The comforts of the kitchen

The onset of winter has its compensations, not least the chance to indulge in the flavoursome indulgence that is slow cooking, says Tom Parker Bowles

- Tom Parker Bowles

SLOW and low. Two words that fill me with eternally greedy glee. Because as the last traces of late summer are sluiced away by autumnal rains and sun-warmed paving grows as cold as the mortician's slab, so all thoughts turn to the comforts of the kitchen. And the joys of stews and braises, daubes and ragus, carbonnades, curries and cassoulets. Every culinary culture, from desert nomad to Arctic Inuit, has their own version of gently simmered delight-birrias, gumbos and rendangs; adobos and feijoadas; bigos, tajines and goulash. Dishes where all the work is in the preparation, so that, once the pot has been slipped into the oven or been left, bubbling gently atop kitchen hob or glowing coals, you're free to, well, frolic, caper and cavort to your heart's content. Or failing that, simply take the dogs for a walk.

Because the slow-cooked dish is all about the cheap, resolutely unglamorous cuts-cheeks and shins, thighs and trotters, necks and tails. The tough, no-nonsense bits of the animal, which have lived a life of backbreaking slog. In contrast to those indolent fillets and languid breasts, with their neat, film-star looks and bland, easy succulence. I don't mean to do down these sybaritic treats. They have their rightful, if gilded, place in the culinary canon. But hard labour means good flavour.