I’m feeling the need to be braise-y, so I can get warm again. Pork, apples, quinces*, onions, leeks, shallots, thyme, lots of black pepper, all into the oven for as long as it takes, with mashed potatoes and kale as companions. The nice thing about braising is that the smell from the oven all afternoon makes you all feel warmer psychosomatically, so by the time you eat, you’re already half defrosted. A full plate, a grateful room mate to do the dishes and two extra blankets on the bed when you fall in to it are the last part of the prescription.

There are no set quantities for this – just eyeball everything, and make sure you have extra stock on hand.

Heavily season your piece of pork shoulder, sear it in some good regular olive oil, and then set it aside. Over a fairly high heat, cook the onions, leeks and shallots in the fat from the pork, adding a little more olive oil if need be, until they’ve started to turn translucent and picked up some color. Set them aside with the pork, and then use the fat/oil that’s left in the pan to hard sear the apple and quince – you want these to pick up some really dark color on a side or two of each chunk without getting soft. A pair of tongs is ideal for this job; pull the pieces of fruit out as they’re done and add them to your pork/veg pile.

Deglaze the pan with some white wine, if you like, or just chicken stock, get everything back in the pot (pork on the bottom, veg and fruit over the top) with herbs, pepper, and enough hot stock to just cover the meat. Cover and put in a 275 degree Fahrenheit / 140 degrees Celsius oven until the meat is falling-apart soft – probably at least 3 hours. Check in on it from time to time, just to make sure it doesn’t dry out; add more (hot) stock if need be.

If you can make the time to let it sit on the stove for at least half an hour before you eat it, the meat’ll be even more tender: it sucks back in lots of the stock/juice as it cools, so I don’t start the potatoes for the mash until the braise is out of the oven. (This also makes it easier to tell the now ravenous room-mates when they’re going to get to eat the thing they’ve been smelling all afternoon.) If you want to tinker with the balance of the sauce, redcurrant jelly, honey and preserved lemon are all tweaking options at this point.

*Seriously, it’s all about the quinces. It’s a great, classic combination without them, but they add a magical, tangy, rosy tone to the whole pot. And if they’re a bit under-ripe, it doesn’t matter much by the time they’ve lazed around with all the other ingredients for a few hours.