Start whenever you like

The Winter Kitchen: cooking with the seasons

Shaved Stir-fried Brussels Sprouts with Toasted Almonds

Local, seasonal sprouts have NEVER tasted so good!

Slow cooked split pea dahl

A pot that looks after itself, from The pot.

Harissa chicken traybake with cauliflower and red onion

A whole meal on one tray, from The oven.
A practical cookery course for the dark months. Five ways of cooking and 27 recipes, built on a store cupboard that will always give you supper.
By the middle of November most of us are cooking in the dark, and the same four suppers come round again. We're going to change that! 

Five parts, taken in any order

The Winter Kitchen is a practical course for those months. It teaches five ways of cooking, each well enough that you can make supper from what is in the house without looking anything up. You will stock a cupboard and a freezer you can cook from. You will make soup and stew without a recipe, and put a whole meal on one tray. You will get to know the vegetables you usually walk past, and learn why a jar of something sour belongs in every winter fridge.

There are 27 recipes. Some are as local as colcannon and a stew with turnip in it. Others borrow their flavours from further away, among them a slow cooked split pea dahl and a South Indian cabbage poriyal. Every recipe flags its fibre, and many include a slow cooker or air fryer method.

Each part ends by asking you to cook one thing that week. By the end you will have chosen the handful of dishes that become your own winter repertoire.

There are 59 short pages. You also get four worksheets to print and a recipe collection to download. The parts can be taken in any order, although I would begin with The store cupboard, because the other four cook from it.

This is a cookery course and not a diet. There is nothing to give up and nothing to catch up on.

The store cupboard

The food you keep in, and what you can make from it. You will stock your shelves and freezer at a pace your budget allows, then cook five suppers that need no trip to the shops.

The pot

Soup and stew as methods you can repeat. You will build a soup from whatever vegetables you have, and make a stew with a cheaper cut of meat or with no meat at all.

The oven

Letting the oven do the work. You will roast vegetables so that they brown instead of steaming, and time a traybake so that everything on it is ready together.

Roots and greens

The vegetables that are cheapest and best in winter. You will learn what to do with turnip, celeriac, beetroot and parsnip, and how to cook kale and sprouts so that they stay green.

Crunch and zing

The acid and crunch that stop winter food all tasting the same. You will make a jar of dressing and a jar of quick pickle, and find out what the evidence on fermented food shows.
Meet your instructor
Kim Close is a nutritionist, lecturer and food writer based in Northern Ireland. With a background in psychology and culinary nutrition, she has spent over a decade teaching how food influences mood, cognition and long-term health.

She is Head of Cognition at the Food for the Brain Foundation and the founder of Whole Health 360, where she combines evidence-based nutrition with practical cookery and behaviour-change science. She holds a BSc in Psychology (1st class) and qualifications in Behaviour Change, Health Coaching and Nutritional Therapy, and is a fully qualified higher level lecturer. Kim is currently studying and carrying out research for a PhD in Lifestyle Medicine.
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