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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!

For World Environment Day on June 5th I was invited to take part in a collaboration making plant based, sustainable meals, and this is the one I came up with. Everything , or very nearly, was locally sourced from local farmers or foraged by Little One and I. After a visit to a local farmer, where I picked up yellow carrots, I started playing around with ideas of what I could make using those. Then there was local barley from the mountains on sale in the grocery store, so I decided on a tart, grinding the barley for the crust. For the other components of the tart I decided to go pick nettles for a pesto, which eventually ended up being nettle and dandelion, and to make ricotta with milk from the local dairy. I found other edible wild flowers too, so those were incorporated into the plan. I am really glad that I agreed to take part in that collaboration as otherwise I wouldn't have necessarily put all these components together, and it was really fun and came out super tasty! Ingredients: For the crust: 1 c barley flower (I ground up whole barley in the coffee grinder) 1 1/4 c whole meal flour 1/4 - 1/3 c cold butter 1/3 c milk For the pesto: 3-4 c nettles, washed in vinegar and then steamed til just wilted 1-2 c dandelion leaves 2 cloves garlic 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp vinegar juice of 1 lemon a little water Salt and pepper to taste For the tart: 7-8 yellow carrots, quartered or eighthed lengthwise 1 c pesto 1/2 - 1 c ricotta OR Goat cheese 1-2 tsp wild thyme 1 1/2 - 2 tbsp honey 1 tbsp olive oil salt and pepper Wild flowers to top: Clover Wild thyme Wood sorrel 1) Make the crust: Place flour and barley flour in a bowl and cut in the butter in small dice. Rub butter into the flower with fingertips until a crumby mixture forms. Add milk and mix until just combined. Chill 30 minutes. 2) Make the pesto. Place all ingredients in a blender and blitz until smooth. Taste test. Dandelion leaves can be a little bitter, so add some lemon juice to counterbalance this if necessary. 3) Assemble the tart. Roll out the crust to the size of your tart plate, and line the bottom of the dish with it. Spread the pesto over the base and then arrange the carrots over the top radially. Dollop the honey and drizzle the olive oil over the carrots. Mix the wild thyme into the ricotta and then spread the ricotta over the carrots. Salt and pepper to taste. Bake at 190°C for 35-45 minutes, until the crust is golden and the carrots are tender but not soft. 4) Allow to cool a little and arrange the wild flowers over the top (optional). This was beautiful! All the flavours balanced each other beautifully, with the bitter dandelions and sweet carrots and honey and the acidic lemon and the creamy cheese. The tart was hot, the flowers fresh, the pesto deep, the lemon bright. And the colours truly popped! Eating it, it occurred to me that goat cheese could work very nicely on it, so when we heated it up on day 2 I added some and it did indeed work very nicely. Otherwise, more ricotta could be nice but is certainly not essential. I was really interested to see how the crust would come out. I don't often cook with non-wheat flours, and some I have used, like rice flour, I am not a fan of. Grinding my own grain into flour was certainly a first too. It came out very well. A little toothier than regular crust because there's only so fine I can get flour in a coffee grinder, and a little sweeter. It was a bit darker too, and I must say that it came out looking a little rustic (which matched the wild flowers, so that's fine.) The only potential change I would make otherwise would be to begin roasting the carrots ahead of time, or parboil them next time to kick start their cooking process. Otherwise, I am thoroughly delighted with this dish, as were Hubby and Little One.

As mentioned in Day 40 of The Challenge I love making my own pasta. My pasta maker is one of my favourite kitchen toys. I started making fresh pasta a few years ago with my dad, for lasagne or carbonara or ravioli. I got my pasta maker as a house warming gift and love pulling it out. For a long time I stuck with traditional fresh pasta, made with flour and eggs, then last year I started replacing the eggs with different vegetables. It gives the pasta a cool colour, and impregnates it with flavour without losing any of the richness. It works with pumpkin, carrot, beet, sweet potato, each with its own profile and different sauces or dishes to match them to. Some work better than others for the texture, so sometimes, the addition of one egg is necessary. Seeing as it's pumpkin season, I decided to use some roasted pumpkin for the pasta. I only started using nettles this year. I've heard for years about how good it is nutritionally, and it grows all over around here. I've been curious, but only got around to it this summer. I made the pesto earlier this summer and froze the extra, so for yesterday's dinner we made the pasta and simply heated up the pesto, sautéing it with onions before mixing it with the fresh pasta. Skip the parmesan to make this recipe vegan. Ingredients: Pumpkin pasta: 1 1/2 - 2 c roasted pumpkin, mashed 3-4c flour 1 1/2 tsp sage Salt and pepper to taste Nettle pesto: 4-5 c nettle leaves, de-stalked and washed ( I recommend gardening gloves!) 1 head of garlic, peeled and crushed 1 tsp olive oil 1/2 cup walnuts 1/2 c olive oil 1/2 c parmesan (for this one I added 1/2 c roasted beetroot, but it is just as good without). 1 tbsp olive oil 2 onions, chopped Parmesan for grating 1) Put flour in a bowl and create a well in the centre. Put the pumpkin in the well and gradually mix the flour into the pumpkin to create a soft, elastic dough. Knead in crushed sage and salt and pepper to taste. 2)Dump it out onto a clean, floured surface and knead for a few minutes. Make sure it isn't too sticky as otherwise it will gum up the pasta maker, or it will get sticky when cooked. If it seems to sticky, knead extra flour into it. (If you don't like all the kneading make sure the dough is floured on the outside and pass it through the first setting of the pasta maker a few times. It will work the dough for you.) 3) Once the dough is ready, cut off a piece the size of half a fist and pass it through successively higher settings on the pasta maker. Different machines have different settings, but just to give you an idea, I stopped at setting 5 for this one - thick enough to have some bite, thin enough to be delicate and not clumpy. 4) Once you have it to the desired thickness, pass your sheet of dough through the fettuccine cutter and the hang to dry on a pasta tree, rack or the back of a chair. Just make sure the surface is clean and that the pasta won't stick. At this point you have the option to dry the pasta completely and store it, or to cook it right away and have fresh pasta. 5) To cook the fresh pasta, bring a pot of water to the boil. Put pasta into the water a couple of portions at a time. Cook for a couple of minutes and drain the pasta. Be careful! Fresh pasta cooks much faster than dried, so it won't take long. An extra 30s and you will be eating mush. 6) Meanwhile for the pesto, heat 1 tbsp of oil in a frying pan. Sauté the garlic and add the nettles. Traditionally the garlic is left raw, and you can for this too, but I like the softened sweeter flavour of the garlic to contrast with the nutty flavour of the nettles. To not be stung by nettles they need to be either steamed or sautéed, so I figure, kill two birds with one stone. 7) When the nettles are wilted, tip them and the other ingredients into a blender or a mortar and pestle and grind until it forms a smooth paste. Taste and adjust any seasoning. 8) Sauté the onion in a large pan, and then add the pesto to it to warm. Add the cooked pasta, and if it looks dry, a couple of spoons of the pasta cooking water. Grate cheese over the top, salt and pepper to taste, and serve! This came out beautifully! possibly some of the best pasta I've made. It was almost better without the pesto, just with butter, much as I like this pesto. It is a little labour intensive, but it is a labour I love and truly enjoy, especially with a buddy. The turning certainly provided a show during Little Bit's dinner! In case you want to try making these but don't have a pasta machine or pasta tree click on the links to get one of your own! As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

We didn't use all of the butternut purée that we had prepared for our Rainbow Lasagna the other day, so when in need of a quick easy dinner, I threw this together to have over pasta. It didn't come out entirely as planned because the Allspice spilled out a little faster than I had anticipated. With a couple of tweaks though, it worked out. Ingredients: 1 tbsp butter 1 tbsp flour 1 1/2c milk 1 1/2 - 2 c butternut squash purée (squash rings roasted until soft, then mashed) 1/2c white cooking wine 2 tsp allspice 1/2 tsp sumac 1/2 tsp thyme Salt and pepper 1) in a saucepan, melt butter. Stir in flour and cook for a few minutes until thick. Add milk in splashes, stirring until incorporated to create a roux. beware of it sticking and burning on the bottom of the pan. 2) Stir in butternut and wine, then spices. adjust consistency with extra milk if you want it a little thinner. We used the sauce in two different meals. The first was over spaghetti with veg on the side. It was tasty, but the acidity from the veg was a necessary component of the meal to balance out the flavours. With the leftover sauce, I mixed in tomato and peas and turned them into pasties for a picnic. These were arguably better than the original pasta the sauce was used for. I simply folded them in pie crust, brushed with olive oil and baked in the airfryer at 195°C for 8 minutes, they came out beautifully. These were perfect for a picnic, still warm in our hands on a chilly day. As a side note, I used peach syrup vinegar (from making pickled peaches this summer) in the pie crust instead of milk or water. The extra flavour layer worked very nicely and added a contrasting acidic note to the sweet flavour of the butternut,

This was Hubby's birthday cake. It is an altered and adjusted version of the dark chocolate cake I grew up with, and it came out wonderfully. I was experimenting with making candied orange peel, so the peels themselves and the syrup from making them were used. Two additional oranges were slaughtered in the making of this cake, both semi-blood oranges. This is also one of the most elaborate cake decorations I've tried, and I was quite pleased with it. Ingredients: For the cake: 1/2 c butter 1/2 + 2 tbsp sunflower seed oil 6 tbsp cacao powder 1 1/4- 1 1/2 c orange juice 2 c flour 1 tsp baking soda 2 c sugar 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 c sour milk (milk + 1 tsp vinegar) 2 eggs 2 tsp dried orange peel For the frosting: 1/3 c soft butter 1/3 c cream cheese 1/4 c powdered sugar 1/2 c (or more) cacao powder 1 tsp cinnamon 1/4 tsp cloves 1/2 tsp Aloha Chilli Spiced Cacao 1/2 c orange syrup (or orange juice and increase the amount of powdered sugar to taste) 1/4 c milk 1 Tbsp orange zest Slices of candied orange peel (optional) 1) Melt butter in a small saucepan with oil, cacao and orange juice. 2) Mix dry ingredients, then gradually add milk, vanilla and eggs. Stir in the chocolate mix. 3) Prepare two cake pans and pour the batter into them. Bake 25-30 minutes at 165°C. 4) Cream together the butter and cream cheese until smooth. Gradually beat in the other ingredients, taste testing regularly and adjusting accordingly. If necessary, add a little more orange juice, or some milk for creaminess. Adjust spicing to taste too! 5) Allow both halves of the cake to cool thoroughly before frosting. Sprinkle with orange zest and candied orange slices. Optionally, boil a few orange slices in a syrup until the water cooks off and they begin to caramelise, and arrange on top or the cake. Rich and sweet, both the chocolate and orange came through. This cake was very tasty, and I am glad I already had started on the candied orange peel as the syrup really added to the frosting, and the candied pieces themselves really added to the cake. It was Little Bit's first time trying chocolate cake, and he was a bit disappointed originally that I was offering him this instead of a rice cake (the only other cake he's ever had). He was quickly converted though! Happy Birthday Hubby!

It was rainy and cold and after nap time I was reading Little Bit a classic from my childhood, Happy Winter by Karen Gundersheimer. In it is a recipe for a fudge cake that the little girls in the story make with their Mama. My first idea was to make that cake with little Bit and then go stomp in puddles while it baked, coming in to hot cake. It needed to bake too long for our available time slot though, so I considered brownies instead, and it occurred to me that we had pear and ginger on hand to put in them. I like pear brownies, but the pear flavour doesn't shine as much as I'd like, so I decided on blondies instead. These were beauteous and gooey and gingery. They are definitely going to be sticking around (and very sticky they were too!) Ingredients: 1/2 c butter, melted 1 c brown sugar 1 egg 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/8 tsp baking soda 1/2 c walnuts, chopped 1 c flour 1 pear, diced 1 finger of ginger, diced 1/4 - 1/2 c sugar 1/2 c whey/milk 1) Place the diced ginger in a saucepan with enough water to drown them by a couple of centimetres and add sugar. simmer gently, reducing the liquid. As it reduces, add a splash or two of milk or whey, allowing it to caramelise with the sugar. Stir regularly! 2) In a large bowl, cream the brown sugar and butter together. Beat in egg and vanilla. Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix well. 3) Stir in the pear and walnuts. Add enough milk or whey to make the batter thick but pourable. Stir in the ginger with its caramel syrup. 4) Bake in a prepared baking tin at 175°C for 30-35 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. These were beautiful! They were sticky with a layer of gooey caramel on the bottom. The ginger and pear came through very nicely. I might reduce the sugar a bit next time, using some of the sugar that would go in the batter to candy the ginger, and I would use a few more nuts, but otherwise, am I delighted with these! The timing of the baking was perfect too! We came in wet and muddy from stomping in puddles, and the blondies were ready for us to eat by the fire once we were dried off. Maybe a little richer than I needed, but tasty and moreish... and healthy because of the pear, ginger and nuts, right?

My parents' neighbour gave me a massive basket of freshly picked chanterelles, and sweet potatoes were on sale again, so this naturally came out of it. The flavouring was a little non-traditional but felt appropriate to the encroaching autumn, and it was deliciously warm and filling after a long day out and about with friends. Ingredients: 2 tbsp olive oil 3 c arborio rice 7 c whey (approx) 1 tsp rosemary 3-4 sweet potatoes, chopped 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp thyme 2 - 2 1/2 tsp Urfa Biber 2 c milk 1-2 c cheese, grated 3 tbsp butter Salt and pepper to taste 3c chanterelles 2-3 tbsp butter 1) Heat oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add rice and rosemary and sauté until the rice is translucent. Add whey 2 c at a time and sweet potato pieces, and cook over medium-low heat, stirring regularly, until the liquid is absorbed. Stir in spices. Reduce heat and cover. 2) Sauté chanterelles in butter, and add them and their liquid to the risotto, stirring to incorporate thoroughly. Stir in cheese and enough milk to achieve desired thickness and consistency. Add butter just before plating. Some of the flavouring was admittedly because I used a little too much whey in my rush to get it cooking before running off to bathe Little One. I then discovered that it was too acidic and a little flat and so added a bit of this and a bit of that to compensate. It also ended up ready long before Little One, overtired after a long day, actually consented to go down, so I added milk to keep it moist. Flavours ended up all over the place, and initially, I wasn't sure about it, especially when the feedback I got about it was "interesting" and "different", but then pulling out leftovers a few days later, I was pleasantly surprised and really enjoyed the flavour combinations. Some of the leftovers we turned into arancini balls, using them to try out my new airfryer. I made balls of the leftover rice and rolled them in cheese the first night. That got a little messy, so the second time around, I rolled them in breadcrumbs instead, mixing the cheese into the risotto to thicken it a little in the hopes of getting it to hold its shape better. The first batch I stuffed with some of my Fromage blanc too. These were really tasty and I was very pleased with them for a first attempt at arancini, but they were phenomenally messy. I might need to start with a stiffer, less creamy risotto next time.

My second foray into using watermelon rind as an ingredient went well. I really enjoyed trying Watermelon Rind Chutney, so decided to see how it would work as a jam. The rind does have a mild flavour, but a little bit of spicing and it worked out nicely. As with the chutney I did have to partially blitz the jam as the chunks of rind did not disintegrate at all with the cooking. The watermelon rind also appears not to have any pectin so I added some home-made apple pectin to help it firm up. All in all it worked out very nicely and I am very happy with it. Ingredients: Rind of 1 medium watermelon, diced 1 1/2 c sugar 2 c apple pectin 1/2 tsp cloves 1) Place the watermelon rind pieces in a pot and cover with water. Place over medium-low heat and simmer for about an hour until the pieces of watermelon rind are tender. 2) Add other ingredients and stir. Using a hand blender, partially blitz the jam mixture to desired consistency. Taste test and cook down until thick. 3) Boil clean jars and lids for at least 15 minutes. Fill with jam while the jam is still bubbling, wipe the neck of the jar clean and seal. Place upside down to cool, sealing in the process. I am very happy with this jam, tried out on fresh home made English Muffins. The cloves added a much needed depth of flavour to the jam, and the flavour of the watermelon rind itself came through nicely. So happy to have more jam for my cupboard!

For the next challenge with my sister and my friend, Hibiscus Kook, to make a dish three different ways, and each of us trying something new, we decided on pancakes for pancake day today. Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, whatever you want to call it, is the last day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. Lent, being a period of fasting, prayer and penance leading to Easter in the Catholic faith, is traditionally a leaner period culinarily. Many know it now as being the period during which people tend to try to give up chocolate, but for many centuries it was, and for many it still is, a period when richer foods are given up until Easter. Shrove Tuesday was therefore a good time to use up eggs and fats which remained, and so pancakes became traditional in the UK. I had grown up celebrating the feat of Mardi Gras, but had never heard it called Pancake Day until I moved to Scotland for University. I was completely mystified, especially as no one could explain the significance of the pancakes, they were eaten for supper rather than breakfast, and most of my friends who celebrated pancake day were in no way religious and weren't going to be observing Lent or Easter. I still don't necessarily eat Pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and certainly eat them at other times of the year, but once in a while, it is a fun tradition to embrace. My sister's suggestion, therefore, of making Pancakes our next recipe to coincide with Pancake Day suited me to a T. Here are our three different Pancake Experiments, and a bonus Whipped Cinnamon Honey Butter recipe. For my friend, HibiscucKook's recipe for vegan pancakes on her blog, click here. Sahlep Pancakes by me Piggy Pancakes (AKA Hamcakes) and Whipped Cinnamon Honey Butter by my Sister

So I have this habit of taking traditional things and doing my own take, usually the same but just with more veg, and all from scratch , no tins or boxes allowed except tomatoes or tuna. This was similar. A creamy pasta sauce, but replacing some of the cream or milk with pumpkin purée, and a dash of vinegar. Super tasty, lighter than the regular version, but smooth and velvety, bursting with flavour. We spiced it differently to normal, of course, and added veg. It would have been beautiful with bacon and parmesan too, or other veg like asparagus, courgette, aubergine etc., but was still excellent without. Ingredients: 250 g pasta 2 TBSP butter 2 TBSP flour 3/4 c milk, warm 1/2 c pumpkin purée 1 TBSP balsamic vinegar 1/4 c white cooking wine 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp nutmeg 1/2 tsp cloves 1 tsp cayenne 3 red onions diced half a head of garlic, minced 2 peppers, 1 red 1 yellow, diced Black pepper to taste 1 TBSP olive oil 1) Cook pasta according to instructions. 2)Make a roux with the butter, flour and milk: melt butter in a saucepan. Add flour and stir it in until it forms a uniform mass. Add the milk a little at a time, stirring after each addition to avoid lumps. Add the pumpkin purée, spices, wine and balsamic adjusting quantities to taste and consistency. Stir, pepper, set aside. 3) Heat oil in a pan. Sauté veg in the olive oil. 4) Toss pasta and veg together, pour sauce over it, and serve. Optional cheese to grate over the top. Filling and tasty, velvety but with a bit of a tang to bring all the flavours out. It is an incredibly chameleon-like meal, able to shift to fit the mood, your fridge, tastes or dietary requirements. I hope you enjoy! Note: When in doubt as to how to make flat flavours pop more, add acid not salt. Vinegar, lime or lemon juice or wine depending on what it is.