From molten cheese pies to waffles with truffles, winter food is hotting up, says

Trends Frankie McCoy

THE biting cold weather is finally here — thankfully. Because icy days make it legitimate to eat yourself warm: to fill your boots with all kinds of rich, creamy, cheesy fare that will warm your very bones. Eating is so much more fun when it involves double carbs and a mulled chaser. You thoroughly enjoy cultivating that extra layer of blubber. And London’s menus have filled up with food to help you get started.

You should start with a Sunday roast. A long, bracing countryside walk followed by a huge plate of roasted meat with a lake of gravy is the distillation of a British winter. But even if all you’ve achieved by Sunday lunchtime is a crawl from your hangover pit to a pub, that’s reason enough to head to the new Dirty Bones in Shoreditch: rather than serving plain old roasted chicken, they fry it in buttermilk, preventing any chance of dried-up breast. Order an extra skillet of mac and cheese to soak up the meaty juices.

If (or rather when) you catch the inevitable office cold, there are worse places to fling yourself, face first, than into a stonking bowl of creamy, umamiish soup. “Laksa is the perfect comfort food,” says David Tjong of Laksa Kitchen, which is settling into Kentish Town’s Tolli Café for a winter residency on October 28. Besides traditional Malaysian soups, there’s also Assam Laksa, a sour, pungent soup with tamarind and mackerel. There’s also Sambal Shiok at Blend Café in Harringay: Mandy Yin’s silky- rich curried broth has a cult following in London. It’s thick and coconut-heavy with an oily, orange slick of spice — an unbeatable winter-lurgy killer. For a spicy take on the trad meat and potatoes combo, go to Jikoni and order scrag end pie - the meat is cooked slowly so that it becomes tender and spicy, and topped with a fat layer of mash.

Once you’ve blasted away your cold with spice, you’ll be able to smell