Cheddar and cider soup by Nigel Slater
A nourishing, silky bowl of soup to cosy up with and keep out the cold. Serves 6
onions 2, medium
butter 30g
carrots 2, medium
celery 1 stick
milk 400ml
plain flour 45g
chicken or vegetable stock 400ml
cider 350ml
mustard 1 tsp
cheddar 400g
chopped parsley a small handful
Peel and roughly chop the onions. Melt the butter in a deep saucepan over a moderate heat, then cook the onions until soft. Scrub and finely dice the carrot, finely dice the celery, then add to the softening onion and continue cooking for 10 minutes or so until tender.
Warm the milk in a small saucepan and set aside. Stir the flour into the vegetables and continue cooking for 2 or 3 minutes, then add the milk and stir to a thick sauce.
Pour in the chicken stock and cider, bringing it to the boil, then lower the heat and let the mixture simmer for a few minutes. Stir in the mustard, check the seasoning. (It may want pepper, but probably very little salt.)
Grate the cheese and stir into the soup, leaving it to simmer (it is crucial it doesn’t boil) for 5 minutes, until the soup has thickened. Add a handful of chopped parsley as you bring it to the table and serve with bread.
Chocolate treats by Annalisa Barbieri
In order to start the Order of Cosy, you should start with a Velvetiser, £99.95 (join the VIP club and get £30 off) or equivalent. All my kitchen gadgets have to earn their place and this really does (plus you can use it to froth milk for a cappuccino). You can of course use a saucepan and a whisk but there’s something disproportionately decadent in using it and letting it do the work. As close as I’ll ever come to a butler.
In recent years hot chocolate flavours have got complicated and a bit unnecessary. If you have to think “does this flavour work?” then it’s making you work too hard, and working too hard is the opposite of cosy. Nothing will ever beat the simplest but most perfect of hot chocolates made with a high cocoa content chocolate. My favourite of all time is probably Bare Bones 68% Dominican Republic, £11.25/250g.
A close contender is NearyNogs, £7.95/180g, a delicious stone ground chocolate made into its 70% dominican republic (other flavours also available) bean to bar drinking chocolate by the Neary family. To up the cosy factor, I always drink it imagining their factory on the Mourne Coast looking out to the Irish sea.
A perfect accompaniment to sitting under the blanket watching a film or staring aimlessly into the fire is Solkiki’s Boulders, £12.50, thick chocolate covered marshmallows in various flavours – my recent faves were peanut and pretzel although I’ve yet to find a one I don’t like, and I’ve yet to find someone who doesn’t like Boulders. They are suitably decadent but also incredibly, high in fibre. For added cosiness while indulging in all these chocolate treats, what better than Turtle Doves chocolate-brown recycled cashmere fingerless gloves, £35.
Warming drinks by David Williams
Whisky Mac To be properly, deliciously cosy, you first need to be cold – or at least to be aware that there is cold and dark outside – and a certain warming quality is necessary in any putatively cosy drink. Although it was reputedly invented in the heat of late-19th-century India by a Scottish soldier, Major General Hector Macdonald, no drink warms the cockles like the mix of spice and spirit in a classic Whisky Mac. Simply mix equal parts decent blended Scotch (such as Chivas Regal 12 Year Old; £29.95 widely available) with Stone’s Ginger Wine (£6.50, widely available) over ice, or, for a hot “toddy” version, replace the ice with boiling water.
Proper Spanish hot chocolate Chocolate’s gentle mood-lifting properties have been documented with sufficient scientific rigour to justify my ballooning mid-winter consumption of various forms of the cocoa bean on medical grounds. And at this time of year, one of the best ways of administering this most delicious of medicines is as a drink. A mug of decent powdered cocoa will do it, but for a properly cosy treat, the Spanish method of melting a chunky corner of a satisfyingly robust bar of drinking chocolate – such as Simón Coll 60% Cacoa y Canela (£3.95, tugboat.co.uk), with its subtle infusion of cinnamon – makes for something exquisitely dark and silky that is best served with soft, sweetly spongey melindros (aka lady finger) biscuits.
Amarone della Valpolicella When it comes to wine, cosy is a euphemism for rich, robust and warming – the sort of wine that can be enjoyed in what must be the Platonic form of the cosy place, a perfectly comfortable armchair by the fireside. This is an after-dinner wine, really, of the kind that rewards slowly contemplative sipping – a wine to which the Italians give the wonderful title “vino da meditazione”, the king of which is undoubtedly the deeply flavoured, bittersweet red made from dried grapes in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy known as Amarone della Valpolicella. Allegrini Corte Giara Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 2020 (from £30, thewinesociety.com; vinvm.co.uk) is an accessibly de-luxe example.
Mulled wine If the Whisky Mac’s alcoholic hit is too much, then another warm boozy way to cosy is to do a bit of mulling. Most of the supermarkets (and some swanky merchants, such as German specialist The Wine Barn) now offer a pre-mixed mulled wine, but it’s not especially difficult (and also, somehow, much cosier) to make your own. I like mine to have a little sweetness, but not too much, so, rather than add sugar, I’ll use half a bottle of decent (sweet) ruby Port such as Morrisons’ Ruby Port NV (£9.25) and half of wine (something full-bodied and fruity like malbec), which I’ll simmer in a pan for 10 minutes with a cinnamon stick, a slice or orange or two, a couple of star anise and cloves.
