Liam Charles’ recipe for New Year’s Eve banoffee trifle

Let’s set the scene: you’re hosting a New Year’s Eve party. You still have hours until the big countdown begins, but you’ve forgotten to make a dessert. Never fear: there’s hardly any cooking involved in this banoffee trifle, and it’s all about the celebration – just stick a few sparklers in it and get back to the party. Have an easy, happy new year.

Prep 20 min
Cook 20 min
Serves 12

For the toffee sauce
150ml double cream
40g unsalted butter
50g light muscovado sugar
¼ tsp fine sea salt

For the brittle
230g caster sugar
20g unsalted butter
150g mixed nuts, roughly chopped

For the trifle
600g extra-thick double cream
100ml Baileys
400g chocolate digestives, broken
5 large bananas, peeled and sliced
2 x 500g ready-made vanilla custard

To finish
75g dark chocolate, grated

Melt the cream, butter and sugar in a medium-sized saucepan, then leave it to bubble and turn a toffee sauce-like colour. Add the salt to taste, and set aside.

Put four tablespoons of water into a saucepan and slowly add the caster sugar, stirring with a whisk or spatula, until combined. Cook over a medium heat until the sugar turns a deep amber colour. Remove the pan from the heat and quickly stir in the butter. Tip in the nuts and stir until they’re well-coated in the sugar.

Carefully pour the sugary nuts on to a silicone mat or a tray lined with baking paper and leave to cool. Once cool, smash into shards.

Mix the cream with three tablespoons of Baileys and set aside. Divide the broken biscuits over the bottom of a large dish. Drizzle more Baileys over the biscuits, top with the sliced banana, custard and Baileys-infused cream. Squiggle over some caramel sauce and finish with grated chocolate. Pop in the fridge until needed. When ready to serve, top with shards of brittle (and some sparklers).

Thomasina Miers' recipe for Thai curry with partridge and squash

My local market has been exquisitely decorated with squashes and pumpkins this autumn. I marvel at their knobbly, non-conformist shapes and sizes, and their stunning range of colours.

If ever there was a time for embracing variety in our vegetables, it is now: global seed companies are increasingly trying to shrink the varieties available to us, both to buy and to grow. Here, I am pairing the sweetness of squash with the gentle flavour of partridge.

Thai peanut coconut curry with partridge and squash

If you are squeamish about jointing a bird, ask a friendly butcher to help. I find this is a brilliant way to cook partridge or pheasant, yielding a tender, succulent bite.

Prep 20 min
Cook 50 min
Serves 4-6

3 partridges, jointed (or other small game birds, such as pheasant; use guinea fowl out of game season)
Salt and pepper
5 tbsp coconut oil
1 medium-sized squash, peeled and diced
4 shallots, peeled and finely sliced
1 stem lemongrass, tough outer layer discarded and roughly chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1 large thumb ginger, peeled
150g-200g good-quality red curry paste, to taste
2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
1 x 400ml tin coconut milk
1 tbsp fish sauce

To serve
Peanuts, toasted and roughly chopped
Coriander leaves
1 plump lime, juiced

Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan)/gas 7, then season the partridge. Heat two tablespoons of the coconut oil in a deep, wide casserole dish and brown the partridge skin side down. You should do this in two to three batches, for a minute or two per batch. Set aside the partridge, tip the squash into the same casserole dish, season generously and stir to coat in the hot fat. Roast for 10 minutes while you make the sauce.

Put the shallots, lemongrass, garlic, ginger, curry paste and peanut butter in a blender or food processor with a tablespoon of water, and blitz to a paste. Warm the remaining coconut oil in a medium saucepan, gently fry the paste for seven to eight minutes, then add the coconut milk, 100ml water and fish sauce.

Take the squash out of the oven. Bring the sauce to simmering point, pour it over the squash and stir in the partridge legs. Roast for 10 minutes, then add the breasts and cook for a final 10-15 minutes, until the partridge is tender and the squash cooked through.

Serve on a bed of steamed rice, sprinkled with peanuts, coriander and fresh lime juice.

Beef rib boulangere recipe

It was the first properly cold morning of autumn when we set about making this deeply comforting dish. Layers of potato and cheap, bone-in meat for a night when the chestnut leaves are piling up in the lane outside the house. The hands-on cooking time here is minimal, involving little more than the slicing of onions and Maris Pipers, but the unattended cooking time, when the recipe gets on with things itself, is a good two hours. The dish is all the better for that, the flavours deepen and the separate elements – the meat, stock and potatoes – become, deliciously, as one.

During the layering of meat and potatoes I like to tuck in the stripped rib bones, and in so doing extracting every last bit of goodness and savour from them. On the side, a crisp white cabbage salad, perhaps (olive oil, white wine vinegar, dill), and some bread with which to sponge up the herb-stippled juices.

Serves 6
beef short ribs 1.4kg
olive oil 4 tbsp
onions 3 medium
thyme 8 sprigs
rosemary 4 bushy sprigs
bay leaves 4
black peppercorns 8
beef stock 2 litres
large potatoes 1kg

Cut the beef into ribs. Warm the oil in a large, deep-sided pan, then brown the ribs all over, taking care as they may spit and pop. Turn the ribs over with kitchen tongs as they colour, removing them to a plate when their fat is golden.

Peel and thinly slice the onions then put them into the pan in which you have just browned the beef, adding the thyme, rosemary, bay and peppercorns, and lower the heat to moderate. Let the onions cook, giving them the occasional stir, for about 20 minutes, until they are soft and light gold.

Return the beef ribs to the pan, together with any juices from the plate, then pour over the beef stock and bring to the boil. Lower the heat so the liquid quietly putters, partially cover with a lid, and leave for 1 hour or until the meat can easily be cut from the bones.

Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 4. Remove the ribs from the pan and pull the meat from the bones. Slice the potatoes thinly, using a mandoline if you have one, a large cook’s knife if not. In a large, shallow baking dish or roasting tin, layer the potatoes and the meat and onions, seasoning each layer as you go with salt and black pepper, then pour over the stock from the pan.

Bake for an hour to 90 minutes, until the potatoes are soft and giving.