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I made pickles for the first time in the autumn. Bread and butter (sweet) cucumber pickles and spiced beetroot pickles. I made each a couple of times and was delighted to discover how easy it was to pickle. Based on those experiences, I decided to try my hand at an idea of my own, namely spiced pickled carrots. I had a hunch, so I read up a bit more on the pickling process and went for it. I made these in the winter sometime, but then they needed to sit for 3 weeks to mature, and then other things came up, so here they are now. Ingredients: 1 - 1,5 kg carrots 3 1/2 c apple cider vinegar 1 tbsp mustard seeds 1 c sugar 1 tsp salt 8 cloves garlic, sliced 2 1/2 - 3 " ginger, sliced 2 black cardamom pods, crushed 1 tsp turmeric 1) Place the vinegar and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add other ingredients and cook until the carrots are tender. 2) Meanwhile, sterilise your jars. Bring a big pot of water to the boil, and keeping it at a rolling boil, submerge the jars and their lids for at least 15 minutes. 3) Spoon the carrots into the jars, pour the vinegar over the top, wipe the rims of the jars and seal. Place the jars upside down until cool, then store in a cool dark place for about 3 weeks before opening them. When these were ready to go, I pulled them out at my parents' place first. They have been on the side of a quite a few meals since then and have proved a hit. I am pleased with how the spicing came out, and in general the idea worked as well as I could have hoped! Now for more pickling ideas...

Next on this winter's odyssey of marmalade batches is a lime one (and yes, I say "a lime marmalade" as I plan on making another one), and for this one, I decided to add gin and almond extract. Not sure exactly why I decided on this, but I am glad I did. I am afraid that with night shifts and a teething toddler (how many molars does one kid need?!) who is now in a big boy bed (woohoo for sleep disruptions again!) I opted for the easy, lazy method again. Ingredients: 1,5 kg limes (about 20 limes), halved 1,5 l water 3 c sugar 2 tsp almond extract 1 c gin 1) Squeeze the limes and place them and the water in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Bring to a boil and cook for about an hour until the limes have softened and the contents of the pot has begun to reduce. 2) Blitz and add the other ingredients. Continue cooking until the marmalade thickens to desired consistency. Taste test to check for sweetness and gin content. 3) Boil jars for 15 minutes to sterilise them, then spoon the hot marmalade into the jars. Wipe the rim clean, seal and place upside down on a tea towel to cool. This came out really well. No tonic in the jam, but it still tastes like a G+T (sort of) so I am sticking with the name. Unfortunately, the almond flavour doesn't come across much, but the lime does, and it proved a very popular spread when I brought a jar up to my parents' house for the weekend. Let me know what you think if you try it!

I've done this in various forms before, sometimes vegetarian, sometimes with sausages or other meat,

As mentioned in Day 47 of The Challenge Our basil plant was starting to suffer from the cooler weather, and our tomatoes were ripening, so the stars aligned as it were for a tomato tart. Or agriculture on my balcony did in any case. I had been wanting to have a tomato tart for a while and so seized the opportunity and am delighted that I did! 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 6 large tomatoes, sliced a handful of fresh basil leaves 1 ball of mozzarella, sliced 1 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar 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) Roll out the pastry and line a pie dish with it. Layer sliced tomatoes in the pie dish (Careful not to drizzle in the juice at the same time or your pie will be soggy!) and then place mozzarella slices over the top and drizzle over olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Tuck in basil leaves, and season. 4) Bake at 180°C for 30-35 minutes until the mozzarella browns slightly. Tasty and fresh yet warm for a cool, sunny autumn day. Absolutely loved this, and it went down well with Hubby and Little One too!

This one is half cheese journey and half recipe. I was asked for it by a colleague though, so here it is. Yogurt making is not massively new to me. I have done it a few times, and have enjoyed trying out different starter yogurts and seeing the effect different ones have on the final yogurt. It is very easy to do an the result is satisfying. If the yogurt is not as thick as you'd like, simply strain it. Then you have yogurt as well as whey to use. The key to this as far as I am concerned, is to use a good quality milk. Mine was quite thick, with an almost flan-like consistency, but we strained it a little anyway. Ingredients: 2 l milk 3/4 - 1 c yogurt with active cultures 1) Place milk in a saucepan and heat over medium until it is warm but not too hot. You should be able to dip your pinky finger in and leave it for a count of 10 without being uncomfortable. 2) Add the yogurt to the milk and stir. Cover the saucepan and place in a warm spot to ripen over night or longer. A spot in the sun, by the fire or by a radiator are great. I usually put mine in my Wonderbag cloth oven as it maintains the temperature over a long period without using any energy and without risk. 3) Strain as needed. I particularly like home-made yogurt for dishes like borani where the flavour of the yogurt itself is key. Depending on the starter yogurt used the end-yogurt may be more acidic or sweeter. Play around with it and figure out which you like best!

As mentioned in Day 45 of The Challenge This is a recipe I haven't made in a long time, and it is always slightly different. It is a little involved, with multiple steps and three different parts that then need to be assembled, but it is tasty and warming. It is easily varied by putting different twists on the flavouring or tweaking the sauce or the filling. This time we did a tomato and lentil filling and a spinach cream sauce. I then sprinkled it with breadcrumbs and cheese before baking it. The flavourings were warm spices rather than herbs or sharp. It came out beautifully balanced and tasty - a big favourite especially with Little Bit. Ingredients: For the Crêpes: 1 c flour 2 eggs 1 - 1 1/4 c milk For the filling: 1 onion, chopped 1 tbsp olive oil 200g tin of tomatoes 1/2 c tomato passata 3/4 c green lentils 1 c celery, chopped 1 tsp cinnamon 1/4 tsp cloves 1/2 tsp allspice 1 tsp garam masala 3/4 c red cooking wine For the cream sauce: 2 tbsp butter 2tbsp flour 1 1/2 c milk 1/2 c spinach 1 tsp grated nutmeg 2 tbsp breadcrumbs 2 -3 tbsp grated parmesan salt and pepper to taste 1) Mix the ingredients for the crêpe batter. Add liquids to the flour slowly, beating thoroughly to avoid lumps. 2) Grease a crêpe pan, and pour 2 tbsp of batter into the pan. Tilt the pan to spread it and allow the first side to cook. When it lifts cleanly and easily, flip the crêpe. Cook for a further couple of minutes and then remove. Repeat until the batter is all cooked. Adjust the batter after the first one by adding a little milk if it seems to thick to spread out thinly. 3) Meanwhile, heat oil in a saucepan and sauté the onion until translucent. Add the other ingredients and simmer until lentils are tender. 4) In another sauce pan, melt butter. Stir in the flour and then gradually add milk, stirring to avoid lumping. Add in the spinach and nutmeg and cook until it is the right consistency. Again, add milk as needed if it is too thick. Salt and pepper to taste. 5) Grease an oven proof dish. Carefully place 2-3 tbsp of filling along the centre line of each crêpe then roll it up. Line up the crêpes in the oven proof dish until there is no more space. Add any extra filling at the feet of the crêpe rolls to fill the dish. 6) Spoon sauce over the crêpes and sprinkle breadcrumbs and cheese over the top. Grind pepper over the whole, and bake 25-30 minutes at 180°C. Serve hot. Hot filling and comfort foody while being healthy and not too heavy. Perfect for a rainy autumnal evening!

Back in the autumn, my dad shared a video with me by Pro Home Cooks on making your own vinegar at home. I was intrigued, and after checking out a few more websites and how-tos, I decided to try it out. I then checked out instructions from a couple of other places and launched into it. I used only dried fruits as these apparently have a lower incidence of white mould forming on top. I made six different kinds of vinegar, using cranberries, raisins, apples, lemon slices, rosehips and one combo vinegar of apple and rosehips. I filled the bottles about a third to half-full bottles with the fruit and then filling the rest with water. I covered them with cloth, so as to allow the bottles to breathe but keep debris out and stirred them (almost) every day. And that was it. At the 3 week mark I filtered out the fruit, and at the 60-day mark, I capped the bottles. Once or twice I had issues with a little mould on the top, which I skimmed off. Other times, it was hard to tell what was mould or what was the mother of vinegar forming. I only hope I didn't skim the mother at any point! Interestingly, it was the lemon vinegar with which I had the greatest mould challenge, even right up until the end. Each of my six vinegars now has a distinctive colour, smell and flavour. I am leaving them to mature a little before really launching into using them, but will do so soon! SO far they've been used a little on salad but not for much else yet. I want to try the same method with other things too. Supposedly vinegar can be made from carrot peels for example. We'll see how it goes!

This is a dish which I first saw in a video by Chef John a few months ago, and then I saw pop up on the internet and Instagram in the mean time. With left over tomato sauce on hand from making pizzas, and extra cacik (Turkish tzatziki) in the fridge, I decided that my own version of this would make a perfect lunch on a cold windy March day. Fast and easy, it came together in 10 minutes from start to finish. It was tasty and had a pleasing variety of colours and textures, and I found it easy to modify the heat level for Little Bit's palate and our own. Normally cacik also has cucumber but mine didn't this time. You can use a variety of different herbs in it too, but this time I opted for thyme which is one of my favourites. Ingredients: For the cacik: 2 c yogurt 2 c blanc battu (a fresh cheese, the consistency of very thick yogurt. If you don't have any available, simply use only yogurt) 1 head garlic, crushed 1 - 2 tsp thyme 1 - 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and pepper to taste 1/2 - 3/4 c tomato sauce per person 1 -2 eggs per person enough oil to shallow crispy fry the eggs 1tbsp jalapeño peppers (I used pickled ones as fresh weren't available) 1 tbsp (ish) coriander leaves 1 tsp olive oil Stale bread, toasted 1 tsp sumac Salt and pepper to taste 1) To prepare the cacik, mix together the yogurt and blanc battu until smooth and creamy. Add other ingredients and mix well. Taste test. 2) For the jalapeño and coriander sauce, place them and a little olive oil in a bowl and blitz. 3) In a deep frying pan, heat about 2 cm of oil. When it is shimmering, crack two eggs in, not too close to each other. Using two wooden spoons, as the eggs fry, fold them back over themselves. Cook for 4 minutes then remove and drain. 4) To serve, place some tomato sauce on a place and spread. Into the middle of this, spoon some cacik, then place a poached egg with the yolk still runny on top. Drizzle the green sauce around and over the rest, and sprinkle some sumac salt and pepper over the whole. Serve with toasted sliced of bread. This was really tasty! The biggest issue was convincing Little Bit that, despite his love of eggs, he could not have my egg as well as his own. I can't believe that it took me this long to try this, but I'm glad that the stars (or at least the ingredients and left overs in my fridge) all finally aligned for me to make this! Book Pairing: Not an audiobook, so this is cheating a little, but my association in my mind with cooking this dish is overwhelmingly of reading The Wolf's Secret by Miriam Dahman and Nicolas Digard, illustrated by Julia Sarda, to Little Bit. It was cold and windy and he was just in from a chilly walk, so we curled up under the covers to read this while the tomato sauce warmed up. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Continuing on from that initial request for a ketchup recipe, here is another one. This time I decided to do a spiced (but not spicy) carrot ketchup, in part because I had a bunch of carrots on the brink of going off. It turned out really tasty, but slightly less classically ketchuppy than the Tomato Ketchups or the Beet Ketchup. Ingredients: 6 c carrots, chopped 3/4c tbsp apple cider vinegar 5 tbsp brown sugar 1/2 tsp ras el hanout 1 tsp tandoori powder 1 pink onion, chopped 4 cloves garlic, minced 4 cm ginger, minced 1 tsp nigella seeds Salt and pepper 1) Place all ingredients except nigella seeds in a saucepan and simmer until carrots are tender. Blitz until smooth. Taste test, add nigella seeds and reduce until the ketchup reaches desired consistency. 2) Meanwhile, sterilise glass jars by boiling them for 15 minutes. Fill while the ketchup is still hot, seal and leave to cool. We've been having this on all sorts of things recently and it's proved very versatile. Little Bit stays true to his trend of eating condiments as though they were their own foods, but in this case, I'm fine with that.

Have I ever mentioned how much I like chestnuts? Ever? Maybe once or twice, with the Chestnut Cookies, Caramel Chestnut Risotto, or Chestnut Puddings... They are a seasonal must for me around Christmas, and I absolutely love them. The smell of them roasting conjures up images of Christmas markets, hot chestnuts in paper bags, burnt fingers and the delicious sweet earthy flesh warming you from the inside... For Christmas, we usually have pumpkin pie and mincemeat pie, but this year we decided to add in a new one, Chestnut Pie. Somehow, bouncing around ideas about something else entirely, and the idea of trying a chestnut pie came up. Other ideas are still pending testing, but the one we decided to make a reality is along the same lines as a pecan pie. However, those involved in the discussion agreed that pecan pie is generally too sweet, so we reduced the amount of sugar. I also don't like corn syrup, so instead, we used honey and citrus syrup left over from making Candied Peel. We also figured that the citrus would balance out the earthy flavour of the chestnuts. To address the sweetness, we also made a thin pie in a large dish rather than a deep one. For the first try, we used frozen chestnuts (defrosted, of course), but raw. I had thought that 40 minutes in the oven would be enough to cook them, but it wasn't. In the second try, therefore, I used cooked chestnuts, boiling some first (saving the chestnut water, we'll see what it will come in handy for. Oatmeal maybe?), some I roasted. For the pie crust, I used vinegar syrup from making pickled plums this summer. The added flavour was interesting, but a regular pie crust would work fine. Ingredients: Pie crust: 1 1/2 c flour 1/3 c butter, cold and cubed 1/3c milk/whey/plum vinegar syrup Filling 1 kg chestnuts 3 tbsp butter 1/2 c light brown sugar 1/2 c honey 1/2 c citrus syrup (use molasses or maple syrup if need be. Or more honey) 3 eggs 1) In a large bowl, rub the butter and flour together until you achieve a wet sandy texture. Stir in the liquid, gathering into a dough, manipulating as little as possible. Chill. 2) In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar. Stir in honey and syrup, then beat in eggs. 3) If using raw chestnuts, boil for about 10 minutes until tender. Then roast about half at 190°C for 15 minutes (alternatively, I did it in the air fryer). 4) Roll out pie crust, and line a pie plate with it. Pour in the chestnuts, and then the batter. Bake at 180°C for 40min. Allow to cool and set, then serve at room temperature. I really liked this pie! And even the pecan pie doubters (*cough* Hubby) enjoyed it. I liked it better the first time around, but the chestnuts were better cooked the second time around. I would merely use pre-cooked chestnuts or boil them next time, and skip the roasting. I would also deliberately use light brown sugar. The second time I used dark brown sugar, and I think that worked less well, although that opinion was not unanimous. The pie crust worked, but a regular one would have worked equally well. The citrus syrup definitely worked, and I may even add orange zest or candied orange peel to this pie next time. We also used double the amount of chestnuts the second time around, making it super chestnutty. I would maybe split the difference in future and use 750g. The first time we had it with whipped cream, and the second time with mascarpone. Both work, but I think I preferred it with whipped cream.