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:) ), they can suit almost any taste: vegetarian or carnivorous, with cheese or spinach or mushrooms

As mentioned in Day 87 of The Challenge Butternut and chestnut seasons intersect! This was entirely experimental. I saw the title of this recipe elsewhere but didn't look at the recipe and then couldn't remember where I had seen it, so I made it up. I had no idea how this would turn out, but it was beautiful. The balance of sweet to acid with a little spice went very nicely. Ingredients: 1 butternut squash, halved and with the seeds scooped out 500g chestnuts, parboiled and peeled 3-4 tbsp olive oil 2-4 onions chopped 1 apple, chopped 1-2 tbsp apple cider vinegar 1 tsp sumac 1/8-1/4 nutmeg 1/4 tsp cloves 1-1 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp fenugreek seeds 2-3 c chicken broth 1/3 -1/2 c cream 2 tsp thyme Salt and pepper to taste Toasted pumpkin seeds to top 1) Place butternut, chestnuts, apple in a heavy skillet or a roasting pan ( I used my cast iron skillet) and drizzle with 2-3 tbsp of olive oil and the apple cider vinegar to achieve good coverage. Sprinkle the sumac, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and fenugreek seeds over it all and roast for 45 min-1 hour, until the butternut is tender. 2) Sauté onions in the remaining olive oil in the bottom of your soup pot until translucent and even a little charred. Add the contents of the skillet and mix it up ( the butternut should break up easily. Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes, allowing the flavours to meld. 3) Blitz until smooth, then taste test, adjusting any of the spicing or the vinegar. Salt and pepper to taste, and add cream to your taste too. I do recommend some, but how much you do is up to you. Serve and sprinkle with thyme and pumpkin seeds. I absolutely loved this and I am so glad I tried it! The roasting at the start lengthened the cook time a little, but then pulling the soup bit together went really quickly, so it's six and two threes really compared to other souping. The truly lengthy bit is peeling the chestnuts if you use fresh ones, but then I find it quite zen to settle into a task like that. The other option is to use frozen ones that come pre-peeled. In any case, this soup hit all the right notes for me (and hubby and Little Bit) and I hope it does for you too.

As mentioned in Day 80 of The Challenge Quinces are something that (aside from being seasonal! I know! So many seasonal fruits and vegetables in the autumn!) I had only really encountered in jelly or in preserves until recently. And then a couple of years ago a colleague came to work with a bucket of quinces from her garden for anyone to help themselves, and so I started playing around with them. They are like fuzzy green stones, pear-shaped wannabes when they are raw. They need a bit of cooking, usually boiling (I tried roasting one and it sort of worked) to make them edible. This is the first (or one of the first) savoury things I tried with them. As with so many other recipes, it is one I had seen the title of but then lost the recipe link before reading it, so I made it up. Ingredients: 2 onions, chopped 1 tbsp olive oil 600g of carrots, chopped 1 large quince, chopped 1 tbsp honey 2 tsp sumac 1 tsp garam masala 1 tsp cinnamon 1/4 tsp cloves Salt and pepper to taste Herbs de Provence 1) In a soup pot, sauté onions in the olive oil until translucent. Add carrots and quince and enough water to cover it all. Add spices and honey. Simmer for 45 min or until carrots and quince are tender. 2) Blitz until smooth (or almost. Quince won't go silky smooth like some other vegetables). Taste test and salt and pepper to taste. Serve with garlic and thyme croutons. This was very tasty but my husband said he found it too earthy and sweet. Adding the herbs at the end brightened it all up though and brought the flavours into alignment. Some lemon juice might also work. Let me know what you think!

Since first trying to candy and then chocolate cover orange peels last spring, I have branched out to ginger and other citrus fruit peels. Ingredients: Citrus peel or ginger strips - generally about 1 c worth 1/2 c sugar plus extra for candying 100 g Chocolate Optional: Cinnamon, cloves spices etc. 1) Place the (clean) orange peel in a saucepan with enough water to cover it and add sugar. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer for about half an hour to an hour until the orange peel is tender but still retains its integrity and a little bite. 2) Remove and drain, spreading out on a drying rack to dry overnight. 3) Place the ones you want to candy in a jar with the sugar, seal and shake, coating them evenly. 4) For the chocolate coated peels, place chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water to create a Bain Marie. Stir regularly as the chocolate begins to melt. Dip strips of orange peel into the chocolate and lay on a cooling rack. (TIP: I find chopsticks very helpful in the dipping process!) The principles hold generally to the orange peels I did last year, but I thought I would share my thoughts and experiences. I have generally omitted the extra sugar shaken over the candied peels at the end, finding it unnecessary. I find that lime peel and lime slices work very well and have an excellent balance of sweetness and tartness to them when candied. I have also tried coating them in white chocolate, which worked excellently. Ginger, of course, works wonderfully. As with the others, I have not added extra sugar on top, but I have coated in dark chocolate, which is very tasty. Dark chocolate with a little orange oil added to it is especially delectable. On one occasion, I simmered ginger, orange and lime together. It worked nicely, but the citrus peel was done before the ginger, which had to go back in the pan for another go. Also, they shared flavours a little, the ginger imparting a little bite to the lime and orange peels. Not a bad experience by any means, but one to be aware of, depending on your intentions for the candy. Grapefruit peel was tremendously bitter. I tried adding a pinch of salt to the simmering syrup as salt counteracts bitterness a lot of the time, but it made for a weird bitter salty candied peel rather than anything else. I set it aside, therefore, and covered it in dark chocolate at a later date, some with a sprinkling of cloves over the top too, and the grapefruit peel was transformed! I highly recommend this form of candy! Orange peel with a little cinnamon over the chocolate works too. Candied lemon works very nicely coated in white chocolate with a little black pepper. It seems a little counterintuitive perhaps, but that is a combo I discovered when playing around with my chocolate tempering and flavouring. The black pepper's sharpness is mitigated by the lemon and the lemon's bitterness is evened out by the black pepper. I faffed about a little with tempering the chocolate properly before coating my orange and grapefruit peels, but I am not convinced of the necessity of this, and so have not included it in the description above. A caveat to bear in mind is that these keep extremely well in an airtight jar IF, and only if, you dry them long enough. If after the candying process there is any moisture left on the peels, it will go mouldy, which would be a shame... When they do keep, I am discovering that having candied peels around for use as ingredients in other things can be very handy, like in my updated Ginger Snaps. I really enjoyed making these (and eating them too) and prepped a whole bunch last week as Christmas presents for my parents. I didn't faff about with tempering all of the chocolate, and I have to say it is an incredibly sticky medium to work with, but it was certainly fun to play around with the different flavours and try different things out.

I absolutely love baked eggs! We've been making them for a few years now after first stumbling on the idea in Michel Roux's cookbook Eggs (awesome cookbook by the way. I hesitated over getting it initially because I figured "how interesting can a cookbook about eggs be?" Answer: really.) Since that initial revelation, we've played around with different configurations, different layers, different pairings. We've done sweet and savoury, some with veggie bases, others with some meat, or others again with both. Some are layered, some are dropped into a mixture, like curry. They are the perfect dish for using up micro amounts of leftovers. The only trick is to play flavours and textures off of each other successfully. We use vegetables (left over or raw), meat, cheese, cream, fruits, bread, spreads, chocolate, nuts... And the list goes on. Almost anything works. We've also cooked the eggs, instead of in ramequins, in a baking tray with corn bread batter or pancake batter as a base, nested in roast veggies before. It is endlessly adaptable. Omit meat and it's veggie. Use keto friendly veg and it's keto. Skip the toast and it's gluten free. Play around with it! This one came out beautifully. I used the last of my home made whey ricotta, some leftover (slightly spiced) stir fried veggies, the last of a pack of bacon and some fresh thyme, served with day old bread toasted up to perfection. The trick is to bake them until the yolk is still runny but the white is set, so keep your eyes on it. I usually place the eggs in a bain-marie in the oven, but not always. It allows them to come out moister, but depending on what you've used and what you're planning, you don't have to. Ingredients: 6 tbsp left over veggies 6-9 tbsp ricotta 3 eggs 6 rashers of bacon 3 thyme sprigs salt and pepper 1 tbsp butter Toast to serve 1) Butter 3 ramequins thoroughly. Spoon 2 tbsp of veggies into the bottom of each ramequin. Next, spoon in the ricotta around the edges of the dishes, leaving a well in the centre. Place a ring of bacon around the tops of the ramequins using 2 rashers each then crack an egg into the well created in each dish. 2) Place the ramequins in a baking dish and pour boiling water into the baking dish deep enough to come mid way up the sides of the ramequin. 3) Place in the oven at 180°C. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the eggs are set to your liking. Serve with toast. These were rich and decadent. The slightly spiced veg played well off the creamy whey ricotta, and egg and bacon is of course a classic combo. The crunchy veggies and the toast added a textural contrast. It was beautiful and creamy and tasty. This is a must try!

As mentioned in Day 72 of The Challenge Guest starring my dad! This was a twist on a classic cheese tart, and the first time we had tried this variant before. A simple cheese tart is a big favourite in our family, easily tweaked to include spinach, onion, tomato, ham or broccoli, for example. This time we included sliced apples and it was scrumptious! Maybe a little further tweaking to perfect it, but certainly good enough to share! Ingredients: Shell for 1 pie crust (For crust recipe see here) 400g of L'Etivaz or Gruyère (or a similarly mature cheese), grated 400 ml milk 4 heaped tbsp of flour 4 eggs 1/4 nutmeg, grated 2 1/2 apples, sliced 4-5 rashers of bacon, fried and crumbled Pepper to taste 1) Line a pie plate with crust. Arrange apple slices over it in a single layer, then sprinkle over the grated cheese. 2) Beat eggs. Add flour and whisk together, then add milk, mixing well. Grate in nutmeg and stir. 3) Pour egg mix evenly over the cheese and apples. Grind pepper over the top and sprinkle over the crumbled bacon. 4) Bake at 200°C for 35-40 minutes until golden brown on top and the tart has risen. So very tasty, and it paired well with chunky veggie soup and a glass (or two) of wine for dinner. The tart seemed unable to decide fully whether it was dinner or dessert, but turned out to be the perfect middle ground. Next time though we thought of swapping out the bacon for prosciutto as it has a more delicate flavour. We also would like to try standing up the apple slices in the cheese to allow the skins to caramelise. EDIT: We made this again, standing up the apple slices in the cheese and it worked very nicely :)

Or is it Lemony Cream Pasta? Working with what we had in the fridge, this is what came out. We have a teething baby (why already at 10 weeks old? I thought we had another couple of months!) and a toddler who refused to nap today and was overtired, so it had to be quick and easy. We've all been sick so the more places I can include vitamin C, the better. This was the result this evening, and it seemed good enough to share, so here it is. Ingredients: 500g tagliatelle 1 1/2 - 2 c slab bacon, cubed 2 onions, chopped 1 c mascarpone 1 c cream 1 lemon, peel strips and juice 1 tsp sumac 6(ish) c spinach, or 6 large frozen cubes 1 tbsp vinegar - I used homemade lemon vinegar, white wine vinegar would work too. Salt and pepper Optional: Cured egg yolk grated over the top 1) Boil the pasta until al dente, as per packet instructions. Drain setting aside 2c of pasta water. Stir in mascarpone, cream, vinegar and lemon juice. Add sumac, salt and pepper. Add necessary pasta water to achieve enough sauce to coat the pasta but not have it swimming. 2) Meanwhile, brown the bacon bits in a pan over medium heat. Add onions and fry for a few minutes until translucent. Add spinach and strips of lemon peel, cooking until spinach is wilted or defrosted, depending on what you're using. 3) Stir the bacon and spinach mix into the pasta. Grate cured egg yolk over the top if using. Taste test and serve warm (optionally with a nice rosé.) We really enjoyed this. It came together quickly (the longest part was defrosting the spinach), it felt light but was flavourful. Little Bit objected to anything touching his pasta until he realised he was missing out on bacon. Definitely going to hold onto this one. Despite the cream, bacon and mascarpone, it was not overly rich or heavy. It would also have worked without the bacon (surprisingly, as I usually seem to think most things could be improved with bacon!), although it was certainly tasty with it!

I only discovered rose-hips two years ago, My brother-in-law mentioned them as one of our rose bushes wasn't being pruned. My grandmother and I started harvesting them and turned it into a whole enterprise, cleaning them and prepping them. Rose-hips are the fruit of the rose which grows from the base of the bud after the flower becomes overblown - if it is not pruned. They grow wild as well as on domestic rose bushes and can be a treat along a walking trail. They are bright red when ripe and vary in size and shape, some being squat spheres, others being more ovaloid. Prepping them involves removing the seeds and small hairs attached to the seeds as these used to be used as itching powder - less than pleasant if left in food. Removing the seeds and hairs involves either turning the rose-hips into purée by soaking in boiling water then passing through a food mill or a sieve, or deseeding and drying. Both are a bit of work, the latter more so, but worth the effort I find. On their own, rose-hips are quite tart, and are very high in vitamin C. I like the idea of using a food that we had harvested from our garden. More local and organic would be hard to find. It was also a fun time spent together, just the two of us harvesting and processing buckets of rose-hips. Some of these we made jam with and some we deseeded and dried (excellent in porridge with apple juice and cinnamon). Only last year did I start expanding what I used them in, both sweet and savoury, This was an experimental soup, no recipe, just taste test and tweak as needed. Ingredients: 600ml Rose-hip purée 600ml water 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped 1 onion, roughly diced 1 knob of ginger, minced 3 carrots, roughly chopped 2 small-medium potatoes A handful of spinach or Swiss chard or some such 1 tsp honey 2tsp olive oil 2 tsp chilli flakes - I used Turkish Urfa biber -Smoked chilli flakes. A handful of fresh basil Salt and pepper to taste 1) Heat oil in a small saucepan. When it starts to shimmer add onion, garlic and ginger. Stir them and cook until they start to crisp. The browned garlic, onion and ginger add a nice-counter balance to the tartness of the rose-hips. 2) Add the potato and carrot and stir for a minute before adding the rose-hip purée and water, then the rest of the ingredients. Be sure and taste test as perfect tart-sweet-heat balance for me may not be right for you. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with crusty bread and enjoy! As an experiment this worked rather well. It was refreshing but flavourful, especially on a hot day, with mild heat and a well rounded flavour, hitting heat, tart and sweet notes.. We have soup most days for lunch and this provided a tasty variation to most soup bases. I hope you enjoy!

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.

Traditionally for New Year's Eve in my family we have a chocolate fondue. This being the case, I was looking for something light to make for lunch before an afternoon of sweet rich chocolatiness. I had also recently read a new trick for firming up the egg whites which I wanted to try and had some broccoli on hand and nine (yes, 9) egg whites left over from making leckerli and eggnog pudding...So I made broccoli soufflés, which came out airy and light and delicate, and were the perfect precursor to the New Year's chocolate fondue. Ingredients (makes 7 individual soufflés): A head to a head an a half of broccoli, chopped 2 tbsp butter 1 tbsp flour 1 c milk 1 c grated parmesan 1 tsp sumac ( or more) salt and pepper to taste 9 egg whites 1 tsp fresh lemon juice 1 tbsp white wine (optional) 1) Steam the broccoli until tender (not mushy. You want it to blitz well but still retain its flavour). Blitz until smooth, adding a little of the water from steaming if it needs some extra liquid. 2) Make a roux. Melt 1 tbsp of butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour. Stir constantly, not allowing any browning and gradually add the milk, stirring constantly. 3) Mix in the blitzed broccoli and 2 tbsp of parmesan. Pepper generously. If the batter is too thick, add a splash of white wine (optional) or milk. 4) Butter individual soufflé dishes - well! the soufflés won't rise as well if they stick to the sides of the pan. Mix sumac and pepper with the remaining parmesan and then sprinkle the insides of the dishes with the parmesan, tapping out the excess (you can do one big dish instead). Preheat the oven to 220°C and boil the kettle. 5) In a large bowl, beat the egg whites to STIFF peaks with a pinch of salt and the lemon juice (my new trick for making them rise better). 6) Stir 1/3 of the egg whites into the broccoli mix then gently fold this into the remaining egg whites, and sprinkle the remaining parmesan over the tops. 7) Spoon into the soufflé dishes and place these on a baking tray. Pour the boiling water from the kettle into the tray to come about half way up the sides of the soufflé dishes and place in the hot oven. 8 ) Bake for 20 minutes without opening the door of the oven. This takes trust, so do something else in the mean time. After this, take a peek. If they still look too jiggly, lower the temperature and leave for another 5 minutes. If they are set but need to brown, increase the temperature for 2 minutes and then remove. 9) Serve immediately before they fall. These came out beautifully! I was very happy with them. I had been a little worried as our fridge decided to freeze about half the whites. I melted these over the hot water from steaming the broccoli and kept my fingers crossed. I had not tried this flavour combination before but was very pleased with it and will certainly do it again! Good baby food too - Little Bit loved his (the one in the little red dish)! My sister did mention that it made for an odd breakfast though (at 1 pm), so maybe don't plan it too early in the day ;). Note: Toying with how to make this recipe keto, it occurred to me that it might be possible either to skip the roux altogether or to use almond flour instead. I have not tested this theory yet, but I would like to do so. If you test it, do let me know how things go!