Jess Shadbolt’s recipes for warming pasta soup and a sharp, salty-sweet salad

A delicate but filling winter pasta soup and a roast persimmon and radicchio salad studded with gorgonzola and hazelnuts

Winter warmers don’t always have to be hearty and heavy. This pasta e fagioli is robust enough to take the edge off a cold day, but it is also silky, delicate and elegant. Be patient with the soffritto, however: the lengthy cook helps build the soup’s flavour, and your patience will be more than rewarded. Persimmons, AKA kaki fruit, meanwhile, are one of the unheralded saviours of the winter kitchen, bringing both colour and a welcome, honeyed sweetness to just about everything they touch, especially when tossed with bitter winter leaves. We really don’t use them enough in cooking.