October. The first evening you reach for a jumper before starting to cook. The apples on the tree by the back wall have been falling for a week, and the Savoy cabbage in the garden has tightened up in the cooler nights, its outer leaves dark and crinkled, the heart pale and dense. This is the evening for pork chops.

Pork and apple is one of those pairings that has existed for so long nobody remembers who thought of it first. It doesn't need reimagining. A thick chop, bone in, fried in butter until the fat goes crisp and glassy. A rough apple sauce, sharp enough to cut through the richness. Cabbage, buttered and bright, with a grating of nutmeg that you can't quite identify but would miss if it weren't there. Three things on a plate, and none of them competing.

I cook this when the evenings draw in and the kitchen window starts to fog. It takes less than half an hour from start to finish, most of that spent standing at the hob, paying attention. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. The chops might be thicker than mine, your apples sharper or sweeter. Adjust. Taste. Trust your nose. We're only making dinner.

I wrote it down in the notebook last autumn: pork, apple, cabbage, Tuesday, the garden still warm from the afternoon. That was enough to remember it by.