Ember Days

With a bonus soup recipe to mark the turning of the seasons.

It’s the light quality when I wake up that reminds me that we’re definitely in early autumn, not late summer any more. Those long, low rays of sunrise that make the windows of the houses opposite glow golden, like this folk tale I remember reading in primary school. That, and the chill in the air when you’re not standing in direct sunlight. My radiators clicked on yesterday morning. We’re at the turning of the seasons, the last glowing sparks of summer before autumn’s full colours emerge. These are the ember days.

And, although I didn't know it until this week, today, 14th September, is an Ember Day with a capital ‘E’. And the reason I know it now is down to an etymological treasure hunt inspired by my daughter, who messaged me to say she’d found a fascinating fact she had to phone and share with me, knowing that I too love etymology, the study of word origins, as much as she does.

She had been playing Wordle, and had got as far as AI_LE. Fellow Wordle players will know what the word was, and non Wordlers can probably guess, but she’d reached that stage of word blindness where nothing looks right - AIKLE? AIGLE? - and was trying the remaining letters to see if they made an actual word. She typed in AIZLE - and it was recognised as a word. Not the one the Wordle gods wanted, but an unfamiliar word that she didn't recognise. So, like the good English teacher she is, she looked it up.

I’d be fascinated to know if any of my readers had heard the word before. It’s pronounced like ‘hazel’ without the ‘h’ and it’s a Scottish word meaning a glowing spark, coal or ember. It’s derived from the Old English ‘isel’ which comes from the Old Norse ‘ysel’ - from which we also get our modern word ‘sizzle’ - the noise the pan makes when it hits the aizles (as a side note, AIZLE is also the name of a famous restaurant in Edinburgh where instead of choosing items from a menu, you get to choose from a list of ingredients and they make something completely bespoke to you, which sounds intriguing).

Thinking about embers made me think of that phrase ‘ember days’ - which I’d always thought of as a very evocative phrase to mark the last of the light of the summer season as it turns to autumn. So I wondered further whether that was what was referred to, or if it came from somewhere else. So I went on my own etymological journey…and found out that the phrase ‘Ember Days’ comes from the Anglican Church calendar, and there are four of them, to mark the turn of each season. Evidently, this is another example, like Easter (Eostre) and Christmas (Yule) of early Christians taking existing seasonal pagan festivals and refashioning them as Christian ‘holy days’.

Today’s Ember Day is Holy Cross Day, which commemorates both the finding of the True Cross by St Helena, and the building of a church on the Holy Sepulchre (the site of Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem) both in the 300s CE. It’s also known as Holy Rood Day or Holy Crouch Day (which just sounds uncomfortable), depending on your denomination. Disappointingly, though, embers (or aizles) have nothing to do with this. It’s called an Ember Day because there are four of them in the year, and the Latin term for this was Quatuor Temporum (the four times) which got shortened in German to Quatembren and hence in English to Embren and then Ember. So the casting of the word in my mind as capturing the dying spark of a season is etymologically inaccurate - but still evocative and so I’m going to stick with it regardless.

Ember Days are traditionally days of fasting and reflection. In the early and mediaeval Christian Church, fasting usually meant not eating meat. I’m going to celebrate it by giving you a recipe that (if you leave out the bacon, but, heathens, you don't need to!) would indeed qualify as a fasting dish. But what a feast it is. It’s pasta e fagiole (pasta and bean soup) adapted from one of the greatest pasta recipe books ever produced (apologies, Rachel Roddy) - Pasta Italian Style, by Patricia Lousada.

This is one of a series of books produced by Sainsbury's. They were very well regarded in their time, and many well known food writers were commissioned to write them (Jocelyn Dimbleby, Roz Denny, Glynn Christian, Carolyn Waldegrave et al). This book went through several editions, originally published in 1981,

when ‘spag bol’ was the extent of most people’s experience of pasta, but this cover is the one I own, published in 1990. It went with me to university and has been on my shelf and my cookery book stand ever since. The measurements are, charmingly, given in imperial but with metric in brackets. The comments on her recipes are brilliant and enticing (“Egg noodles seem to have a special affinity with chicken livers, which form a wonderful basis to this elegant meaty sauce”, “When leeks are stewed in butter and stock they make a delicious sauce for pasta”, “Be choosy and buy only the freshest, shiniest aubergine” are a few that echo in my head as I’m shopping or cooking). There are many recipes here I started cooking in my teens and can now do without looking at the recipe (her ragu alla bolognese, the penne al tonno, the walnut sauce for pasta, the tagliatelle with chicken livers), and this is one of my all time autumn and winter favourites. It’s a very thick soup, almost a stew, with very simple ingredients that meld into something quite special. It’s one of those recipes where you can use up the end of a bag of pasta that won’t quite feed two, and make a dish that serves four. It’s nourishing and warms you right down to your toes, and using tinned rather than dried beans means you can get in from work as the night is drawing in and have it on the table in under an hour, but it will still taste like your Italian nonna has been slaving over it all day. Probably venerating the Holy Cross as she stirs.

Pasta E Fagiole

400ml tin of haricot or borlotti beans

Either 75g guanciale, chopped, if you can source it (I found some in Lidl last week, deep joy!) or 50g chopped bacon or pancetta and a tablespoon of olive oil

A clove of garlic, crushed

1 small onion, chopped

1 small carrot, chopped

1 stick of celery, chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

400ml tin of chopped tomatoes

500ml beef or vegetable stock

175g any short pasta

A parmesan rind if you have it, plus parmesan to serve

If you have guanciale, add it to a large saucepan and fry gently until the fat renders and the meat starts to crisp, then add the veg. If you are unlucky and can’t get any, heat the olive oil and gently fry the bacon, garlic, onion, carrot, celery and parsley (you’re using the herb for flavour rather than colour here) until softened. Add the tomatoes, stock and the beans with their liquid. Until I made Jamie Oliver’s Mexican All Day Breakfast from his 5 Ingredients book, where he tips the entire contents of a tin of black beans into a pan, I’d never really thought about using the bean liquid. However, as long as it’s not overly salty, it’s essentially bean stock, and so can only add to the overall flavour. If you don’t want to do this, just add another 250ml of stock. This is also the point at which you add the parmesan rind you stowed in your freezer for just such an occasion.

Bring to the boil and simmer until thickened, probably about 30 minutes. At this point Patricia Lousada recommends scooping out a cupful of the beans and whizzing them in a blender (I use a Nutribullet to do this, but I don’t always bother). Adding the blended beans back to the soup thickens it further. When it’s close to the texture you want, add the pasta and cook until tender, remembering that the pasta starch will thicken the mixture further. Stir occasionally at this point to prevent sticking.

When ready, scoop out the remains of the parmesan rind (scrape off any melty bits into the soup) and serve with grated cheese and black pepper.

Enjoy this Ember Day, make the soup, and as you eat, reflect on the change of seasons and be grateful you get another circle round the sun, with all the sparks and joy it has to offer.