Diana Henry on the joys of autumn – from dishes bursting with seasonal flavours to welcoming friends round a cosy kitchen table once again

It was unusual for me to bunk off school – I was far too much of a goody two shoes – but on the occasions I did, it was because of the countryside and love. Some of the classrooms looked out on fields thickly edged with trees, their branches flickering red and ochre on autumn afternoons. Farmland lay just beyond the edge of town and if you kept to the wooded areas you were unlikely to see any teachers, until the day that you did. It was worth being reprimanded if you could hold hands with your boyfriend lying below turning leaves.

Despite the fact that autumn is a time of decay it fills me with optimism. It’s the gauzy days, the newness of the school year and the dates that dot the calendar. My birthday is in October, then there’s Hallowe’en, Guy Fawkes and, eventually, Christmas. All of these demand celebrations.

You gradually learn to be indoors again which, for me, means being in the kitchen. Open-plan living is nothing new so my kitchen isn’t unusual but, in the autumn, all of life happens here: cooking, eating, watching television, doing homework, drying washing and talking round the table. We discard jumpers – it’s cold outside but not inside – and I make the room busier still by piling pumpkins on the table and putting apples in a stone bowl – a big one with the words COMFORT ME WITH APPLES cut into the rim. It’s not quite Martha Stewart but it does me.

Summer cooking requires panache, speed and thinking on your feet. If the sun doesn’t shine you might have to abandon that salad of nectarines and tomatoes. On the grey days this past summer I cooked lentils and made soups. For a while I was in a kind of limbo, making the right food in the wrong season. I wanted proper autumn, not this imitation.

It’s not just the kitchen that changes but ingredients too. In Northern Ireland you used to be able to pick blackberries until the end of September, even early October, so we made the first crumble then, blackberries and apples under a crust of toasted hazelnuts, butter, wholemeal flour and brown sugar. Every year I think about Seamus Heaney’s Blackberry-picking, a melancholic poem that reminds you how violently things can change in this season. The picked berries never last until the next day. You have to cook them as soon as you get them home, and if you put off making that crumble, the possibility will be lost.

Sleepy looking pears have to be gently prodded to check for ripeness, and quinces, weighty and voluptuous, arrive in October. They’re like a fruit from another age. Wild ones still grow at the foot of the mountains between Iran and Turkmenistan. You have to cook them, their flesh is rock hard, but it softens to a honeyedness that works beautifully with lamb and pork.

We tend to regard autumnal food as brown but just look: beets the colour of red wine, tangles of emerald green watercress, orange pumpkins. Wild mushrooms smell of the forest floor, and bags of grains and pulses are pulled from the back of cupboards. You oversee roasts and braises and indulge in more carbs than usual. I start baking on a Sunday afternoon again so there’s something sweet to eat at 4pm. The griddle, the star of summer cooking, lies untouched, and cast-iron casseroles and gratin dishes take up residence on the kitchen counter. Despite the fact that you’re hibernating, by moving indoors, you want people round the table. I welcome more friends for supper in the autumn than at any other time of year. Everything slows down so you have time to talk as well as cook. It’s the best season.