Ingredients: Shell for 1 pie crust (For crust recipe see here) 400g of L'Etivaz or Gruyère (or a similarly

I picked up fresh Burrata (such a delight!) and then wasn't sure how best to use it. We had lots of plums on hand, so I ended up making a spicy plum sauce, served on toast with the burrata split open over the top. To complete the lunch, we had it with sautéed mushrooms and scrambled eggs. This was quick, easy and delightful after a morning at the zoo with Little Bit (he was most excited to see the goats and the excavator. It takes all sorts I suppose!) Ingredients: 4 slices of bread, toasted, (I used tresse) 1 pink onion, chopped 1 tbsp vegetable oil 5 plums, pitted and chopped 1 small red chilli, chopped 1 1/2 tbsp apple cider vinegar 1/2 tsp almond extract 1 tbsp ground almonds 1 tsp cinnamon 1 ball burrata 1) In a small saucepan, heat the oil over medium flame. Add the onions and chilli and sauté until tender. Add the remaining ingredients except for the burrata and the toast. Cook, stirring regularly until the plums are beginning to fall apart. 2) Serve the toast on two plates, dividing the sauce and the burrata between them and allowing the cheese to ooze. The creamy burrata balanced the spicy and sweet plum sauce and the eggs gave everything a relatively neutral counterbalance. The toast provided some bite to oppose the softness of the plums and the almost custard consistency of the burrata. Overall, I was quite happy with this. I would maybe just tone down the spice a little next time. I loved it but it was a little much for Little Bit, who was perfectly happy with eggs and mushrooms instead.

As mentioned in Day 8 of The Challenge Savoury crêpes can have any range of fillings. Dead simple to make (if you have the right pan, which I now do! :) ), they can suit almost any taste: vegetarian or carnivorous, with cheese or spinach or mushrooms , spicy or not. With eggs or not. Very versatile and easy. We did a bunch of these with traditional fillings and then trialled something new with our last few crêpes. Ingredients: 1 1/4 c flour 2 eggs (I had used all my eggs on the soufflé the night before so instead I used 4 egg yolks - these came out beautifully!) 1 c milk 1/4 c oil Cheese, ham, spinach, mushrooms, fried eggs, cockles, tomatoes, Swiss chard.... the choice is yours! And, for our new filling per crêpe: 2 tbsp pumpkin purée 2 dates per crêpe 1 tsp lime juice 3 slices of mozzarella Black pepper 1) Mix flour, egg and milk together. 2)Oil a crêpe pan, heat slowly and pour in 2 ladles full of batter. Wait for batter to turn opaque and for bubbles to burst, then flip. 3)Add whatever filling you want and fold the crêpe in half, allowing cheese to melt. * For our new filling, spread pumpkin purée on the facing side of the crêpe. Place halved dates and mozzarella slices in them, and add lime juice and black pepper. 4) Flip again allowing the other half to cook, and serve. These worked beautifully. I wasn't sure about our new filling until I tried it, and did warn my husband that I was trialling something new and that he didn't have to join me if he didn't want to. It worked though! The traditional ones were tasty, but the new ones had an added spark. They were somewhere between savoury and sweet, or savoury with a twist of sweet. They could use a little tweaking, maybe adding some spice or some heat, but I would certainly try this again.

I believe the original recipe called for raspberry jam, but I used red currents as that is what I had

I am not vegetarian, gluten-free or vegan (a glance at my other recipes should confirm that for anyone I did use some sausage in this but it can easily be skipped to make the recipe vegetarian or vegan.

And then I found some sofrito in the fridge from another recipe, so that helped colour the flavours of

As for many people, Macaroni and Cheese is a comfort food. I've grown up with it and don't usually mess with it too much. I do like adding different vegetables to it though, cutting down on the carbs and cheese with a little bit of extra green. Spinach and broccoli are particular favourites. Making it the other day though, I realised that I was out of white cooking wine for the roux. I had already planned on adding pumpkin and apple to the mix, so decided to go all out and make the roux using apple sauce. Unfortunately I also was low on cheese (no points for advance planning and preparation!) so it was under-cheesed, but aside from that, the seasonal twist worked really well! Ingredients: 1kg spiralli pasta 2-3 c pumpkin, chopped 1 onion, chopped 3 apples, chopped 2 tbsp butter For the roux: 3 tbsp butter 3 tbsp flour 1 1/2 - 2 c milk 1 1/2 c apple sauce 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar 3ish c cheese, grated 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp Aloha Spiced Cacao 1 1/2 tsp Pul Biber 1/2tsp sumac 2 tsp dried orange peel Pepper to taste 1) Boil the pasta until almost al dente. Place pumpkin, onion, apple and butter in a baking dish and roast at 180°C while prepping the rest of the ingredients. Check and stir occasionally. 2) In a saucepan, melt butter. Stir in flour to make a paste. Add milk gradually, stirring well after each addition (adding it too fast will lead to a lumpy sauce). 3) When all the milk has been incorporated, add the apple sauce and start incorporating the cheese bit by bit. Add the vinegar (even a splash more if necessary to get a smooth sauce) and the spices. 4) When all the cheese is melted, taste test, then mix the pasta, veg and sauce together in a casserole dish. Bake at 180°C for 35 - 45 minutes, until browned and crisped on top to your liking. I love this variation on macaroni and cheese. It could do with a little improvement next time though. I needed more cheese, and although it looked like I had masses of veg when I put it in to roast, I think it could do with more. I would aim for equal parts pasta and veg next time. We had it meatless this time, but it could work really well with some little bits of bacon. Otherwise, though, I was delighted with the texture of the sauce and the flavours of the dish as a whole. The boys loved it too, which is always important!

As mentioned in Day 54 of The Challenge I planted a bunch of tomatoes this year by putting sliced tomato under a thin layer of earth. I ended up with 19 tomato plants on my little balcony. Because of how late they sprouted, we only had a few ripe tomatoes from them. The rest were growing nicely but didn't get the chance to ripen. With the first frost predicted, we harvested them and my dad's remaining green tomatoes and turned them into chutney to avoid having them go to waste. I had never tried this before but was quite pleased with how it came out! Ingredients: 2.5 - 3 kg of unripe tomatoes 3 cooking apples, cored and chopped 3 onions, chopped 1 1/2 c raisins 1 c red wine vinegar 1 1/2 c white cooking wine 1 1/2 - 2 c brown sugar 2 tsp ground ginger 2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg 2 tsp ground cinnamon 1 tbsp chilli flakes ( I used pul biber, Turkish red chilies) 1) Stew the tomatoes, apples and onions in a little water until they disintegrate. Add raisins, sugar and vinegar, then the spices and cook over a low heat. Place a saucer in the freezer. 2) Stir occasionally to prevent the chutney from sticking. As it thickens you'll need to stir more consistently. Taste test to check for sugar and spicing, and feel free to tweak to your taste! 3) Drop some of the hot chutney on the saucer from the freezer. If after a minute if starts to solidify and the top wrinkles and pulls tight, it should gel nicely once cool. If not, then boil it a bit longer or add sugar (or both). 4) To sterilize jars: boil clean jars and their lids for at least 15 minutes. Fill them with the boiling chutney immediately on removing them from the boiling water (canning tongs make this so much easier and makes it less likely that you'll burn yourself, but you can do it with a spoon or a spatula and a dish cloth). Fill to just below the rim, wipe the grooves clean and screw the lid on tight. As the jars and contents cool, the centre of the lid should be sucked down and the jars will be sealed properly. Place the jars upside down on a clean cloth. Label when cool. (The part about putting them upside down is from my German Oma, I don't know what's behind it but it works.) This chutney was a little on the sweet side, which I hadn't expected. There was a slight bitterness to the after taste when it was hot that I tried to compensate for. It is not overly sweet and still has the sour, spiced chutney notes, no more bitterness. It is very tasty, especially with the baked pancakes! I highly recommend this if you have green tomatoes you don't want to spoil!

did I start expanding what I used them in, both sweet and savoury, This was an experimental soup, no recipe

Third on the challenge of coming up with four different types of ravioli in a week for my sister is the Pork and Apple Ravioli. We had these with a creamy mushroom sauce, just like the Pumpkin and Sage Ravioli on night one, but this time I added some apple cider vinegar and Spiced cacao to the sauce to match the other flavours. These came out really nicely. Ingredients: For the Pasta: 2 1/2 - 3 c flour 3 eggs 2 tbsp apple sauce 1 tsp thyme Pepper For the Filling: 2 tbsp olive oil 250-300 g pork, minced 1 c apple sauce 1 large red onion, minced 1 tsp cinnamon 1 - 1 1/2 tsp tandoori powder 1/2 tsp Aloha Spiced Cacao For the Sauce: 2 tbsp butter 1 c mushrooms, chopped 1-1 1/2 c milk 1/4 c apple cider vinegar 1 tsp Aloha Spiced Cacao Nutmeg, freshly grated 1) In a large skillet, heat the oil for the filling and sauté the onion. When it is soft, add the pork, cooking until the meat begins to brown. Add the other ingredients for the filling, stirring regularly, until it all comes together. Taste test and put aside to cool. 2) Meanwhile, place flour in a large mixing bowl. Grind in pepper and add thyme. Make a well in the flour and crack in the eggs. Add the apple sauce and mix the flour into the apple and eggs gradually with a fork, to form a soft, elastic dough. 3) Pass fist-sized pieces of dough through progressively higher settings on a pasta maker until as thin as possible. Use a ravioli mould to make hollows in the sheet of pasta and place 1/2 tsp of filling in each. Place a second pasta sheet over the top, seal and cut. (alternatively use a ravioli cutter). 4) Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. In the meantime make a roux. Melt 1 tbsp butter in a saucepan. Stir in flour, and then add milk bit by bit, stirring well. Add the vinegar and Aloha Spiced Cacao. Sauté mushrooms in the remaining 2 tbsp butter and add to the sauce. Salt and pepper to taste. 5) Boil ravioli in batches for 4-5 minutes at most. Fresh pasta doesn't take long! Drain and serve with some sauce. These were really tasty, and I feel that they were a worthy inclusion in this challenge. I might have done a different sauce for these, except that one of the conditions of the challenge was to try and use only a couple of different doughs and a couple of different sauces, using the fillings for the variation for the most part. As we had these all in a row, I've added some variations, but I do feel that the variations would be easy to add in even with four different types of ravioli going at once. A note on the challenge of making ravioli. I struggle to get them to not stick to each other or whatever surface they are on between making and cooking. The longer they sit, the more problematic it can be. I've tried using flour or cornstarch. I try to avoid plastic wrap as much as possible so that is out. As far as it goes, the corn starch works quite well, probably better than the flour, but it is hard to get good enough coverage to avoid any sticking and tearing in the ravioli. Part of my problem is also my lack of counter space in the kitchen. I have to make these in the dining room on the table and then transfer them, which is easiest done on cutting boards, but then limited space means that it is more tempting to stack them up... If any one has any better ideas, I'm all ears! In case you want to try making these but don't have a pasta machine , pasta tree or a ravioli cutter, click on the links to get one of your own! As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.