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The neighbour gave us a basket of chanterelles, and trying to decide what to do with them, a recipe we tried a few years ago came to mind. I don't remember where the recipe was from, and don't have it saved anywhere (at least, not to my knowledge), but I tried to sort of recreate it from memory, with a couple of ingredient swaps. So here is what came out of that. Ingredients: 5 onions, whole 3 c whey 1 tsp herbes de Provence 1-2 tsp dried orange peel 1 tbsp butter (and some for greasing the baking dish) 4 c (approx) chanterelles 1 c cream 1 c barley Salt and pepper to taste 1) Place the onions in a saucepan and pour over the whey (my whey was half yogurt whey, which is more acidic, and half ricotta whey). Add herbes de Provence and orange peel, salt and pepper to taste and bring to a simmer. 2) Meanwhile, melt butter in a frying pan. Add chanterelles and cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes, allowing the mushrooms to render their liquid. Mine gave up quite a lot, so instead of draining it in the sink, I poured the extra liquid over the onions. 3) Add cream and pepper to the chanterelles and stir. Cook for a few minutes, allowing the sauce to thicken, then cover and set aside. Butter an oven proof dish. 4) When the onions are tender when stabbed with a knife, transfer to the baking dish, reserving cooking liquid. Pour barley into the saucepan with the cooking liquid and cook until al dente - 15 to 20 minutes. 5) Pour the contents of the saucepan into the baking dish (it's ok if there is still a little liquid), arranging the barley snugly around the onions. Pour the chanterelle sauce over the onions and barley and place in a pre-heated oven at 180°C for about 10 minutes. This was delightfully warm and filling, without being heavy. The onions were sweet and tender, and the barley and mushrooms complemented them very nicely. I am not sure if this is exactly what we had a few years ago, but it certainly worked well! I might omit the oven step next time and see how it goes though. It might have helped marry the dish and the flavours a little, but I am not sure. Anyway, a big hit with all three of us, and then it held up very well as a left-over lunch at work for me (mostly blind with almost no onions or mushrooms, but still tasty). This could work well as a side course with meat, or with bits of bacon or something in it too.

After my earlier attempt at a tomato ketchup, I was inspired to play around with other ketchup varieties. One that I wanted to try, thinking that the vegetable would lend itself well to this, was beetroot. The challenge in making this ketchup was to make it taste properly ketchupy and not like borscht. I think I managed! Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think! Ingredients: 4 beets, peeled and chopped 1/2 head garlic, minced 1 onion, chopped 7 tbsp red wine vinegar 3 tbsp light brown sugar 1 tsp oregano 1 - 1 1/2 tsp thyme 1/2 - 1 tsp salt 1 - 1 1/2 tsp tandoori powder 1) Place beets in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer, cooking, covered, until beets are tender. Add other ingredients, and continue to simmer, uncovered for about 20-30 minutes. 2) Cool the beets slightly then pour the contents of the saucepan into a blender and blitz well. Taste test, adjust, then transfer back to the saucepan and cook further until reduced to the desired gloppiness. 3) Meanwhile, boil clean jars for 15 minutes, completely submerged in water, thus sterilising them. While the ketchup is still hot, spoon into the jars one at a time (canning tongs come in handy here to fish the jars out of the boiling water), then wipe the rim, seal and place upside down on a clean towel to cool. I made my ketchup last week, and then we pulled it out this evening to have some, and I am really quite pleased with it. It tastes like ketchup, but it also still tastes like beet. And to my great relief, it does not taste like cold borcht!

This is my own (inadvertent) version of a dish of my mother-in-law's. I had never had vegetarian lasagne before meeting my then boyfriend (now husband). He made this for me back when we were still living in Edinburgh a long time ago. I really enjoyed it (even if he did freak out a little about the layering) and it is a dish that has stuck around ever since. I decided I wanted to make it last week but couldn't be bothered to pull up the recipe, so I set about making it from memory. I thought that my conception was pretty close to the original until Hubby called me out on it. I still haven't checked the original recipe but there are some bits that have ended up changing. Here it is! Ingredients: 1 tbsp olive oil 3 onions, chopped 1/2 head garlic, minced 2 tsp cumin 1 tsp oregano 1 tsp sumac 1 tsp tandoori powder 2 black beans, cooked, OR 3/4c dried + 1 tsp baking soda 3 c tinned tomatoes 1 1/2 c spinach 1 1/2 - 2 c ricotta 3/4 c coriander, chopped 3/4 c parmesan, grated 1/2 c mozzarella, grated Lasagne sheets 2-3 tbsp butter, melted Salt and pepper to taste 1) If using dried black beans, start by cooking them at a simmer with 1 tsp baking soda until tender. 2) Heat olive oil over medium heat in a frying pan and sauté onions and garlic. Add these, the spices and the tomatoes to the black beans and cook for around 15 minutes, allowing the flavours to meld and the sauce to start to thicken (add a little water to the beans if necessary). Using a fork, mash up the beans, or partially blitz the sauce. 3) Mix the spinach with the ricotta. Brush a lasagne pan with melted butter and begin layering: sauce, ricotta and spinach, a handful of coriander, lasagne sheets, brush with butter, some parmesan. Repeat until the layers near the top of the pan. For the final layer, ladle some sauce over the lasagne sheets and sprinkle mozzarella over the top. Pepper generously. 4) Bake at 200°C for about 40 minutes, until crispy on top and noodles are tender when stabbed. Serve warm. I was very happy with how this came out. It was moist and rich and very tasty, with a lovely deep flavour from the beans, and very cheesy. I made the ricotta for it fresh just before assembly too! Mixing the beans in with the sauce means that they stay nice and moist, and the whole dish was too, without being wet. I find this very satisfying, and as much as I like a good, traditional meat lasagne, I also like having different options and variations up my sleeve when the need or the fancy arises. I am indebted to my mother-in-law for the original, and am very pleased with this version.

Baskets of chanterelles are available in the store again! This is very important news, which is why I'm bothering telling you so. One of my favourite things to do with mushrooms is a croûte aux champignons, and this one is more specifically a chanterelles croûte. It is dead easy to make and super flavourful, and a traditional food from this area. I hope you enjoy my take on it! Ingredients: 6 slices of your bread of choice 750g (approx) of chanterelles, chopped 1 onion, diced 1 tbsp butter 1/4 c spinach 1/2 - 3/4 c cream 1/3c white wine 1 tsp thyme Dash of fresh nutmeg 1/2 tsp sumac 1/2 tsp cumin 1) Butter a large baking dish and lay out the bread slices. Place in the oven at about 180°C and toast on each side. Glug over about 2 tbsp of white wine and place back in the oven for a few minutes. 2) Meanwhile, melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Sweat onions, then add mushrooms. Cook for about 5-8 minutes, allowing the liquid to cook off, then add remaining ingredients. Cook for a further 5 minutes. 3) Spoon mushroom sauce over bread. Optional: return to the oven for a couple of minutes. Serve hot. Like I said, dead simple, and if you like mushrooms, you can't go wrong. Little Bit devoured his portion. I'm not sure why I don't make this more often... Book Pairing: In case you are not familiar with it or missed it, there is a quote from Dr Seuss's Sleep Book above. See if you can find it! An absolute classic in children's literature, it seemed appropriate for some reason.

To be able to even attempt a goat's cheese I needed to first find goat's milk. The grocery store has cow and sheep cheese, and the local dairy only has cow. Asking them, the first time no one knew where I could find goat milk, but then when I asked again a few days later when different staff were on duty, someone knew of a place a few villages later. The first time Little Bit and I tried to head over, we were on the bike, and it's about 15km. Almost there though, (after multiple pee stops) we got bogged down in mud mid way to the axles. We turned around and headed back up to the main road (squelch squerch squelch squerch), but by then it was too late, so we got lunch and headed home instead. We tried again after nap time a couple of days later, and success! We got to visit the goats, some of whom were being ,milked, and some pigs too for good measure. When we got milk after seeing the animals, it was fresh from the goats we had just seen being milked. I pasteurised the milk first, and then set up the culture inoculation for the next day and a half. It was all straight forward, and then we had the cheese draining in my new moulds for a few days. I set the cheeses up to age in olive oil and spices as per the instructions in my cheese book and then left them alone for 10 days. We have now tried it, and I am very happy! Now that I have found goat milk I will try more! This was my second cultured cheese, and while I faced the same issues with DCUs as for the cream cheese, I am finding it works relatively well.

I was going to save this post until the autumn, but accidentally bought a bag of apples which turned out to not be very good eating apples (well, Little One thought they were, but he sometimes has questionable taste) so it seemed like a good time to make more and to post about it. It is also a good time because pectin is useful in jam making for any fruit which isn't high in pectin, helping with gelling. And it's jam season! It is entirely natural and easy to make and allows you to make something of what would otherwise be compost. In order to make pectin, all you have to do is to save apple peels and cores (when I made pectin in the autumn, I made apple sauce from the apples and pectin from the off-cuts, and this time around I dried the apple slices). You then simmer them in water over medium low heat until the liquid turns pinkish and thickens a little. Strain out the bits and save the pectin. Et voilà! I put mine away in the freezer for future use (like in my Watermelon Rind Jam).

For a long time, mead was something I had only ever read about in medieval literature, like Hrothgar's mead hall in Beowulf, or mead being toasted with in Arthurian lit. I only tried it a few years ago, initially in Brittany and then as mulled mead in Stuttgart. The first time I wasn't in love with it (but did like that is was called Merlin's brew or something), but then trying it hot and spiced in a German Christmas market, I really enjoyed it. When I saw Max Miller's episode on making his own mead in Tasting History therefore, I decided to try it out for myself. I ordered a 3l pickling jar with a water stop and gave it a shot. I only had baker's yeast rather than brewer's yeast. I thought this would prove too big an issue, but my sister said she had done the same and it worked, so I figured I would go ahead. I heated water, then stirred in the honey, brewed it for a few minutes and then allowed it to cool. When it was about 37°C, I stirred in the yeast, and then put it in the jar with the water-lock in place. I left it to ferment in out coat closet for about 5 days (the coat closet smelled strongly of fermentation). I then transferred out the mead and got rid of as much yeast as possible, and put it back in the jar for a couple more weeks to age a little. Ingredients: 600ml honey 1.8l water 15g yeast 1) Bring water to a boil briefly, and stir in honey. Allow the honey to dissolve and then bring the temperature down to about 37°C. Stir in the yeast. Place in a jar with a water-lock and then leave in a dark place to ferment for a couple of days. 2) Transfer the mead out of the jar, leaving to age for at least a few days. I pulled it out of the coat closet today to try it (I need to pick up a funnel before I can bottle it). I am afraid it didn't come out as well as I had hoped but better than I had feared. It is very acidic and has a little bit of a bitter edge to it. I'm not sure why it went so acidic - whether I fermented it too long, or if the fault is down to using the wrong yeast, or if I messed something else up...As a first attempt at fermentation, I am not too disappointed, but I am not sure what to do with it. It is not sipping mead, but maybe mulled? I will have to look into this and have a think. I've included the recipe anyway, so if you try it out, let me know it you have better luck! EDIT: I strained it repeatedly through about 16 layers of cheese cloth until the mead came out clear. I've put it aside for now, but I'll give it another taste soon to see if getting all the yeast out improves the flavour.

The blog turned one this week! I've been playing around with the idea of making a rose cake for a while so I decided that now was a good time to try it. It also seemed appropriate as my grandmother's birthday would have been this week too and she is the one I first started playing around with rose petals with. I couldn't decide how best to have the flavour come across and how to have the flavour match the texture, so I considered (and tried) both a Genoese sponge and a butter cake. In the end the butter cake worked better. I also wasn't sure how best to have the flavour come through from the petals. In one cake I tried adding dried, crushed petals to the batter, and for the other I infused the milk with the rose petals. We had it with rosé syllabub, which surprisingly came out tasting quite rosy. Here is the recipe that worked best, although I might try it over with a couple of tweaks at some point (not just now though as I don't think we need another cake in one day). Ingredients: For the cake: 1 3/4 c sugar 2/3 c butter 2 eggs 2 3/4 c flour 2 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 1/4 c milk 1/3 c dried rose petals For the syllabub: 3/4 c cream 3 tbsp rosé wine 1/2 tbsp sugar 1) Pour milk into a saucepan and add rose petals. Heat slowly until warm but not boiling and leave to infuse for about 30 minutes. Strain. 2) Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. 3) Mix flour and baking powder together, and add alternately with milk, starting and ending with flour. Mix well and pour into a prepared pan or cupcake tins and bake 30 -35 minutes at 177°C. Remove and cool on a wire rack. 4) Place cream, rosé and sugar in a bowl and beat until thickened. Dollop on top of cakes. I was really pleased with this cake. It didn't come out tasting very rosy, possibly because unfortunately I had only dried petals to play with, and no fresh petals. Despite not having a strong rose flavour, there was more complexity to the flavour than a usual butter cake. The Genoese sponge version was good, but drier and had even less of a rose flavour. The butter cake was therefore decided to be the better one, although I might play around with ways of intensifying the rose flavour. The rosé syllabub balanced the cake out perfectly. Not too sweet, and with a little acidic bite, and its rosy flavour. I had planned on trying a rose frosting too for comparison, but didn't get around to it, and in retrospect, I'm content with that. The cupcakes rose a lot in the oven but didn't dome, and I wonder if that is because I made the batter in the afternoon and only baked them quite late. Did sitting out half the day in the heat change anything? Trying to compare different versions of a recipe, I definitely wish I had access to a test kitchen! Book Pairing: I am currently listening to George Eliot's Romola. This is the third book of hers I have read, and I am very much enjoying it, aside from the fact that the central character from the first half of the book is rather a cad. Eliot came recommended to me by a very well-read family friend as being, in his opinion, the finest novelist in the English language. I am very glad that I took his recommendation and gave her a shot! EDIT: I worked out another two versions of this using fresh petals. Check them out here!

As with the Fenugreek Pancakes, I wanted to trial fenugreek's maple flavour in something that traditionally has maple syrup added to it. For this recipe I crossed two crêpe recipes, my dad's and Michel Roux's and the results were beautiful: light, lacy crêpes with a not-too-sweet maple flavour to them, and just slightly more of a tan colour than normal. I would even consider upping the fenugreek next time for even maple-ier crêpes. In any case, these were a hit. Ingredients: 1 c flour 1/4 c powdered sugar 2 eggs 1 1/2 c milk 1/2 c cream 1 tsp fenugreek powder oil for cooking 1) Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the eggs and beat until smooth. Gradually add other liquids, mixing well until a loose batter is achieved. 2) Heat a crêpe pan over medium-low heat (I have a dedicated cast iron one) and brush with vegetable oil. When it is hot, pour 1/2 ladle of batter in and rotate the pan to spread the batter in a thin round. DO NOT pour the oil in before the pan is hot as it will not spread properly or cook evenly. 3) Once the top side is matte and little bubbles have popped on the surface, flip the crêpe and briefly cook the other side. Serve hot with yoghurt, fruit, butter, jam... whatever you want really. I found that relatively neutral flavours did best, allowing the fenugreek's flavour to come out best. This batter was looser than my crêpe batter tends to be and the crêpes were thinner and more delicate. Sometimes I prefer heartier ones, but for a breakfast treat, these did beautifully!

This one is half cheese journey and half recipe. I was asked for it by a colleague though, so here it is. Yogurt making is not massively new to me. I have done it a few times, and have enjoyed trying out different starter yogurts and seeing the effect different ones have on the final yogurt. It is very easy to do an the result is satisfying. If the yogurt is not as thick as you'd like, simply strain it. Then you have yogurt as well as whey to use. The key to this as far as I am concerned, is to use a good quality milk. Mine was quite thick, with an almost flan-like consistency, but we strained it a little anyway. Ingredients: 2 l milk 3/4 - 1 c yogurt with active cultures 1) Place milk in a saucepan and heat over medium until it is warm but not too hot. You should be able to dip your pinky finger in and leave it for a count of 10 without being uncomfortable. 2) Add the yogurt to the milk and stir. Cover the saucepan and place in a warm spot to ripen over night or longer. A spot in the sun, by the fire or by a radiator are great. I usually put mine in my Wonderbag cloth oven as it maintains the temperature over a long period without using any energy and without risk. 3) Strain as needed. I particularly like home-made yogurt for dishes like borani where the flavour of the yogurt itself is key. Depending on the starter yogurt used the end-yogurt may be more acidic or sweeter. Play around with it and figure out which you like best!