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Here is another new twist on an old favourite. Having made a green curry for dinner, we had left over lemon grass and ginger (although we almost always have ginger on hand so I hesitate to call it left-over). Continuing on our soup for lunch trend, this made its appearance and proved an excellent addition to the repertoire. It can also easily be made vegan by switching the chicken stock to veg stock, too. Ingredients: 2 tbsp peanut oil 4 onions, chopped 1 (largish ) chunk ginger, chopped 8-10 carrots, chopped 1 sweet potato, chopped 2 c chicken stock 3 stalks of lemon grass, chopped salt to taste For garnish: Sesame oil Coriander Sumac 1) Heat oil in a heavy bottomed pot. Sauté onions and ginger until the onions are translucent. Add other ingredients and bring to a boil, then simmer until carrots are tender (30-40 min). 2). Blitz until smooth, drizzle over a little sesame oil, sprinkle with shredded coriander and some sumac and serve. Beautiful and warming. I love this new twist on an old favourite full of delicate (and not so delicate) flavours.

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.

This recipe was a mistake, but it worked out both for savoury and sweet purposes so I thought I would share. I was preparing the ingredients for the onion rings recipe from Ottolenghi's Flavour cookbook, and I failed to read the recipe through before starting to mix things. I was working on the assumption of a batter, but as it turns out the recipe was for egging then flouring the onion rings. As such, being a bit of a numpty, I mixed the wet and dry ingredients together without really paying attention and then realised I had messed up. I set aside the batter I had begun and instead followed the recipe as it was actually written. I detest food waste, so the batter I had begun needed to find a use. The use I found for it was to turn it into pancakes. These I both cooked normally, and a few I deep fried (as I already had a pan of oil going), which had very interesting results. They got puffy and light and cooked faster. As a pancake variation they were tasty and I will revisit them in future. Being a mistake doesn't make them any less worthy of sharing! Ingredients: 1 c whey (or buttermilk) 2 1/2 tbsp white wine vinegar 1/2 tsp turmeric 1 1/3 c flour 2 1/2 tsp nigella seeds 2 tsp lime zest 2 tsp baking powder 2 eggs (or more accurately, 1 egg and 1 egg white as I used a yolk to make mayo) 1 tbsp butter 1) Mix the dry ingredients well with a fork. Gradually beat in the wet ingredients to form a thick-ish batter. 2) Heat a griddle or frying pan and butter. Drop batter onto the pan in two tablespoon dollops. Allow to cook at medium heat on the first side until little bubbles come to the surface and the pancake lifts away from the pan easily, then flip and cook for another minute. 3) Alternatively, if you want to deep fry them, make sure the oil in your pan is shimmering and hot. Drop the batter in in dollops and wait until they turn golden brown, turning once mid-way through. These came out really well, especially for a mistake! It had never occurred to me to put nigella seeds and turmeric in pancakes before, but they worked both with the onion rings and mayo and baked veg that I was originally making that night, and also for breakfast with butter and jam. definitely a win! Let me know what you think if you try them! When I made these (and perhaps a small amount of distraction from the cooking to focus on my book instead explains the mistake that led to their creation) I was listening to The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. I found it absolutely absorbing. Told as a biography of a brilliant man, set in an undefined future, it presents a beautiful picture of the society the narrative is set in, as well as pointing out its cracks... and those of our society too. I absolutely loved this book! My favourite by Hesse so far, but then I haven't yet read Narcissus and Goldmund,

As mentioned in Day 34 of The Challenge Mushroom season is here now too! (I know, so many seasons... plums, pumpkins and now mushrooms, but that is the beauty of autumn and the harvest season. My tomatoes are coming in too, as are little cucumbers on my balcony garden). Chanterelles are ridiculously over priced most of the year, but suddenly in September and October they aren't! They are almost like a normal food! So we got a little wooden basket of them from the store and made... a tart! Ingredients: Crust: (you can use a store bought crust if you want, but this is also very quick and easy, I promise! It is better if you have a half hour to let it chill before rolling it out, but it still works if you don't) 3/4 c flour 1/2 c cold butter, cut into pieces pinch of salt 1/4 (approximate) water Tart: 250g of fresh chanterelles 1 1/2 c fresh cheese (the eat with a spoon-fresh like quark or blanc battue) a few sprigs of fresh thyme 1 tsp of dried sage 1 tsp butter salt and pepper to taste 4 zucchini flowers 1/2 tsp dried mint 1 tbsp parmesan 1 tsp olive oil Salt and Pepper to taste 1) To make crust, mix flour and salt. Cut in pieces of butter and mix together with fingertips until it forms a crumb like texture. Add water and mix with a fork, then knead into a soft dough. 2) Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. 3) Mix the fresh cheese, reserving 1/4 c of it, with the thyme, sage, salt and pepper. Add 1 tbsp of water. 4) Roll out the crust to approximately 1 cm thick and line the bottom of a pie plate with it, and stab with a fork to create breathing holes. 5) Spread the fresh cheese over the crust in a thin layer. 6) Sauté the chanterelles briefly in the butter to allow them to give up their liquid (we didn't the first time making a mushroom tart and it was tasty, but swimming), then drain them (reserve the liquid if you want for use elsewhere) and sprinkle them over the cheese layer. 7) Take the remaining fresh cheese and mix it with the mint and some salt and pepper. Using a teaspoon, gently fill the zucchini flowers with it. 8) Place these on top of the tart and drizzle the olive oil over them. 9) Salt and pepper to taste and bake at 200°C for about 20 minutes. Serve warm with a side salad. Light but warm, it made a good lunch for an early autumn day, and easy to assemble too.

Cranberry sauce is a must for a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, to my mind anyway, and also very tasty alongside all sorts of other meals, so I was delighted to find whole packs of cranberries available in the store. For our Big Feast, we, therefore, used these to make cranberry sauce. It is only in recent years that these are available here, so it is still quite a delightful novelty to be able to do this at all. Ever so simple, it is worth making your own! Ingredients: 3 c cranberries 1/2 - 1 c sugar 1 tbsp orange zest Juice of 1 orange 1 tbsp ginger, grated 1) (Optional: cut cranberries in half). Place in a saucepan, add enough water to cover, and add other ingredients. Simmer, stirring regularly and with increasing frequency as it thickens, until the sauce has reached desired consistency to desired consistency. Taste test and adjust sugar or orange according to your taste. Serve with extra grated zest. This was very tasty with the original Ham Feast, but then also with multiple other meals, such as a chestnut risotto, or a bacon roly-poly. Having it on hand was truly delightful, but unfortunately, it ran out in under a week... I may need to make more.

These are an adapted version of a muffin recipe I got from my mother-in-law. They are packed full of vitamins, fibre and protein and are super tasty. The only down-side is that they are a little dense, but they are very worth it despite that! I switched out the sugar from maple syrup to honey and grape molasses, and changed the spicing and nuts around a little. Some of those decisions are taste based and some are pantry based. The grape molasses was because I recently picked some up and wanted to try it out. Ingredients: 1 c ground hazelnuts 1 c ground almonds 1 c oats 1/2 c raisins, chopped 2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp cloves 1 tsp baking soda 3 eggs 1 c zucchini, grated 1 c carrot, grated 1/3 c butter (scant), melted 1 tsp vanilla 1/4 c honey 1/4 c grape molasses 1) Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. beat in the eggs then add the wet ingredients. Stir until just combined. 2) Fill muffin cups 3/4 full and bake at 175°C for 25-35 minutes until golden brown and a knife comes out clean. I like these either plain, or with just a little butter. They are tasty, with a rich flavour and make a great breakfast on the go. I might play around with spicing and flavours a little more though just to sharpen them up a little.

I really liked the first Rose Cake recipe I came up with in versions 1 and 2, but I wanted to try again using fresh petals. To try out two different ways of incorporating the rose into the cake, I split the butter cake batter and tried two versions. In version 3, I soaked the petals (mostly red this time) in the milk and then strained them out and continued with the batter normally. For version 4, I blitzed red rose petals into the milk before incorporating this into the batter. This turned out to be the best version, so it is the one I am including below! For these cupcakes, I made a butter frosting, incorporating rose petals blitzed with milk into a normal butter frosting. It was beautiful! This frosting also worked very nicely with lemon cupcakes, too, just, you know, if you're in that kind of a mood. 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 1/2 c fresh rose petals, roughly chopped For the frosting: 1/2 c butter, soft 1/2 - 3/4 c cream cheese, soft 1c (ish - this boils down to taste) powdered sugar 1/2 c fresh rose petals, roughly chopped 3 tbsp milk 1) Blitz together milk and rose petals. Let sit for 30 minutes to allow the rose flavour to infuse the milk. 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 butter and cream cheese in a bowl and beat until fluffy and homogenous. Gradually add the powdered sugar, taste testing until you like it. 5) Blitz rose petals with milk until smooth. Incorporate into frosting. Frost cake or cupcakes. I added slightly too much milk to my rose petals, so the frosting came out as more of a drizzle than a frosting, but it was very tasty just the same. The cake was light, fluffy and moist with a very nice crumb and a delicate rosy flavour. It was slightly bluish though because of the colouring of the rose petals once blitzed. I do want to try it with yellow rose petals for comparison, but so far, I am more than happy to stick with this.

We had leftover Broccoli and Fennel Tart for lunch, but not enough of it for a whole meal. We are going away for the weekend so I wanted to draw down on what we have rather than picking up more food. With a kilo of carrots in the fridge and a large chunk of ginger, a warm "salad" seemed ideal, especially for a cold, rainy day. It could just as easily be served over rice or couscous or something and become a more substantial meal though, or even have chunks of meat added to it to make it a main. We had it as described here below though, and aside from maybe a little fresh coriander, I wouldn't change anything. I spiralised the carrots and ginger (my first time spiralising ginger. I got mixed results), but they could just as easily be chopped or julienned. It was just the quickest, easiest way for me. Ingredients: 5 carrots, spiralised 3 inches of ginger (ish) spiralised or chopped 1/2 head of garlic, crushed (ours was a very big head. If yours is smaller, 1 regular head should do). 1 1/2 tbsp peanut oil 1 tbsp soy sauce 2 tsp pomegranate molasses 1 tsp nigella seeds 1/2 - tsp Aloha Chilli Spiced Cacao 1 tsp white sesame seeds 1 tsp black sesame seeds 1) Heat oil in a small wok or a frying pan. Add ginger and garlic and fry until fragrant, allowing a few of the pieces to brown a little. Add carrots and stir. 2) Add other ingredients aside from sesame seeds and cook for 5 minutes until the carrots are beginning to become tender. Add sesame seeds and cook for another minute, then serve. This was super tasty! I would not change anything. I had help cooking it (hence the second spatula in the picture) and Little Bit could stuff it into his mouth fast enough once it was ready (after brief protestations of "hothothot").

As mentioned in Day 57 of The Challenge Rotkohl, literally red cabbage, is a stewed cabbage dish traditionally eaten in Germany and German-speaking Switzerland alongside sausages or other meat. You can get them ready made in tins, or you can make it yourself, pretty easily too. This batch came out particularly well, but the key, really, is time. I got this ready early in the day, before lunch, and stashed it in my Wonderbag slow cooker for the rest of the day until dinner, thus giving it plenty of time to stew. I also added a couple of first-time innovations which worked out scrumptiously. Ingredients: 1 half of a red cabbage, chopped 2 apples, chopped 1 c raisins 2 tsp orange peel 1/4-1/2 nutmeg, freshly grated 1 c apple cider vinegar 1 c apple juice Pepper 1) Place all ingredients in a heavy-bottomed pot. Bring to a simmer and stew covered at low temperature for at least 45 minutes (the longer the better). A slow cooker works wonders, but you can do it over the stove if need be. I love this dish! It works as a side for all sorts of meals, it is dead simple, and so so satisfying! Please try this! EDIT: I tried this again recently and made it with dried grapefruit peel instead or orange. It worked well, but there was a little more bitterness. A pinch of salt sorted that out though! Certainly an alternative to bear in mind!

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.