When pudding weather comes, I crave deeply warming food on the table

Each autumn, I see how long I can go without turning the heating on. For the last few weeks, this has involved little more than on putting a winter jumper. Then, as autumn proceeded and the leaves started to fall in earnest, I dug out my thermals. It is not the cold that gets to me – autumn has been quite mild this year – it’s the damp, and I have at last succumbed and the heating is on low.

Just as effective as wrapping up has been the presence of deeply warming food on the table. I am not talking about suet pudding (yet), but big bowls of soup and vegetable gratins, stuffed dumplings and proper puddings that come to the table still bubbling from the oven.

First out of the recipe folder was Meera Sodha’s pasta with chickpeas, lemon and chilli (pictured top, and also find the recipe in the Guardian’s brilliant Feast app). It is both soup and stew, warming and frugal, a proper meal in a bowl. It’s a double carb hit of pasta and chickpeas, the kind of recipe I long for before I come in from the rain. This is the sort of food I make double helpings of, so there is enough for supper and something in the fridge for the following day.

Of all the recipes I have put aside for the cooler days, Rachel Roddy’s potato, cavolo nero and bechamel bake is the one I have looked forward to most. I did put parmesan in it, as Rachel suggests, though it would be good without it, too. After a soggy afternoon in the garden with boots caked in mud, these layers of greens, potatoes and breadcrumbs tick every box and more.

A trip to Warsaw a few years ago confirmed to me there is barely a pierogi I don’t like, steamed, baked or fried. The idea of potato and cream cheese wrapped in dough fills me with joy, and Felicity Cloake’s recipe is another carb-on-carb idea for late autumn. This is no quick fix and is instead the sort of cooking to take your time over. Patience with sealing the soothing potato and cheese stuffing inside the dough is rewarded.

Another recipe for a damp afternoon’s cooking is my own version of pork broth with noodles and greens. Again, a recipe to take your time over, simmering the pork ribs and letting the smell of aniseed and shiitake fill the kitchen. I can’t think of a more reassuring dish to come home to when the leaves are lying wet on the ground.

This is pudding weather, by which I don’t mean a dainty panna cotta. I need a big dish of something warming from the oven: a baking dish of rice pudding with a ballooning, golden skin; a lemon pudding with a deep layer of custard beneath; or perhaps Ravinder Bhogal’s apple and blackberry pudding, a sort of autumn clafoutis.

• A Thousand Feasts by Nigel Slater is out now.

My best dinner | It is a 13-minute walk from Bath Spa station to Landrace Bakery. I almost broke into a sprint at the thought of being too late for a bag of their Eccles cakes before they closed. There were fat sausage rolls, cardamom buns and turnovers of apple, pear and quince. I had a signing at the beautiful Toppings & Company bookshop – a converted Friends meeting house – but returned to Landrace’s upstairs dining room for dinner, tucking into Brixham brill with mussels, leeks and Pembrokeshire dulse, and wolfing the surrounding juices and their waxy potatoes up with a spoon. It is not often I do what I’m told, but the suggestion from the people in the kitchen to order the gorgeous, almond-crusted apple tart has made me wonder if I shouldn’t listen to others more often.

Teatime treats | I take tea breaks seriously. A deep cup of lemon verbena or something ruby-hued and herbal (hibiscus, elderberry, blackcurrant) is something I stop for mid-morning and afternoon. Two days this week I have had goodies from Tÿ Melin bakery in Abergavenny, including a pear and almond turnover, a fine almond croissant and a positively Proustian citrus madeleine.

What I’m baking | A friend turned up with a jar of sourdough starter, and though I have been starter-less all summer, we are well into baking season and this was the most welcome of gifts. It has been too long since my kitchen had the familiar yeasty back-note of rising dough. Time to dig out my recipe for green olive and thyme focaccia and make an accompanying burnt lemon dip.

What I read | Stanley Tucci’s illuminating What I Ate in One Year is seasoned with stories and famous names. I did a similar thing many years ago for the Observer Magazine, noting down each and every crumb that passed my lips. For some reason, it became a habit and, to this day, I keep a note of everything I eat. It is a habit I can’t kick. Mr Tucci, beware.

Suppers in a hurry | Tucci’s go-to suppers involve a lot of pasta. My own panic suppers – the worry of arriving home to find nothing in the fridge – were sorted by the rather large box of dumplings in the freezer: my squirrel-store of Japanese gyoza and Chinese prawn har gow. Stuffed into a frying pan or the steamer, dinner is on the table in 15 minutes while someone from Deliveroo would still be cycling up the hill. My recipe for red lentil soup has also been a problem-solver this week. And the week included a delivery of quinces, so the kitchen is scented with the rose and honey perfume of the golden fruits poaching oh-so-slowly in sugar syrup. A sure sign of late autumn: a pot of glowing jewels with which to face the cold days.