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Littler Bit has arrived, spelling the end of a rather tough pregnancy. My body and energy levels are bouncing back, but not so my sleep schedule. I now have a toddler and a newborn to contend with, so we'll see what effect this has on my cooking going forward. My sister, she of the Variations on a Theme recipes, is staying with us to help for a while. Shortly after arriving she mentioned having seen an idea somewhere for a rainbow lasagna, but without actually looking at what it entailed. We have since spent the last few days bouncing ideas around and decided to try our own version tonight. Well received by all (except Little Bit, who as a toddler, objects to various elements of his food touching each other, a necessity in lasagna), so here it is. It is maybe an intimidating ingredient list, but assembly is very quick! Caution: the quantities below resulted in about two complete lasagna pans-worth -- about double what we had intended. This worked out well, as we now have ready-made leftovers. Reduce all ingredients except cheese and red pepper for a single dish. Ingredients: 2 beets, peeled and sliced 1 1/2c ricotta 2 c spinach (or 2 large cubes of frozen spinach) 3/4 c tinned tomato 1 c black beans - cooked or tinned 1 large eggplant, thinly sliced 2 zucchinis, thinly sliced 2 c butternut squash purée* (from roasted squash scooped out of its skin) 1 tbsp butter, melted 2 red bell peppers, quartered lengthwise 2c grated cheese (we used gruyère- and raclette-type cheese leftover in the fridge) 1/3 c mascarpone 1/4 c whey, milk, or stock (we used whey) ~6 lasagna sheets 1 tsp sumac 2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp urfa biber 1/2 tsp allspice 2 tsp sage 1 tsp thyme 1/2 tsp tarragon Handful of pomegranate seeds Salt and Pepper to taste * Could be replaced with pumpkin purée, either homemade or tinned (if you have the good fortune to live in a place where that is available to you). 1) Steam beets until al dente. Blitz with just enough whey, milk or stock to allow the blender to run smoothly. Add spinach, sage, thyme, tarragon and 1c ricotta. Set aside. 2) In a bowl, mix squash purée with 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon, allspice and sumac. Add mascarpone and remaining ricotta. Set aside. 3) In another bowl, roughly mash up black beans with tomatoes, and add the urfa biber and remaining half teaspoon of cinnamon. 4) Brush a baking dish with melted butter. Line the bottom of the dish with lasagna sheets and brush with butter again. Spread beans and tomato mixture in a thin layer over the lasagna sheets and cover with eggplant slices. Spread a layer of the beet mixture and arrange a layer of zucchini sliced over the top. Sprinkle on a layer of grated cheese and then spread the squash mix, followed by the red pepper and another layer of cheese. Sprinkle pomegranate seeds over the top and grind a generous amount of black pepper. 5) Bake at 180° C/350°F for 45-60 minutes. Seve hot (with a nice glass of red if so inclined). We were very pleased with how this came out! Once his portion was deconstructed, even the toddler consented to have some. The consistency was a little goopy, resulting in a tendency to flow, rather than come out in nice squares. For structural integrity purposes, we should have used thinner layers of the puree, but we thought this would have been to the detriment of flavour -- after all, this is a meal, not an engineering project! The squash layer, taste-tested prior to assembly, would be great to experiment with as the filling for a pie! It was sweet and dessert-y, with warm flavour notes and a rich, creamy texture. We had intended to add orange zest to either the squash layer or the final layer, but forgot. In terms of eating the rainbow, this tasted great, but the green and blue sort of got lost. To truly eat the rainbow, we would need to devise a green/blue layer that held its own a little better without overshadowing the others. For example, a layer of beet greens over the zucchini. As a side note, the ricotta in this was homemade last week, as I had wanted to try freezing the ricotta. We defrosted it for this dish and found that it held its flavour well, although its texture was slightly grainier. This is a good solution for keeping ricotta on hand, as long as you don't need a smooth, whipped texture. This could easily be made gluten-free, by simply omitting the pasta layer, which we included primarily for structural-integrity purposes.

Rösti is a traditional Swiss-German food, so traditional in fact that the border between the French and This dissatisfaction led me to tinker a bit with tradition, and this, or variants of this, is the result Traditional with a twist. I find this take on the traditional dish infinitely more satisfying. There is veg in every bite and while retaining its traditional essence, it is lighter and more satisfying

A traditional Cheese Tart, or a Tarte au Fromage, is an old favourite. My dad has made it for years, and I absolutely love it, sometimes with a little twist.

One of my parents' neighbours was raising rabbits in their horse stall. Ever since Little Bit was a very small Bit indeed, we've taken him in to go watch the bunnies. Especially when he was very small, taking him into the warm semi-darkness of the bunny stall, with quiet noises and the smell of hay calmed him almost immediately. He could be a very upset Little One, only a few months old, and yet almost as soon as we unlatched the door, he would quieten. I have liked rabbit meat for years (which has no bearing on enjoying petting them) and had meant to get a bunny from the neighbour, and then he mentioned that a lot more people said they liked the idea than actually followed through and bought bunnies from him, so he was going to stop raising them. Aside from it being a shame for Little One, suddenly my chance was slipping away, so I asked for one. It was a while before I was organised enough to actually follow up, but he dropped off a freshly butchered rabbit for us last weekend. With a friend coming to visit during the course of the week, I decided to cook the rabbit for dinner. Previously, on the few occasions that I've cooked or eaten rabbit at home, it's been buried in ratatouille and slow-cooked. It now being winter and not the season for courgettes, fresh tomatoes and aubergines, I decided to try a similar strategy but with winter veg: butternut, pumpkin and carrots. For the flavouring, for some reason I decided to go with a mulled wine profile, using red wine, an orange and warmer spices for the sauce. I wasn't sure how everything was going to go, but the proof is in the eating they say and we all had seconds, so I think that is a rather good sign of things going well! Ingredients: 1 rabbit, in pieces 4 red onions, in eighths 3 big carrots, roughly chopped 1/4 of a small pumpkin, chopped 1/2 butternut, roughly chopped 1 apple, chopped 2 c red cooking wine 2 - 3 c (ish) chicken stock 1 orange, halved 2 tsp cinnamon 4 cloves 2 tsp orange peel 1 - 1 1/2 tbsp thyme 1/2 tsp rosemary 2 - 2 1/2 tbsp honey 3 tbsp olive oil Salt and pepper 1) Salt the rabbit and leave it for about an hour. After that time, rinse off the excess salt. Heat a cast-iron skillet to medium-high with the olive oil and when it is hot, place pieces of rabbit in the skillet. Glaze with honey, and sprinkle thyme over the top. Brown about 5 minutes on each side, then remove to the oven-proof dish you will be using for the stew (I used my biggest one and was a little stuck for space...) Brown the meat in batches, ensuring that each piece has sufficient space in the pan, and when you're done, tip the juices and glaze run off into the stew pot. I deglazed the pan with half an orange, too. 2) Add all other ingredients to the pot and mix well. Squeeze the orange and drop in the halves. Place in the oven at about 160°C and leave for the next 3-4 hours, stirring occasionally to ensure everything has equal juice bathing time. 3) Remove and serve over rice, polenta or bread. We opted for polenta ( for a recipe, see here). We all really enjoyed this. It would also work very well with chicken, but the gamier taste of the rabbit stood up nicely to the red wine. The salting was an attempt to apply principles from some of the food science reading I've been doing, and from Salt Fat Acid Heat for example. Salt apparently helps jellify the muscle tissue, trapping more moisture and making for more tender, moister meat. Longer salting is better, but my Little Bit wrangling skills and time management didn't allow for longer, so I was limited to about an hour as I dealt with other bits. We had lots of extra juice, so a good bread didn't go amiss to mop up. All in all very successful, but I must say, rabbit has a lot of bones! The stew has also stood up well to multiple leftover meals (we had rather a lot left over from that first meal). I plan on using some of the leftover juice to make risotto, so stay tuned for that! Book Pairing: Making this, as Little Bit napped, I was listening to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It is a long while since I read it and I enjoyed revisiting it. Being shorter, too, I find that Dickens' wordiness bothered me less than it did in, for example, Great Expectations. Knowing the about-face that Scrooge was about to undergo, it was interesting hearing him be so entrenched in his grumpy misery and delightful to watch him turn. It was in keeping with the season, too, which is always a big favourite. Digesting our stew that evening, we lit the candles on our Christmas tree for the second time this year and watched them quietly glow as I caught up with an old friend. Candles, friends and good food (with some good books thrown in) do really make life - and Christmas-time more especially - delightful!

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.

I first encountered clotted cream on a trip to Cornwall with my dad when I was 8, and I loved it. Living in Switzerland, it is unavailable here, so it was always only an occasional treat on trips to the UK. And then I moved to Scotland and discovered that I could have it whenever I wanted. And I learned to make scones. Hey Diddle Diddle! It never occurred to me though - growing up with it as a treat, with it commonly available for 6 years in Scotland, or since it has again become an occasional treat - that clotted cream was something I could actually make at home. With minimal faff or effort involved. And then I read somewhere about how simple it actually is and I had to try it. I read a couple of recipes and other people's accounts of making it, and the difference between making clotted cream and cornish cream, and then decided to try it for myself. The biggest impediment was picking a time when I could have it in and out of the oven at low temperatures for several days. Other than that though, it is the simplest "recipe" I think I have ever tried. Here goes. Heat cream at very low temperature for several hours (10-12). Turn off the oven and leave in, cooling oven overnight. In the morning, move the cream to the fridge. Allow to cool completely for several more hours, then scoop off the solid cream. There will be a slight skin or crust over the top, which is completely normal. It came out beautifully! I can't believe how simple it actually was once the veil was lifted. There are a few foods like that that I've enjoyed de-mythifying over the last few years, but this has to be the simplest....I am tempted to start playing around with this a little, like flavouring the cream beforehand for example. I would also like to try it as an ingredient in other dishes and see how it compares to using butter or regular cream. And then, of course, I had to make scones to go with it...

As mentioned on Day 79 of The Challenge Fondue is traditional here, and as old as our dear Alps. I always make my in a cast iron enamelled caquelon as is traditional here. Not what you might call traditional, but it works!

It is dead easy to make and super flavourful, and a traditional food from this area.

This is very basic, and hardly deserves to be called a recipe, but so very tasty and filling and the ultimate comfort food. Rather peasanty and a very good use for stale bread. It can easily be either vegetarian or meaty. This particular version is vegetarian, but the addition of either sausage or bacon (or bits of chicken, or you name it) could work very well. It is a cheesy, eggy, bready mess. Add any veg you want and just give it all enough time to soak, then bake it until the top is crispy and the inside is moist and messy. Ingredients: 1 loaf of bread, cubed (you can use any bread you want, but personally I like character in my bread, with seeds and dark flour and things) 1 leek, chopped 1 onion, sliced 2-3 tbsp butter 3 eggs, beaten 1 1/2 - 2 c milk 1 tbsp chives A handful of mushrooms, chopped 50-100 g Gruyère, cubed 2 - 3 tbsp parmesan (or other aged cheese), grated Pepper to taste 1) On the stove, melt the butter in an oven proof dish. Sauté the leek and onion. When they soften, add the mushrooms and then the bread, allowing some of the cubes to brown a little. 2) Beat the eggs and milk together and pour them over the bread and veg. Mix in the chives and the cheese. Leave it all to soak for at least an hour. 3) Sprinkle parmesan and freshly ground pepper over the top. Bake at 180° for 30-35 minutes until golden brown on top. This also works well with slices of bread, laid out like a savoury bread pudding. I haven't had it in a while and it was so satisfying on a cold evening. No fancy flavours, no fancy ingredients but honest and tasty.

Last night at dinner, à propos of nothing whatsoever, Little Bit declared amusingly that he wanted to make pear sorbet... with spices, maybe...and squeeze in some lemon. So today, that is what we did, although at the last minute, he decided against spices. What better occupation for a snowy day, with the thermometer at -10°C all day, than making a frozen dessert? I must add though, that having received a new ice cream maker for Christmas (the 30-year-old one from my parents finally gave up the ghost), I was not opposed to this idea. Below are two variations on the method, one with an ice cream maker, and one without. Ingredients: 2 c of pear, chopped up 3/4 c water 3/4 c light brown sugar juice of 1 lemon 1) Bring water and sugar to a boil, then reduce heat. Stir until the sugar has dissolved to create a simple syrup, then set aside to cool. 2) Blend pear, lemon juice and syrup until smooth. Taste test. 3) Set aside in fridge until cool, then pour into ice cream maker as per instructions. OR: 2) Place pear chunks in freezer, spread on a tray in a single layer, until frozen. 3) Blend frozen pear, lemon juice and simple syrup. Taste test and place in freezer. I had wanted to make this with either maple sugar instead of the brown sugar or a dash of maple syrup but discovered that I was out of maple sugar, and the only maple syrup in the house was bourbon flavoured, so I gave that a miss. On the whole though, I was very happy with both the sorbet and the ice cream maker. The sorbet was nice and simple. Most importantly though, the instigator of this whole thing was happy with it. Definitely a keeper! We tried it on its own, then also as a Sundae (on Saturday) with toasted almonds, warm chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Oh the decadence! I might still try another version with some cinnamon and maybe a little of something else, or an elderflower and pear sorbet, but that is for another day. For now, there is very tasty sorbet to eat.