Autumn: deeply unfashionable nest-feathering season. Underappreciated. Discuss.

Autumn is the season that style forgot. Consider the food. Sandwiched between the delicate alfresco salads of summer and the fat-and-alcohol fuelled winter, autumn harvests are a second best. Once the season of plenty was supplanted by seasons of plentier, the appeal of a baked apple strewn with a few sultanas just didn't cut it any longer.

All the things associated with autumn, which once signified richness and bounty (not Bounty), can't compete with a modern world where temperate Europe expects a Mediterranean summer to be followed by an arctic winter. For goodness' sake, I saw mangoes and kiwis on sale the other day. When there are parsnips and Cox's apples in season? You'd be mad.

And you can forget about fashion in autumn. What can you do? Too warm for fluffy hats and quilted coats, too cold for Jimmy Choos, most people end up wearing a pile of layers because they work, not because they look good. Of course, in the 70s, you had a glorious decade of fashion that was all about autumn. Handknits, cloche hats, floppy collars. Woolen capes. You can't wear polyester in summer, can you?

There are no public holidays in the UK from August until winter. Compare this to the fetishisation of the season in North America, where families take holidays for the sole purpose of watching leaves turn, stuff themselves silly on Thanksgiving and Hallowe'en, and have raised the humble pumpkin into a revered object. You guys make bad effigies and beg for pennies. Even the word Americans use, Fall. It's evocative and onomotapeic. It even feels good to say. Fall. Fall. It's like the tongue motion you use when swallowing. "Autumn" is so... disjointed.

I grew up in a house redecorated in 1976 and never touched again. With avocado-coloured walls and terrazzo floors, our drinks were served in Harvest Orange and Chocolate Brown plastic tumblers. Tacky, maybe, but nothing whets my appetite like a 1970s kitchen. Know why you usually can't look in the utilitarian kitchens in restaurants? Because there's nothing mouth-watering about stainless steel. I see a sleek glass, chrome and pale pine kitchen in a house, the first thing I think is "these people never use any of it."

Forget angular, hard-varnished and bony definitions of sexuality. I want to sink my hands and teeth into something substantial. I want lush.

You want lush, too: the bigger Nigella gets, the better her food gets, the more obvious the sensuality of her cooking becomes. Food is sex, displaced. And in autumn more is definitely better.

So think of it as the Nigella of seasons. Soup and bread in the kitchen. Hot gingery drinks and red wine. Fuzzy jumpers. Slippers. Going out in the garden with a cup of tea when the sun comes out, because warmth is a gift you can't take for granted in November. The mouthfeel of organ meats - toasted braunschweiger sandwiches, sauteed kidneys, a knish fried in goose fat.

All the rich root vegetables you take for granted this time of year were exotic where I grew up. We only ever had swede on Thanksgiving, mashed with nutmeg, butter and milk. Shocking to move here and find out turnips are what you feed the sheep. This year, Britain had a real summer and therefore had a real autumn. The excess sugar in the leaves from chlorophyll production in sunny July meant the foliage was unlike anything for decades. And to think most people came in from a walk in the crisp and falling leaves to fakey Italian ready meals, or worse.

The overly delicate, fussy courgettes of summer blow out into a glorious squash, the marrow. There's no taste in a courgette and it's hard to cook them so they don't turn to mush. But marrows are firm, almost spaghetti-like in texture. They flourish, not fade, when spices are added.

So: Stewed marrow with spices, to serve four. Peel and remove seeds from a large marrow. Chop flesh into 2-cm cubes. Thinly slice one large white onion. Saute marrow and onion in 50 g. of butter until the onions are soft and slightly transparent. Add 1/2 pint vegetable stock, 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg and cumin. Break in 2 ounces of bitter chocolate. Simmer about 10 minutes. Add 6 ounces of brown rice and simmer, uncovered, until rice is tender - about 40 minutes, adding more stock as needed. The texture should be like stew, with chunks of marrow and a rich, buttery soup. Serve in shallow bowls with rye bread.