Devils on Horseback

December. The kitchen window has fogged over and there are people arriving in an hour. You need something that can be assembled in minutes, roasted in less, and eaten with one hand while holding a glass in the other. Devils on horseback. They've been doing this job since the Victorians invented them as a savoury course, and nothing has improved on the formula since.

A prune soaked in brandy, stuffed with an almond, wrapped in bacon, roasted hot. That's it. The combination sounds unlikely if you haven't tried it, but the logic is sound: the sweetness of the prune against the salt of the bacon, the warmth of the brandy running through everything, the crunch of the almond in the middle giving you something to bite down on. It works the way all the best simple things work, by not trying to be anything else.

I make them every Christmas, and sometimes in the weeks before when I need a reason to open the brandy early. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: prunes, bacon, almonds, brandy. Ten minutes. Worth it every time. The plate comes back empty. It always comes back empty.

There are few better feelings than putting a warm plate of these in front of someone who has just come in from the cold.