reading to the end of the recipe, I realise the worst is yet to come: I must rotate the turkey three times over the next hour – and balancing a hot, buttery 4.5kg bird on one stunted wing is even less easy than it sounds, believe me. Is it worth it? The skin is crisp, although not as crisp as the Leiths bird, and I realise rather belatedly that brined meat tastes like – brined meat. Not Christmas turkey.

Once you've invested in some muslin, the easiest way to roast a turkey is, fortunately, also the best. Forget spinning it during cooking, or brining it, or embalming it in foil – this is absolutely foolproof. Gravy should be kept similarly simple. As turkeys tend towards leanness, it's a good idea to add some water to the roasting tin before cooking to help things along – otherwise, I found, there tended to be a lot of grease, and not much in the way of meat juices to play around with. Making a giblet stock, a la Delia, felt like an unnecessary extravagance of effort with so much else to think about – instead, add them (apart from the liver, which will make your gravy bitter) to the roasting tin before cooking, along with the neck, half an onion, and a bay leaf for flavouring. This should give you a well-flavoured base for your gravy, which you can top up later with chicken stock or water as required.

Felicity's perfect gravy. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

To make a gravy worthy of the occasion, I tried adding cranberry sauce and port, as suggested by Good Food magazine, but they overpowered the delicate flavour of the turkey. Instead, take a leaf out of turkey queen Martha Stewart's book, and slip in a generous slug of Madeira – its rich, honeyed flavour works brilliantly, and you can drink the rest of the bottle with some Christmas cake the next day.

1 turkey, with giblets
170g butter
½ an onion
Bay leaf
1 large piece of cook's muslin

For the gravy:
1 tbsp plain flour
4 tbsp Madeira
568ml hot poultry stock or water

1. Take the turkey out of the fridge a couple of hours before cooking. Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Weigh the turkey, and calculate the cooking time: 20 minutes per 450g, plus an extra 20 minutes.

2. Melt the butter in a large bowl, and soak the muslin in it; it should all be absorbed. Season the turkey liberally with salt and pepper, and put it in a large roasting tin with the turkey neck, giblets (except the liver) onion, bay leaf and 300ml water. Cover the turkey completely with the folded muslin and put it into the hot oven.

3. Check the turkey is cooked by piercing the thickest part of the thigh with a skewer – the juices should run clear. Remove the muslin, take out of the tin and put in a warm place to rest for at least 30 minutes before carving.

4. Pour the juices and fat from the roasting tin into a gravy separator, or skim off as much as the fat as possible from the top and discard. Mix the flour to a smooth paste with 2 tbsp of the meat juices, and pour the rest of the juices back into the tin on a medium heat, stirring to dislodge any bits on the bottom. Stir in the flour paste, the Madeira, and a ladleful of stock, mix well, and then add the rest of the stock. Bring to a simmer, and cook, stirring, until it has reached your desired thickness. Season to taste and serve with the turkey.

Sage and onion stuffing

Felicity's perfect Christmas stuffing. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Stuffing is one of the main reasons I can never quite bring myself to step away from poultry at Christmas time. I quite like playing around with different flavours (chestnut and prune, or apricot and ginger), and have long had Jane Grigson's oyster stuffing on my to-do list, but sage and onion is the undisputed classic. Traditionally, it would have been made with bread, which was both cheap and had the virtue of soaking up all of those delicious meat juices – something I've always feared would detract from my gravy. Sausagemeat, however, tastes pretty good already, which is not something that can always be said about soggy bread.

Clockwise from left: Leiths sage and onion stuffing, Delia sausagemeat stuffing and Delia's stuffing with added egg. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

However, in the interests of giving tradition a fair trial, I make two stuffings, one with a breadcrumb and apple base, as used by Leiths, and one with sausagemeat, as recommended by Delia. Leiths soften the onion in butter first, Delia uses it raw – but then she also calls for dried sage, so I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope for the best. I have to admit that I prefer the sausagemeat version – it's firm and crisp, rather than stodgy – but the lemon zest, and sweeter onion of the Leiths recipe are worth borrowing. I'm with Delia on the fact that a beaten egg makes the finished stuffing too firm, though – like her, I prefer it slightly crumbly.

I also try adding some chopped turkey liver, as recommended by Delia in another recipe, but find the offaly flavour rather strident; nutmeg, however, adds a gentle hint of festive spice. To lighten the texture slightly, I've increased the ratio of breadcrumbs to sausagemeat, and, taking a tip from delicious magazine, toasted half the breadcrumbs first, to provide a hint of crunch. Feel free to tinker with the flavourings as you wish, but I would urge you to make the full amount – cold stuffing is even better the next day.

Makes about 14 balls

Knob of butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
75g white breadcrumbs
Small bunch of sage leaves, finely chopped
Grated zest of ½ lemon
450g pork sausagemeat
Nutmeg, to grate

1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over a gentle heat, and soften the onion. Turn the heat up to medium, and add half the breadcrumbs. Fry until golden.

2. Mix the onion and toasted breadcrumbs with the rest of the crumbs, the sage and lemon zest, then add the sausagemeat and mix well with your hands. Season and grate over a little nutmeg and mix again.

3. Form into walnut-sized balls, put into a greased baking dish, and bake for half an hour at 200C while the turkey is resting.

Cranberry sauce

Felicity's perfect cranberry sauce. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Cranberry sauce is ridiculously easy to make, and, because you can make it ahead of time and keep it on display, suggests you're a bona fide domestic deity, when in fact all you've done is chucked a few ingredients into a pan. Well, unless you make Delia's cranberry and orange relish, of course, which calls for the fruit to be finely minced before cooking. Chopping up fresh cranberries is not a job I'd wish on anyone – they're slippery little buggers, and I'm red of face as well as hand by the time I've finished. Cranberries, as most other recipes acknowledge, handily break down of their own accord when heated, giving a more interestingly varied texture than the laboriously minced versions.

Nigella's redder than red cranberry sauce. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

I like the orange juice in Delia's sauce, although I find the level of peel rather overpowering – a sprinkling, as suggested by Leiths, is preferable. The port she uses gives a much richer flavour than the cherry brandy in Nigella's redder than red version, which I find rather sickly. The ground ginger, cloves and cinnamon in Delia's recipe detract from the clear, sharp flavour of the fruit though: this Christmas recipe needs no festive spice to make it special.

Serves 8

Leiths recipe cranberry sauce. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Juice of 1 orange, plus zest of ½ orange
210g caster sugar
450g fresh cranberries
2 tbsp port

1. Put the orange juice and sugar into a small pan, and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Add the cranberries, and bring to a simmer, then cook until most of the cranberries have burst, and you have a loose cranberry sauce. It will continue to set as it cools, so stop cooking when it still seems a little too liquid.

2. Stir in the port and orange zest, and serve, or put into sterilised jars.

Bread sauce

Felicity's perfect bread sauce. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

I could eat bread sauce by the spoonful – so comfortingly bland and creamy to begin, with a just a kick of spice to remind you of its medieval roots. It's not a dish that bears much mucking around with; the most important thing to remember is to give the clove-studded onion time to gently flavour the milk base of the sauce. Jane Grigson suggests bringing it very slowly to a simmer in a bain marie, but it's easier to do it in a small pan over a very low heat, and then set it aside to infuse, as Delia suggests.

Delia, Jane Grigson and clotted cream bread sauce (l-r). Photograph: Felicity Cloake

It's perfectly palatable with just milk, but to really push the boat out, stir in a little of the clotted cream you can also use for your brandy butter – it doesn't water down the sauce as much as the double cream more normally used for the purpose, and it gives a less greasy finish than butter. Both Grigson and Mrs Beeton top their sauces with cayenne pepper, which makes them look pleasingly festive – if you don't fancy that, you can always add spice with white pepper instead.

Serves 6-8

1 small onion
5 cloves
A bay leaf
500ml whole milk
115g white breadcrumbs
1 tbsp clotted cream (optional)
Nutmeg, to grate
Cayenne pepper, to serve

1. Cut the onion in half, and stud with the cloves. Put into a small pan with the bay leaf and the milk, and bring very gently to a simmer. Turn off the heat and leave to infuse for at least half an hour, but longer if possible.

2. Remove the onion, cloves and bay leaf, and gently heat the milk. Whisk in the breadcrumbs and heat, stirring, until you have your preferred texture. Stir in cream, if using. Season with salt and white pepper, and grate in nutmeg to taste. Serve warm.

Felicity's perfect fish pie. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Who says beige is boring? A dish in which mashed potato counts as a splash of colour is not likely to win any prizes for style, but by God fish pie knows how to play to its strengths. It's the warm, fuzzy equivalent of settling down for the Sunday afternoon film with a mug of tea – and the perfect vehicle for all the sustainable seafood championed by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's latest campaign. Who could fail to feel a flutter for flounder, or be passionate about pollack when it comes wrapped in a creamy, savoury sauce underneath a crowd-pleasing crust of fluffy mash?

Traditional white sauce

I've decided to use Nigel Slater's recipe as my control; it's one of the simplest I can find, and when it comes to comfort food, the man can do no wrong. The fish is poached in milk until opaque and tender, and the strained liquid is then stirred into a roux to make a simple white sauce, flavoured with chopped parsley and dill. It's comfortingly thick, but undeniably, and perhaps deliberately bland – and after baking for 40 minutes in an 180C oven, the pre-cooked fish is, dare I say it, a bit rubbery.

Michelin-starred white sauce

Tom Aikens fish pie. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Tom Aikens jazzes up his white sauce with an onion and white wine reduction, and a generous amount of double cream, and then cooks the raw fish in it briefly before baking. Without any poaching liquid, however, the pie lacks that vital fishy tang – it's deliciously rich, but disappointingly refined.

A white sauce alternative

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that Marco Pierre White uses stock in his fish pie – after all, he has described the cubes he's paid to sponsor as "the best fucking ingredient in the world" – but his willingness to embrace them doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the earnest devotee of the amateur stockpot.

However, Marco's recipe is interesting in that it jettisons the white sauce entirely, and for that reason I give it a try, softening shallots in butter, before deglazing the pan with vermouth and white wine, reducing them to a syrup, and then adding fish stock (Marco doesn't mention what sort in this particular recipe, so I take him at his word, and use cubes from a leading brand) and reducing it again.

Marco Pierre White fish pie. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

This sounds time-consuming, but without the whisking required to produce a roux, it's actually quicker – all I need to do now is add some double cream, simmer briefly, and it's ready to use. Much as I want to dislike the sauce, the stock has actually added a welcome savoury note, although I find the herbal flavour of the Noilly Prat rather overpowering, and without the roux it doesn't cling to the seafood in quite the same beguiling fashion.

Filling

A fish pie is a very adaptable dish – as Jamie Oliver points out, you can use whatever seafood you like, from mackerel to mussels, so it's a good opportunity to experiment with new varieties. I'm with Nigel Slater in wanting the base to be a delicately-flavoured, firm white fish, preferably something cod-like but more numerous, such as pollack or coley.

Nigella fish pie with cheese sauce. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Something smoked is also a must (the savoury richness brings depth to the sauce, but make sure it's sustainable; good smoked haddock is readily available online) and a bit of shellfish for variety doesn't go amiss either. Nigel recommends mussels, which are "cheap, juicy, and add bags of savour" but I find the texture all wrong; sweet little North Atlantic prawns are more to my taste, and provide a little welcome colour as well. (Scallops, tiger prawns and so on are, I think, wasted here.) Some people prefer to add salmon for a splash of pink – don't cut it too small though, or it will be woolly and overcooked.

To some this may be heresy, but I don't like adding cheese to the sauce, as Nigella does; anchovies, as used in the J Sheekey recipe in Rebecca Seal's Cook, do the same job in a much more subtle fashion. If you want to bulk out the filling, sautéed leeks work very well in a fish pie, as does spinach, which has the added bonus of not requiring any pre-cooking.

Topping

Nigel Slater recipe fish pie with crumble topping. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

A word about that seductive golden top I mentioned earlier; Angela Boggiano uses a pastry crust for the smoked fish and cider recipe in her succinctly-titled Pie, and Nigel Slater suggests a most unorthodox crumble mixture (which I consider 10 kinds of wrong) but for sheer comfort you can't beat a cloud of fluffy mash – nothing else soaks up the sauce in quite the same way.

In homage to J Sheekey, purveyors of the finest fish pies in London, I've topped mine with a few breadcrumbs to add crunch: adding anything else to a properly seasoned mash is gilding the lily as far as I'm concerned, but you can follow their example and sprinkle over a little Parmesan if you're feeling decadent.

Beneath, I've settled on a compromise between the traditional, velvety white sauce and the rich, savoury cheffy version. Serve with plenty of steamed greens to mop it up – anything else is overkill.

Perfect fish pie

Perfect fish pie. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Serves 4

1kg floury potatoes, eg Maris Piper or King Edwards
50g butter
Splash of milk
500ml fish stock
100ml white wine
Small bunch of parsley, separated into leaves and stalks
350g white fish fillets and / or salmon
350g smoked white fish
200g small peeled prawns
50g butter
50g plain flour
200ml double cream
2 anchovies, finely chopped
Handful of white breadcrumbs

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Peel the potatoes and cut into evenly sized chunks. Put in a large pan, cover with cold water, add a generous pinch of salt, and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 20 minutes, until tender. Drain, and allow to sit in the colander for a few minutes, then mash until smooth, and beat in the butter and a splash of milk. Season well and set aside.

2. Put the fish stock, wine and parsley stalks into a large pan, and bring to a simmer. Add the fish, and simmer for five of minutes, then lift out with a slotted spoon, remove the skins if any, and cut into large chunks. Discard the parsley stalks.

3. Melt the butter in a medium pan over a lowish heat, and then stir in the flour. Cook, stirring, for a couple of minutes, being careful not to let it brown. Gradually stir in the stock. Bring to the boil, then simmer for about 20 minutes.

4. Take the sauce off the heat, stir in the double cream, parsley leaves and anchovies and season. Add the fish and prawns and toss to coat.

5. Put the seafood and sauce into a baking dish and top with the mashed potato. Bake for 20 minutes, then sprinkle over the breadcrumbs and bake for a further 15, until the top is golden.

How to cook perfect flapjacks

Flapjacks are defiantly uncool. Unlike the hipster whoopie pie, or the faintly glamorous sounding tiffin, they smack of battered tins of Family Circle, wet walks, and muddy match teas. This presumably goes some way to explain how they've developed a peculiarly wholesome reputation, despite being a cheerful riot of butter and sugars, with a few oats chucked in as a sop to nutrition. Still, I'm not complaining – life can't be all fancy macarons, and it's good to have a few things in your repertoire robust enough to survive being hoisted up a hill in an anorak pocket.

This very portability has been the flapjack's downfall in recent times however – it's the cellophane-wrapped stalwart of the railway buffet trolley and the conference tea table, and the popularity has gone to its head. Some of these modern incarnations are so heavy that you can buy one pulling out of Edinburgh Waverley and have trouble getting out of your seat at Kings Cross.

Chewy v crunchy

There are two principal schools of flapjack: the chewy, and the crunchy. I'm firmly in the latter camp, but I'm prepared to concede the merits of the heartier sort, as long as it doesn't stray into stodge territory, so it's with some relief that I happen upon the information that the two can be made to the same recipe; it's the cooking method that determines the texture.

According to Lyle's Golden Syrup (a cornerstone of the flapjack) all you need to do to turn a soft flapjack into a tooth-breaker is choose a shallower baking tray and turn the oven up. I give this a try using their classic recipe, which includes butter, soft brown sugar, golden syrup and rolled oats. They're right – although I find both lots are a little bit dry and sandy.

Know your oats

Delia Smith recipe flapjack. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Delia Smith uses whole oats in her baking book – she says they add "an extra dimension" to the dish, although she remains mysteriously silent on what this might be. Also known as "jumbo", these are thicker and more substantial than the steamed and rolled kind in the Lyle's recipe. They do indeed give the flapjacks a more interesting texture, but I find they crumble as I lift them out of the tin.

Searching for a solution online, I happen upon a remarkably comprehensive assessment of different recipes, oven temperatures and techniques courtesy of a chap called Andrew J Hardwick, who concludes that, while it is possible to make flapjacks entirely from cheap chopped oats, albeit rather dull ones, "pure rolled oats [do] not work well because the resulting cake is very fragile".

I decide to take his advice, and use a combination of the two, which, after some playing about with ratios, eventually gives me a coherent flapjack with a pleasingly assertive texture. Pressing the mixture down firmly before baking, and allowing them to cool completely in the tin before lifting them out also helps keep them from becoming tomorrow night's crumble topping.

Flour

National Trust recipe flapjack. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Never one to rest on my laurels however, I'm duty bound to give the recipe from the National Trust Book of Traditional Teatime Recipes a try, thanks to its unusual extra ingredient: self-raising wholemeal flour. The idea, presumably, is similar to Dr Hardwick's, in that the flour will help to bind the larger oats together, but the result is grimly stodgy – although the mystery of the mass-produced monstrosities is finally solved.

Sugar sugar

Golden syrup is a non-negotiable ingredient as far as I'm concerned, but the other sugar is a matter of debate. Honey tends to take over in flapjacks, so I prefer the toffeeish flavour of brown sugar – it's an interesting contrast with the more uncomplicated sweetness of the syrup – particularly the larger crystals of demerara, rather than the fine soft stuff used in most recipes. This gives even the chewy tray of flapjacks a slight, but very welcome crunch.

Extras

Tom Norrington-Davies recipe flapjack. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

I'm not keen on Delia's pinch of ground ginger – flapjacks should celebrate the basic flavours of butter and sugar – but I do quite like Tom Norrington-Davies' "brilliantly trashy" recipe with cornflakes, in homage to his grandmother, which reminds me of the treats we used to be given at school for tidying our desks. It's unorthodox, and you may prefer to keep up the healthy pretence with seeds or dried fruit instead, but do chuck in a few handfuls one day; they lower the tone, but by golly it's fun down there.

Perfect flapjacks

Felicity's perfect flapjacks. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Makes 16

300g unsalted butter, plus extra to grease
75g demerara sugar
120g golden syrup (6 tablespoons)
250g jumbo rolled oats
200g quick-cook oats

1. Preheat the oven to 190C / 375F / gas 5 (150C / 300F / gas 2 if you prefer them chewy rather than crispy). Line a 30 x 20cm baking tin with baking parchment, cutting slits in each corner so it fits more neatly.

2. Melt the butter in a small pan with the sugar, syrup and a pinch of salt. Stir well to combine, then take off the heat and stir in the oats. Press evenly into the tin and bake for 25 minutes for chewy, 30 minutes for crunchy, until set and golden. Allow to cool completely in the tin, but cut into squares a few minutes after they come out of the oven, before they harden.

With hot cross buns already staling on shelves, and mince pies surely mere months away, plum pudding and pancakes are the only two foods I can think of that unite the nation for but one day a year. While more delicate sorts claim to find Christmas pud too "heavy", I've yet to meet anyone, regardless of religious affiliation, who eschews a Shrove Tuesday treat. Why we don't dare to bust them out at Easter too, or on fine September mornings, is a mystery to me.

Pancakes are a remarkably versatile foodstuff: French crêpes, Indian dosas, even Ethiopian injera, all fall under the same delightful banner. As Ken Albala, author of a gloriously comprehensive "global history" of the things explains, "any starchy batter … cooked in a small amount of fat on a flat surface" counts. But in Britain, as any schoolchild knows, modern pancakes are descended from those specifically designed to use up fat before the beginning of Lent, which means they tend to be heavier on the eggs and butter than, say, the fluffy American stack, or the squat Russian blini.

Elizabethan pancakes

Interestingly, the oldest recipe for pancakes as we know them comes from an English cookery book – the Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchen (1594 edition) – but it's even richer than the modern incarnation: a pint of "thicke Creame", 5 egg yolks, "a good handful of flower" and 2 or 3 tablespoons of ale, seasoned with copious amounts of sugar, cinnamon and ginger.

Albala assures me that "the result is a horrible mess" with these proportions ("one can only imagine the author was either careless or had gargantuan hands"), but once I've added enough flour to make it into a more workable consistency, I manage to create a pancake, of sorts, from the mixture. It's so meltingly rich it's all but impossible to flip, which is clearly no good at all: tasty, but more of a chaser to some roasted peacock and a goblet of sack than one for the modern kitchen.

Puritan pancakes

The 17th century ushered in more sober tastes – Gervase Markham's 1615 recipe uses two eggs, a "pretty quantity of faire running water," cloves, mace, cinnamon and nutmeg, all beaten together, "which done make thicke as you think food with fine wheate flower". (No one can accuse these old-school food writers of being prescriptive.) Spice aside, they're pretty dull things; rubbery and heavy. Cream may be taking things too far, but milk is a must.

Butter batter?

Telegraph food writer Xanthe Clay uses melted butter in her batter to compensate for any loss of flavour occasioned by cooking them in vegetable oil. BBC Good Food, meanwhile, adds a tot of vegetable oil. The first gives a better tasting pancake, but because I quite like the nutty flavour of browned butter, and the slight crispness of a plainer batter (all the better a foil for crunchy sugar and lemon juice) I decide to include neither. I do take one tip from Xanthe however, using an extra yolk to give the pancakes a depth of flavour without that slight toughness that egg white imparts.

Stand or deliver?

Resting batter, like soaking rice, or washing mushrooms, is one of those ideas which I've always lazily chosen to ignore – after all, what kind of busy thrusting sort of executive has the time to make their pancake mix half an hour before they plan to eat? Gordon Ramsay says there's "no need", Nigel Slater and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall disagree: and suddenly the idea seems almost attractive (even if Nigel does insist on calling them crêpes).

I make up two batches of batter and allow one to sit for 30 minutes while I make and devour the other. The first lot aren't a disaster, but the second are distinctly more even in texture – Hugh suggests this is because the starch has had more time to absorb the liquid, and air bubbles to disperse.

The heat

Although Hugh and Good Food magazine counsel cooking the pancakes over a moderate heat, I prefer to follow Professor Peter Barham, physicist and adviser to Heston Blumenthal, in getting the pan really hot, because I like mine thin and crisp – you can turn it down before cooking if you prefer a softer finish. Spread the batter as thin as possible for delicately lacy edges – and treat the first pancake as an experiment; it usually goes wrong, which is a good excuse to treat it as a cook's perk. As Nigel so wisely observes, "you could argue that the perfect crêpe is always the first of the batch … Wolfed hot and hissing from the pan, squirted with lemon and a thick layer of sugar - this is the pancake that pleases the mouth if not the eye."

Perk aside, these are also good wrapped around a creamy seafood filling, stuffed with spinach and ricotta and gratinated – or, if you must, slathered with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. I've even heard it whispered that the sky won't fall in if you make them this evening, as well as next Tuesday …

Perfect pancakes

A perfect pancake. Photograph: Elliot Smith for the Guardian

Makes about 8

125g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
225ml whole or semi-skimmed milk
Small knob of butter

1. Sift the flour in a large mixing bowl and add a pinch of salt. Make a well in the centre, and pour the egg and the yolk into it. Mix the milk with 2 tbsp water and then pour a little in with the egg and beat together.

2. Whisk the flour into the liquid ingredients, drawing it gradually into the middle until you have a smooth paste the consistency of double cream. Whisk the rest of the milk in until the batter is more like single cream. Cover and refrigerate for at least half an hour.

3. Heat the butter in a frying pan on a medium-high heat – you only need enough fat to just grease the bottom of the pan. It should be hot enough that the batter sizzles when it hits it.

4. Spread a small ladleful of batter across the bottom of the pan, quickly swirling to coat. Tip any excess away. When it begins to set, loosen the edges with a thin spatula or palette knife, and when it begins to colour on the bottom, flip it over with the same instrument and cook for another 30 seconds. (If you're feeling cocky, you can also toss the pancake after loosening it: grasp the handle firmly with both hands, then jerk the pan up and slightly towards you.)

5. Pancakes are best eaten as soon as possible, before they go rubbery, but if you're cooking for a crowd, keep them separate until you're ready to serve by layering them up between pieces of kitchen roll.

Van jokes aside, this is a dish which, in my mind, will be forever associated with the late, great Keith Floyd – it's the kind of cunningly rustic French cookery he delighted in, designed to wring every last ounce of flavour from bargain-basement ingredients. It's not going to win any prizes for thrift these days, elderly cockerels and rough local wines being hard to come by for most of us, but be reassured, this brief trip down memory lane is worth every centime.

Simon Hopkinson and Lindsay Bareham note in the preface to their recipe that "it would have to be a complete moron who managed to cock up a coq au vin," but I fear this may have been more for the sheer pleasure of the word play; it may be hard to make chicken, red wine, bacon and shallots taste bad, but equally, the dish requires thought.

The whole bird

Anthony Bourdain's coq au vin. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

The name coq au vin suggests a poule au pot type arrangement, but curiously one rarely sees the dish made with a whole bird. I discover why when I try Anthony Bourdain's recipe, from the Les Halles Cookbook, which calls for a trimmed, 1.35kg chicken, amongst about 15 other things.

"I know it looks like a lot of ingredients, and that the recipe might be complicated. Just take your time," he says reassuring. "You should, with any luck, reach a Zen-like state of pleasurable calm." (Note that this will not happen if you fail to clock the first instruction, to marinate the bird in red wine and various aromatics overnight, before cooking it for that evening's dinner party.)

Searing a chicken on all sides is hard, even with tongs – it's a cumbersome, slippery beast at the best of times and even harder to grasp when gruesomely Pinot-purple with wine. Setting it aside, I sauté onions, celery and carrot until golden brown, add flour, and then stir in the reserved marinade. The chicken then stews in this for an hour and a quarter, in which time I cook the lardons, mushrooms and pearl onions until golden brown.

"Your work is pretty much done," Bourdain chips in at this point. Twenty-six hours after I first uncorked the wine, this is not entirely true – having made a thickened red wine sauce in the onion pan, I must then strain the cooking liquid into it, swirl in 2 tbsp butter, joint the chicken, chuck in the golden bits, and then "dazzle [my] friends with [my] brilliance". The sauce is good, the chicken is tender, but there's no denying they look disappointed – chicken 'n' sauce is not what they came here for.

Coq au complex

Richard Olney's coq au vin. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Richard Olney, author of The French Menu Cookbook, recently voted the best of all time by an Observer Food Monthly panel, observes "it is only logical that a bird no more than 2 months old, though perfect for a sauté … should be less satisfactory in a dish whose qualities depend on the flavour and gelatinous material which, over an extended period, may be drawn from the meat into a reduced and concentrated sauce." As a compromise, he suggests using leg and thigh pieces (which lend themselves better to this type of preparation than do breasts) and replacing half the wine with a "rich gelatinous veal stock".

I brown the lardons, set them aside, and then gently cook the carrot and onion pieces in their fat until soft, and then brown the chicken pieces on all sides, sprinkling them with flour towards the end. I then douse them with cognac and wine (and a reassuringly jellied stock), bring the whole lot to the boil, and then transfer it to an oven dish, scrapings and all, and stick it in there to stew for 40 minutes. Meanwhile, I cook the mushrooms and the pearl onions.

So far, so simple. However, the sauce-making process is yet in its infancy. Once it's out of the oven, and after removing the chicken and carrots from the pot, I must then strain the cooking liquid into a pan, and put it on the heat "so as to permit its contents to simmer only on one side". This encourages a skin to form, containing, Olney alleges, "fat plus other impurities" which I can then pull to the side and discard – on a regular basis for half an hour or so.

As if reading my mind, he observes tartly that this dépouillement is often avoided "because it is time-consuming and boring", which is a great pity, given it is "essential to the purity and digestibility of the sauce". That done, I may reunite the ingredients in the original dish and finish it off with a final half hour in the oven. The finished result is good – the meat falls off the thighs and legs – but the sauce, while pleasant, lacks the kind of oomph I'd hope for after such effort.

Breakthrough

Elizabeth David's coq au vin. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

My Damascene moment comes when I read Elizabeth David on the subject. After wisely observing in French Provincial Cooking that, in traditional recipes, it is "difficult to get the sauce to the right consistency without spoiling the bird by overcooking", she gives a recipe which involves making a sauce first, and then cooking the bird in it.

"Unorthodox though it may be," she admits, "this method produces an excellent coq au vin". I reduce chicken stock, wine and aromatics by half, meanwhile browning lardons, onions and chicken pieces, and then flambé the meat in cognac – a thrillingly dashing touch – and simmer it in the reduced sauce for 40 minutes. I then remove the meat and vegetables from the pot, and thicken the sauce with a beurre maniére. The sauce is rich and savoury, but there's not enough of it: the dish is undeniably dry. More work needed here, clearly.

Simple Simon

Simon Hopkinson and Lindsay Bareham use a similar method, but manage to reduce it to a mere two paragraphs: reduce the wine, aromatics and a spoonful of redcurrant jelly (no stock here), brown the chicken, then the pancetta, stew the onions and mushrooms, flame with Cognac, and then put it all together and cook for about an hour. The vegetables are a bit mushy, and I find the sauce a little bit sweet thanks to the jelly, but it's a good quick option.

The final reckoning

I'm basing my final recipe on Elizabeth David's, but using thighs and legs, à la Richard Olney, and without thickening the sauce at the end, as she and Julia Child do – this isn't a British stew, and I don't think it needs it. I've also used an all-wine sauce, because the gelatine from the bones is sufficient without the stock. Rather than marinating the chicken overnight, I'd advise making the dish the day before, as Simon and Lindsay advise, to give the flavours a chance to blend and mellow.

As its name suggests, wine is an important part of this recipe, so don't just pop down to the corner shop for a plastic bottle of cooking stuff – although it doesn't have to be from Burgundy, you'll get the best results from a silky, fruity pinot noir. If you find the finished sauce is too thin and acidic, a spoonful of redcurrant jelly, as used by Hopkinson and Bareham, should save the day – but it's easier to buy the right wine in the first place. Serve with boiled potatoes or plain rice, a green salad, and a toast to Keith.

Perfect coq au vin

Felicity's perfect coq au vin. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Serves 4

1 bottle pinot noir
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1 celery stalk, roughly chopped
1 small onion, cut into quarters
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and lightly crushed with a knife, plus 1 peeled and finely sliced
1 bay leaf
Small bunch of thyme
1 tbsp butter
150g piece of streaky bacon, cut into thick chunks
2 tbsp plain flour
4 chicken thighs
2 chicken legs
20 baby onions or 10 shallots, peeled but left whole (drop them briefly in boiling water first to loosen the peel)
20 button mushrooms, or 10 white mushrooms, quartered
4 tbsp cognac

1. Pour the wine into a saucepan and add the carrot, celery, onion, crushed garlic, bay leaf and 4 sprigs of thyme. Bring to the boil and reduce by half, then strain and discard the flavourings.

2. Heat the butter over a medium-high flame in a large, heavy-based pan with a lid and then add the bacon. Cook until golden, then lift out with a slotted spoon and put aside. Meanwhile, tip the flour on to a plate and season well. Roll the chicken pieces in it to coat them.

3. Put the chicken in the pan, in batches if necessary, and brown well on all sides, then lift out and put with the bacon. (Your bacon should have given off enough fat for there still to be enough in the pan for the next stage, but if not, add another tablespoon of butter or a glug of oil.)

4. Turn the heat down to medium-low and add the onions or shallots. Cook for about 10 minutes, turning occasionally, until they are beginning to caramelise, then add the mushrooms and the sliced garlic and cook for a further 4 minutes, then lift out of the pan and set aside (but not with the meat).

5. Turn up the heat, pour a little of the reduced wine into the pan and scrape the bits off the bottom with a wooden spoon, then put in the chicken and the bacon, keeping a few bits of the latter back as garnish. Pour over the brandy and set it alight, then, when the flames have gone out, add the rest of the wine and thyme leaves. Bring to the boil, turn down the heat, cover and simmer gently for an hour.

6. Add the onions, mushrooms and garlic and simmer for another 20 minutes, keeping the lid only half on this time. Taste for seasoning and serve with the rest of the bacon sprinkled over the top, and some boiled potatoes or rice – if you're making it the day before you want to eat, which will improve its flavour, then lift the solidified fat off the top before reheating.

• Hotel cuisine: less than haute?

  

  Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, London. Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

  It has become commonplace for big name chefs looking for a costly central location to turn to the relative security of high profile hotels. This year we've had Dinner by Heston Blumenthal at the Mandarin Oriental (also home to Bar Boulud, launched late last year) with its clever fruity take on chicken liver parfait. Also in 2010 Michael Caines opened his ABode in Chester, a brand new hotel and restaurant delivering decent tuck in the evening and B&B, and Pierre Koffmann returned to The Berkeley with the successor to La Tante Claire, Koffmann's. Most recently of all Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver opened their own place, St John Hotel in April of this year, with minimalist décor and very late servings of doubtless excellent food, and Silvena Rowe is due to launch her new place Quince at the Mayfair Hotel in a matter of weeks.

  Then there are the "restaurants with rooms", where the food is the main draw but you can extend your stay past pudding - I'm thinking of places like the Horn of Plenty in Gulworthy, Devon, where Peter Gorton creates such splendours as breast of wood pigeon with caramelised chicory, orange and candied hazelnuts. Sat Bains has a great place near the River Trent serving the likes of roast scallop with Indian spices, fennel, cauliflower and garlic cream and much is made of Skye's Three Chimneys restaurant with its 'house over by'. Along with some notable exceptions, such as Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, whose primary function is a restaurant, these smaller places manage to get the balance right, offering good food and wine in comfortable surroundings that will leave you feeling grateful you can slope off to slip under the sheets.

  But there is something rotten, I have come to realise, about most hotel restaurant experiences, however opulent and sophisticated the surroundings and acclaimed the chef.
  Continue reading...

• How to make perfect hollandaise sauce

  

  Asparagus with hollandaise sauce. Photograph: Felicity Cloake for the Guardian

  Forget weddings or, even, dare I say it, the workers of the world: the first green shoots of spring are what gets my heart leaping at this time of year. Unlike, say, hot cross buns, asparagus is so beautifully easy to prepare that I can happily gorge on it morning noon and night during its brief season – initially just drenched in butter, and then, once the first frenzy has worn off and I can bear to wait more than five minutes for my fix, in more adventurous ways: baked with ham, steamed and served with anchovies and lemon zest, topped with a poached egg, or, of course, dipped into a big, greedy bowl of rich yellow hollandaise. And there, of course, is the lone fly in this mouthwatering ointment. Hollandaise is, I think, the single greatest thing a spear of asparagus can aspire to, yet the path to perfection is fraught with danger for the cook. British asparagus deserves better than curdled eggs.
  Continue reading...

• Checks, rugs and a sausage roll

  

  Even a simple strawberry can be a revelation when eaten outdoors. Photograph: Peter Orevi/Getty Images/Nordic Photos

  The latest combination of religious and royal festivities, public holidays and sunshine have lured Brits into the country's green spaces for picnics. But while seizing an opportunity to bask in the British heat in the company of a cold drink is as easy as pie, the question of picnic food often provides more of a challenge.

  Reading Elizabeth David's Of Pageants and Picnics, I became aware of an old school sense of ceremony around picnics. For her, a picnic is as much (if not more) of a treat as fine dining: "As you drink wine from a tumbler, sprinkle your bread with olive oil and salt and eat it with ripe tomatoes or rough country sausage you feel better off than in even the most perfect restaurant."
  Continue reading...

• Consider the milkshake

  

  Banana, strawberry and kiwifruit milkshakes. Photograph: Elena Elisseeva/Alamy

  The diner is a gleaming nugget of Americana. When US culture became so dominant and enticing around the middle of the last century, a fair portion of its appeal lay in the chrome and Grease of those egalitarian restaurants. The milkshake was the most important and evocative drink of the diner, if not necessarily the most popular. (That was soda, to be discussed anon.) Milkshakes were there to greet the newly invented, cotching teenagers, who wanted kids' drinks in a semi-grown-up environment.

  Sweet and cool and sexy, a milkshake represents the best of being young in summer. The original was a thick whiskey-based affair, a kind of savoury eggnog served to invalids. It turned up on the American east coast in the 1880s and was probably made in a cocktail shaker, hence "shake". By 1900 the booze had gone and milkshakes were made with flavoured syrup, and around 20 years later someone thought of adding Horlicks powder to it to make the first "malted milk", one of the gastronomic epiphanies of modern times.