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As mentioned in Day 42 of The Challenge I love chestnuts and always have. They are a marker of the season. I used to only get them at Christmas markets in little paper cones, roasted and so hot that you burn your fingers trying to peel them. And then I discovered that you could buy them and roast them at home, and even cook with them. It isn't quite chestnut season yet, although it was last week in the southern part of the country and it got me hankering for some chestnuts. This is a soup that I first tried out of my Taste of Portugal cookbook by Edite Viera, and then at a friends' place for a St Martin's Day dinner, and I loved it. The recipe from my cookbook I found at once too bland and starchy though, so I have played around since, and was very happy with today's soup! Ingredients: 1 Tbsp olive oil 1 red onion, chopped 1 white onion, chopped 2 carrots, chopped 1 celery stick, chopped Half a head of garlic, chopped 750g chestnuts (as they aren't quite in season yet, I used frozen ones) 1 tsp thyme 1 c chicken stock 2 c milk 1/2 c lemon juice 1 tsp urfa biber per bowl chives for sprinkling Salt and pepper to taste 1) Sauté onions briefly in oil in a soup pot. Add other veg and sauté for a few minutes more, allowing the veg to char a little. 2) Add a small amount of water (approximately 1/2c) and add the chestnuts. I allowed them to cook like this in the water until it had cooked off then, waited a few minutes before adding more liquid. This allowed the chestnuts to roast a little, releasing a delicious flavour reminiscent of cold hands and paper cones in Christmas markets. 3) Add thyme and salt and pepper, stir then add the stock and milk. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 30 minutes. 4) When the vegetables and chestnuts are tender, blend until smooth and velvety. Add the lemon juice and dish into bowls, garnishing with chives and urfa. This soup is silky smooth and velvety. It had just the right starch and sweetness, balanced by the deeper notes of the garlic and urfa and rounded out by the veg and the lemon juice. It is filling, so if you plan on serving this as a starter, ladle up small portions or people won't be hungry for the next course! Perfect as a lunch though. It pairs well with crispy bacon crumbled over the top or with bread on the side, but works perfectly well without either.

as it goes, the corn starch works quite well, probably better than the flour, but it is hard to get good

This is one of those recipes that wasn't planned beyond "We need food. What's in the fridge?"

Anyway, this one came out very tasty, and is definitely a good recipe to have stick around! Serve ravioli with a good drizzle of sauce.

As mentioned in Day 33 of The Challenge It is pumpkin season again! We picked up a big Georgia Candy Roaster Pumpkin from a road-side stand (also excellent as dessert just roasted with a little olive oil and cinnamon! If you want to be decadent add butter and brown sugar to the hot orange mess and pour cream over the top, but it honestly doesn't need it! I think this will be my dessert for as long as the pumpkin lasts.) As the evenings have turned cooler, we decided to make a pumpkin chilli, with pumpkin replacing the role of the tomato. It worked well but was missing something, so we added a bit of tomato to the leftovers the next night and it was beautiful. Sweet and hot with just the right touch of acidity to balance it, and the deeper flavour notes from the beans. Ingredients: 1/3 of a large pumpkin 3 tbsp of olive oil 3 cups of assorted beans, soaked and ready to go ( we used adzuki and pinto beans) 3 onions, chopped 2 heads of garlic, chopped 2 red peppers, chpped 2 spicy(ish) white pepper 4 chilli peppers, chopped 8 mushrooms, chopped 2 tsp orange curry powder (or another of your choice. This is an interesting one we picked up in a market) 1 tsp Aloha Spiced Cacao 2 tsp Urfa biber (Turkish black chili) 2 tbsp lime juice 2 tsp cumin 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp cloves 1 tsp ground ginger Salt and pepper to taste (500ml of tomato passata) 1) Roast the pumpkin chunks with 1 tbsp of olive oil at 200°C for about a half hour until soft. Mash with a fork and set aside. 2) Sauté onions and garlic in the remaining olive oil in a large heavy bottomed pot. Add spices and stir. 3)Add peppers and chilis and cook until almost tender. Pour in beans, pumpkin mash with all the roasting juices, the lime juice, and about a cup of water. if using tomato passata, now is the time to add it. Salt and pepper to taste. 4) Cook for an hour or more until flavours are married. Serve hot with corn bread or over rice. Garnish with fresh coriander if you have any. Served with fresh corn-muffins, it hit the spot both ways and was tasty, warming and satisfying but not overly heavy. We are just disappointed that with the Challenge in play, we won't be able to make this one again during pumpkin season (unless we cheat and call a time out). We kept this one mild as we were going to share with our 9 month old, so do feel free to spice it up further!

Served in little glasses, I think this could work quite nicely as a party food!

Don't be fooled by the way the bananas look when they come out of the oven either. They are pure caramel goodness!

Sweet potatoes are still inexpensive, which will only last another little while, so I managed to buy up rather a lot of them and then needed to use them (Oh! no! Not the sweet potatoes!) How else to use potatoes than a shepherd's pie. And if a shepherd's pie with sweet potato mash on top, then what to put underneath it? Beans! And then I found some sofrito in the fridge from another recipe, so that helped colour the flavours of the bean mix. Sofrito is a mix of blended onions, garlic, red pepper, green pepper, coriander, cumin and chilli. It is a South/Central American base used in cooking, the exact components and proportions of which vary. I also added beets to the beans. These I figured would help add some depth of flavour which a red meat dish normally has. The result was a little goopy because I was impatient with the bean mixture but very tasty. Ingredients: For the mash: 1 kg sweet potatoes, chopped 2 tbsp butter 1/4 c milk (ish) For the bean mix: 1 c dried red beans (small ones, not kidney beans, although these might work too) 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 c red lentils 2 tbsp olive oil 4 onions, chopped 1 head garlic, minced 2 beets, chopped 3 tbsp sofrito 1 1/2 c passata 1 tsp oregano 1 tsp cumin 1 tsp dried coriander 1 tsp dried orange peel 1 tbsp red wine vinegar Juice of 1 lemon 1 c cheese, grated 1) Soak the beans overnight. (I actually first brought them to a low simmer with the baking soda and then put them in my wonderbag, or slow cooker overnight, and then I brought them back to a boil before adding the other ingredients.) 2) Place the beans on the stove, add the lentils and bring to a simmer. In a separate pot, boil the sweet potatoes until mashable - 20 to 25 minutes (a bit longer if you chop them bigger). 3) In a frying pan, heat the oil. Brown the onions and garlic, then add the sofrito and the spices. Cook for about 10 to 15 minutes, then add to the beans, along with the passata, beets, vinegar and lemon juice. Simmer to reduce until thickened to a spoonable consistency (or less if you don't mind it a bit liquidy). 4) Drain and mash the sweet potatoes with milk and butter. In a large ovenproof dish, place a layer of beans and then spread the sweet potatoes over the top. Sprinkle the cheese over the top. Bake at 180°c for 30-35 minutes until the cheese is melted and golden and the two layers have married and bubbled together. This was really tasty! It needed the beets and the brightening with the lemon and vinegar, but the spicing worked well for what it was and the beans contrasted nicely with the sweet potato mash. There was about twice as much of the bean mix as I needed, so I set the excess aside and we used it subsequently in wraps which it was very well suited to. The beans were a little mushier than I would have liked. I assumed the cook times of kidney beans, which these clearly did not need. I would recommend merely soaking them overnight rather than placing them in a slow cooker, and leaving them alone until you start bringing other bits together the next day. I enthusiastically got them back on the stove too soon and they disintegrated. As a result, the beans could have done with some more texture to them. In addition to cooking the beans a bit less, I am wondering if something like cashews might not go nicely in the bean portion. That is just musing though. I have no idea. If you try it, let me know!

My dad brought by some rhubarb from his garden the other day. They are the biggest and longest rhubarb stalks I have ever seen. As well as standard sweet rhubarb dishes, I wanted to use some to make something savoury, and so decided to try a risotto. It was cool and rainy and so a perfect risotto day, too. While assembling it, the rhubarb component was quite tart, but it balanced out with lots of ginger, carrots and some honey, I wanted the risotto itself to be quite creamy so I cooked it mostly with milk. Grabbing something from the fridge though, I noticed a lonely log of goat's cheese on the shelf and thought that would pair quite well, so it went in too. Ingredients: 1-2 red onions, chopped 1 tbsp olive oil 1/2 head of garlic, sliced 2 carrots, diced 2 long sticks of rhubarb, diced 3 inches of ginger, diced 2 tsp honey 2-3 tsp sage Salt and pepper to taste 1 tbsp olive oil 1 1/2 - 2 c arborio rice 2-3 c milk 1-2 c water Lots of pepper 1/4 c goat's cheese Toasted walnuts to top 1) In a deep sauté pan, heat the olive oil. Add onions , garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant. Add other ingredients and cook on medium heat until carrot and rhubarb are tender. 2) In a saucepan, heat the olive oil. Add rice and cook until rice becomes translucent but do NOT brown. Add 1 c water and cook, stirring almost constantly, until mostly absorbed. Add about half the milk and cook, stirring still, until almost absorbed. Add the rest of the milk and cook further (20-25 minutes in total, roughly). If when this has been absorbed the rice is still a little under done, add the last of the water. Add pepper and goat's cheese and stir until melted. 3) Serve rice topped with rhubarb mix and toasted walnut halves. This was super tasty! The veg was a little softer than I would have liked because poor planning meant I didn't have all the ingredients at the start and so ended up cooking it for a little longer than intended. Other than that though, I would not change anything. We did discover though that Little Bit doesn't eat goat's cheese. Oh well. He had the veg and some frozen blueberries instead.

which didn't get packed away immediately quietly disappeared of their own accord, which is always a good