Ingredients are sparse in these winter months so we've got to get inventive. It's a time for hearty combinations and the use of winter vegetables adding deep robust flavours to our cooking. The larder should be stocked full from an autumn abundance and there is certainly plenty of game to hand. Seasonal dishes like roast venison with celeriac and braised pheasant casserole with juniper accompany such delights as the gently developing sloe gin.

Flavours certainly blend, mature and better with time and this is the very essence of slow winter cooking, like a good chutney, great once matured for a season or two. And that reminds me, before Christmas I asked my local butcher to dry hang a whole sirloin of prime angus beef for 6 weeks, that's 42 days. The results were remarkable, though I did get a raised eyebrow from the wife when I added a little too much of my roast garlic and fois gras purée to a resting 16ozs, gently panting after a furious grilling.