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I heard that watermelon rind is edible and that it makes nice jam or chutney so I wanted to give it a try. I celebrated our first watermelon of the season by saving the rind until the melon was all gone and then having a go at chutney. Here is the recipe I came up with. The rind has a mild, but pleasant flavour which I combined with some apple and red onion for a chutney. I did have to blend it a little, which I don't generally do with jams or chutneys as the rind didn't break down much even after considerable simmering. It just stayed in the little cubes I had cut, so blitzing it briefly gave the chutney a more even consistency. Ingredients: Rind of 1 small watermelon, diced 3 red onion, diced 1 apple, diced 3/4 c herb vinegar 1 tsp salt 3/4 c sugar 1 red chilli, diced 2 tsp (or more) red chili flakes - I used pul biber 1) Place watermelon rind in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until almost tender. Add other ingredients and cook for a further 30 minutes or so. 2) Blitz briefly until chunky-smooth (chutney consistency) and taste test. Place in hot, sterile jars while chutney is still hot and seal, allowing to cool. I am really pleased with how this came out. I wasn't sure what to expect nor really what direction to go with it, so proceeded by taste testing and adjusting. The apple went in both for taste and to add pectin to help it all come together. We've tried it with crackers and cheese and a couple of sun dried tomatoes and it held up well! With the next watermelon, I think I am going to try watermelon jam....

Sweet Potatoes are normally really expensive here, so when the price drops, I buy up loads of them. Usually, being a tuber, they last pretty well. This time though, that meant using up 4 kilos of sweet potatoes fast. After putting a couple in a few other dishes and still having a mountain of them to use, I chopped off the ugly bits and made soup. As often happens, I didn't have a very clear idea when I started of where I was heading with this soup, but I am really happy with where it ended up, so thought I'd share. I had thought maybe I would go a big veggie soup direction, or maybe cream of sweet potato soup, or something coconutty. The Fromage Blanc was the last from my most recent batch of homemade cheese, and the chives were the only ones that poked their heads through this year. The pot looked rather like a bald man's head with only a few green hairs sprinkled around. I used chicken stock as I had some from a recent chicken dish, but veggie stock would have worked well too. It all came together very nicely though! Ingredients: For the soup: 2 tbsp olive oil 3-4 onions, chopped 4 cm ginger, diced 2 - 2,5 kg sweet potatoes, chopped 4 c chicken stock 1 tsp Urfa Biber 1 tbsp nigella seeds 1 - 1 1/2 c corn Salt and pepper to taste for the red pepper paste: 1 red pepper 1 red chilli pepper 2 tbsp olive oil 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar 1 onion, chopped For the fromage blanc 3/4 c fromage blanc (or cream cheese) 2-3 tbsp fresh chives 1/2 tsp garlic powder salt 1) Place red pepper and chilli in the oven, whole at 200°C for 20-30 minutes, until the red pepper is soft and starting to char. 2) In a heavy-bottomed soup pot, heat olive oil over medium heat and sauté onion and ginger. 3) Add sweet potato and stock. Add water until the sweet potatoes are just covered and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 20 - 25 minutes until sweet potatoes are soft. 4) Using a hand blender, blitz soup until it is most of the way smooth. Add corn, Urfa and nigella seeds. 5) Meanwhile, remove peppers from the oven and blitz in a blender with the onion, olive oil and vinegar. (I used olive oil left over from preserving my Cabécou Goat's cheese). 6) In a bowl, mix the fresh cheese, chives, garlic powder and salt. 7) Serve the soup hot, with dolloping options of fresh cheese and red pepper paste. I am really happy with this soup. Having the fresh cheese and the red pepper paste on the side meant we were each able to spice it up or make it creamy according to our own tastes. This also continues the trend of keeping spicy things on the side so that Little Bit can eat the same meal as us. He wanted corn from the tin while I was cooking, so I ended up needing more corn than anticipated, but then he offered me 5 kernels for the soup. Individually of course. He was very proud of his contribution too! The fresh cheese was very tasty, and I enjoyed the creaminess as it melted into the soup, but the soul also works really well without it. The red pepper paste is tasty in its own right, and I am happy to have it around for other purposes too. I like happy accidents in cooking!

As mentioned in Day 41 of The Challenge Vegetables stewed with prunes and warm (rather than hot) spices served over couscous. What better for a rainy autumn afternoon? Especially not knowing how well the friend coming to lunch tolerates spice... Ingredients: 3 red onions, chopped 2 tomatoes , diced 3 carrots, chopped Half a head of garlic, sliced 6 celery sticks, chopped 400g chickpeas 400ml vegetable broth 1/2 c tomato passata 100 g prunes, pitted and chopped (or apricots could work) 1 cinnamon stick 1/2 tsp ground cumin 2 tsp tandoori powder (I like the light heat and the warmth of this spice, but you can use paprika if you'd rather) 1 tsp of Aloha Spiced Cacao (or cocoa powder) 3 tsp urfa biber or chilli flakes Salt and pepper to taste 1) Put a heavy oven proof dish in the oven without its lid, and heat to 180°C. 2) Chop your veg and add to the preheated dish. Add spices and stock, replace in the oven and allow to cook 1 - 1 1/4 hours until vegetables are almost tender (I like the carrots and celery to have a little bite left) and flavours have blended. Taste test and serve over couscous. Super simple, tasty and easily adapted to different veg, chicken or different levels of spice. It diffuses a lovely smell through the house, and on a cold afternoon warms you from the inside.

As mentioned in Day 38 of The Challenge This can be vegetarian, as this was, or with ham and bacon, but either way it's tasty and satisfying, while also being easy and quick to assemble. Ingredients: 2 c peas 1 tbsp olive oil 2 onions, chopped 4 potatoes, chopped 2 carrots chopped. 2 tbsp lemon Salt and pepper to taste 1) Sauté onions in oil in a saucepan. Add potatoes and carrots and sauté for a minute longer, then add the peas and enough water to cover the veg. 2) Bring to a simmer and cook until the potatoes and carrots are tender. Blitz to desired smoothness. 3) Serve into bowls and drizzle the lemon juice over the top and season as desired. Simple and satisfying especially served with crusty bread and some cheese.

The butter could be skipped to make this vegan, or bits of chicken could be added just after the onion

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!

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.

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!

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!

Skip the parmesan to make this recipe vegan.