Diana Henry’s classic cookbook, Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, is now revisited, revised, and refreshed nearly 20 years after its first publication, with a new foreword by Nigel Slater and seven new recipes.

Full of comforting delights from cold-weather climates, it features recipes gathered from Diana’s travels to Scandinavia, the French and Italian Alps, Scotland, Ireland, and New England. This is irresistible food you’ll cook over and over again.

Choose Alpine dishes of melted cheese; autumnal pies and substantial winter salads; pastries from Viennese coffee houses; festive snow biscuits and – closer to home – Diana’s definitive recipe for warming Irish stew. Of course, there is also a recipe for Sugar-on-Snow as well.

These recipes will bring warmth to your heart as well as your home. And Diana’s evocative writing about both place and food make this a book well worth reading, as well as cooking from.

Recipes include:

• Georgian Cheese Pies
• Salad of Smoked Duck with Farro, Red Chicory and Pomegranates
• Pumpkin Tarts with Spinach and Gorgonzola
• Vermont Baked Beans
• Roast Pork with Black Pudding, Apple and Mustard Sauce
• Melting Leg of Lamb with Juniper
• Snow Biscuits
• Skier’s Chocolate with Bugnes
• Roast Figs and Plums in Vodka with Cardamom Cream

New recipes to this edition include:

• Hazelnut, espresso and chocolate shortbread
• Crimson leaf, black lentil, roasted grape and walnut salad
• Beetroot and blackberry soup with walnut relish
• Pasta alla norcina
• Ham and haddie pie
• Swedish apple, almond and cardamom cake
• Plum and cardamom galette

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Italian Christmas chocolate cake with chestnuts, hazelnuts and walnuts

I love the Italian Christmas sweetmeat panforte and wanted to make something more dessert-like with the same flavors. Serve this in small slices with whipped cream. If it’s for adults, you could add a dash of booze – amaretto or brandy – to the cake or to an accompanying cream.

serves 8

1½ sticks unsalted butter, plus more for the pan

¾ cup plus 2 tbsp superfine sugar

12oz 70 per cent cocoa solids chocolate, broken into pieces

½ cup walnut halves

heaping ⅓ cup skinned almonds

⅔ cup skinned hazelnuts

5 large eggs, separated

scant 1¼ cups cooked chestnuts, broken into chunks

finely grated zest of 1 large orange

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ cup almond flour

to decorate (optional)

confectioners’ sugar, to dust

70 per cent cocoa solids chocolate, broken into pieces

hazelnuts and walnuts

Melt the butter and sugar in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, then add the chocolate and melt it into the mixture, stirring to help it dissolve. Take it off the heat and let it cool slightly.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter an 8-inch springform cake pan.

Toast the nuts, except the chestnuts, in a dry frying pan, taking care they don’t burn. Break the nuts up very roughly: you want a mixture of large and smaller chunks, not chopped nuts.

Add the egg yolks to the chocolate mixture with the toasted nuts, chestnuts, orange zest and cinnamon. Separately whisk the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Loosen the chocolate mixture by folding in a large spoonful of egg white, then fold in the rest, along with the almond flour. Mix lightly so that you don’t knock out the air. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes.

Leave the cake in the pan to cool for 20 minutes, then unclasp the spring and remove the cake from the base. This is quite a fragile cake, with a mousse-like middle, so handle it carefully. The top will deflate and crack a little as the cake cools, but that’s fine.

Dust with confectioners’ sugar. Or, if you want a glossy finish, melt some chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. Spread the melted chocolate on to the cake and let it set. Roughly chop some hazelnuts and walnuts and scatter over the top.

Recipe reprinted with permission from Aster.