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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.

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!

Easily tweaked to be vegetarian, too.

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!

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.

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...

As mentioned in Day 84 of The Challenge This is one of my favourite tarts (and for any of you who've been paying attention, I make a lot of tarts). The first time I made it was just before we were going to go away on a trip for a week, so I made mini tartlets and brought them with us so as not to have the onions rot while we were away. Sitting on our (very short) flight all I could smell was the onion wafting down from the over-head compartment... Maybe not my most socially conscious move ever, but by then it was too late. Anyway, they made for a really tasty picnic lunch on our adventures and I've been making this tart, in normal or mini form, ever since. Feel free to omit the tomato or bacon, add spinach, cut the cumin and replace it with some nutmeg or add cheese. All of these options work! Ingredients: 1 pie crust (for pie crust recipe, see here) Half a dozen onions, sliced 100g bacon, sliced 2 tbsp butter 1/4 c flour (scant) 2 eggs 100ml milk 200ml cream (I don't always use cream, sometimes I do it with just milk) 1/2 - 1 tbsp cumin 1 tomato, sliced salt and pepper to taste 1) Line a pie dish with the crust and poke with a fork. 2) Melt butter in a frying pan and fry the bacon with the onions until they are translucent. 3) Mix flour, eggs, milk, cream and cumin. 4) Spread onions and bacon on the pie base. Pour the egg and milk mix evenly over the onions. Place tomatoes on top. Salt and pepper to taste. 5) Bake at 190°C for 25-30 minutes. Serve hot or cold, as a main or a side. It holds its own either way, and I love it! Great finger food for little bit too!

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!

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.

Tattie scones are an essential part of a full Scottish breakfast. Browned on the outside, soft on the inside and warm enough to melt the butter a little, I've made them myself since leaving Scotland, but it occurred to me recently, with all the sweet potatoes on sale, that a sweet potato version of these could be tasty. With my sister's recent return from the UK with a delivery of Cumberland sausages and British bacon, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out. We had a full Scottish breakfast - or as near as possible over here where black pudding isn't available. The Tattie Scones came out beautifully. The sweet potatoes needed more flour to come together than regular ones, but the texture was good and they were a little sweet without being overwhelmingly so. Ingredients: 400g sweet potatoes 2 c flour 3 tbsp butter Salt and pepper to taste 1) Boil the sweet potatoes until soft. Mash in butter (peeling or leaving the peels of the sweet potatoes as you prefer). 2) Mix in flour to form a dough- enough for it to be non-sticky but not so much as to make it dense. 3) Roll out the dough to about 1 cm thick on a clean, floured surface. Cut into large circles (I used a soup bowl) and score quarters on the surface. Melt a little butter on a gridle or frying pan and cook over medium heat on both sides until golden. I am really happy with how these came out. The taste wasn't slap-you-in-the-face different but did certainly have its own twist on the originals. Certainly an alternative which will be making it into the repertoire!