After our last batch of mascarpone, we tried out mascarpone with meringue, banana and Aloha Spiced Cacao, which was decadent and scrumptious in the extreme. That was my starting point for this. We then picked up fresh dates, and somehow the image of them paired with mascarpone and meringue, or meringue and mascarpone - I am not sure which elements I put together first - and I had to try it. With fresh dates, I naturally had to add in an orange drizzle, and then when making it for a sister who doesn't eat dates, the walnuts joined the party. A drizzle of Cointreau over the top was my dad's idea. Like most things therefore, it was a multi-step process, and I am very grateful for the family helping to bounce ideas around. I made mascarpone specially for this using lemon juice again instead of citric acid and leaving it to curdle for several hours and then to drain overnight. The mascarpone came out really well, and I am glad of the speed and ease with which I was able to make it. I feel at this point that mascarpone has been fully assimilated into my repertoire. I have not been sweetening mine at all and I've been enjoying it like that, with a slight acidic note to it. After Easter and the requisite feasting which follow (including the post-Lent binge), we didn't need another dessert, but in the interests of science - and a need to find out how this would taste- everyone threw themselves on the sword of this dessert, for which I am most grateful. We're still trying to come up with a name for this, so suggestions are welcome! Ingredients: 4 meringues 300 - 400 g mascarpone (roughly 2-3 tbsp per person) Juice and zest of 1 orange 1 tbsp sugar 1/2 tsp cloves 8 fresh dates, pitted and quartered a handful of walnuts a drizzle of Cointreau per bowl 1) In a small saucepan, heat the orange juice and zest, sugar, and half the cloves. Stir and allow it to come to a gentle simmer. Taste test and add the rest of the cloves if desired. Once this has thickened to a thin syrup, remove from the heat. 2) Place a meringue in each of four bowls, then over the top a dollop of mascarpone (for the fun of it I decided to form mine into ro-shays - ahem, rochers for those who speak French- , but feel free to just dollop). 3) Place some of the date quarters and a few walnuts in each bowl then spoon some orange syrup and drizzle Cointreau over the rest. Ta-Da! It' is that simple, but simply delightful! Next time I might roughly chop the walnuts to get a more even coverage, but otherwise I would change nothing about this. Except maybe to try it with a drizzle of rum? Hmmm. There's an idea! I also wonder how everything would react to being lightly flambéed.... Oh so tasty though!

My sister's suggestion, therefore, of making Pancakes our next recipe to coincide with Pancake Day suited Here are our three different Pancake Experiments, and a bonus Whipped Cinnamon Honey Butter recipe. For my friend, HibiscucKook's recipe for vegan pancakes on her blog, click here.

As mentioned in Day 20 of The Challenge There are a number of different ways of doing this recipe, but

As mentioned in Day 96 of the Challenge Trouvez la VF en commentaire I love making home-made pasta. It seems like a lot of work, but my sister actually worked out that when making pasta for just herself, it was faster to make her own than to wait for store-bought dried pasta to cook. It cooks in no time if you're eating it fresh, dries well to save for later or you can cook it to just under done and reheat in the sauce of your choice later, thus melding the pasta and sauce flavours perfectly. In the last year or so I have gotten into sometimes replacing the egg in pasta with vegetable purée. Beets are one potential replacement. I love making pasta with beets! The colour is fantastic and the taste comes through wonderfully, earthy and sweet. The beet pasta paired perfectly with the broccoli sauce, both in terms of colour and flavour, and the garlic shrimp made it all pop. Ingredients: For the pasta: 1 beet, steamed until soft then puréed 3-4 c flour 1 tsp thyme salt and pepper to taste For the broccoli sauce: 1 head of broccoli, floretted 3 cloves of garlic, crushed 1 tbsp olive oil 1 onion, chopped 1 tsp oyster sauce 2 tsp rice wine vinegar 15 shrimp (for 3 people) 3 chillis, chopped 6 cloves garlic, crushed 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp black sesame seeds 1) Put 3 c of flour in a bowl and create a well in the centre. Put the beet purée in the well and gradually mix the flour into the beet to create a soft, elastic (pink) dough. Knead in crushed thyme and salt and pepper to taste. 2)Dump it out onto a clean, floured surface and knead for a few minutes. Make sure it isn't too sticky as otherwise it will gum up the pasta maker, or it will get sticky when cooked. If it seems to sticky, knead extra flour into it. (If you don't like all the kneading make sure the dough is floured on the outside and pass it through the first setting of the pasta maker a few times. It will work the dough for you.) 3) Once the dough is ready, cut off a piece the size of half a fist and pass it through successively higher settings on the pasta maker. Different machines have different settings, but just to give you an idea, I stopped at setting 5 for this one - thick enough to have some bite, thin enough to be delicate and not clumpy. 4) Once you have it to the desired thickness, pass your sheet of dough through the fettuccine cutter and the hang to dry on a pasta tree, rack or the back of a chair. Just make sure the surface is clean and that the pasta won't stick. At this point you have the option to dry the pasta completely and store it, or to cook it right away and have fresh pasta. 5) To cook the fresh pasta, bring a pot of salted water to the boil. Put pasta into the water a couple of portions at a time. Cook for a couple of minutes and drain the pasta. Be careful! Fresh pasta cooks much faster than dried, so it won't take long. An extra 30s and you will be eating mush. 6) For the broccoli sauce, heat the oil in a saucepan. Sauté the onions and garlic until translucent then add the broccoli, oyster sauce and rice wine vinegar. Cook until the broccoli is tender but still dark, then blitz until smooth. 7) For the shrimp, heat oil in a frying pan. sauté the chilis and the garlic. Give them about 2 minutes then add the shrimp. Gook for 3-4 minutes until the flesh is white and tender, add the sesame seeds, and serve over the top of the beet pasta and the broccoli sauce. This came out really well! The only thing I would tweak for next time would be to reduce the chilli in the shrimp a little to let the other flavours shine through a little better. Otherwise, beautiful! In case you want to try making these but don't have a pasta machine or pasta tree click on the links to get one of your own! As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

As mentioned in Day 46 of The Challenge Soup season continues! (Does it ever really stop?) A friend recently gave us quite a large bag full of sage, so needs must... This was a first try at this soup, but it will be sticking around now. Very tasty, quick to pull together and a good twist on the various other carrot-based soups we make. Many thanks to my hubby for putting it together! Ingredients: 1 kg carrots, chopped 2 onions, chopped 4 potatoes, chopped 1 l of veggie stock 1/2 c dried sage 2 tsp honey 1/2 tbsp olive oil Salt and pepper to taste 1) Heat oil in a soup pot and sauté onions. Add carrots and potatoes and allow to char briefly on the bottom of the pan. 2) Add stock and sage and bring to a simmer. Add honey and cook for about a half hour. 3) Blitz til smooth, taste test and serve. This has got to be one of the simplest of soups, but it was warming and satisfying on a cold October lunch. We had it with crusty bread, local cheese and home made Green Tomato Chutney.

I tried to grow all sorts of things on my balcony this year - thyme, rosemary, beets, strawberries, peppers, basil... Between late frost, two hail storms and a lot of rain this year on the one hand and a very enthusiastic, helpful toddler on the other, not much survived. The carrots did though. I had to bail them out at times, but I grew them from seed and was excited to watch them grow taller and taller. Eventually, by early November, the carrot tops were each about 2 cm wide, if not bigger, and the greens were easily 40cm tall. I excitedly kept an eye on them and left them in the ground, figuring them I would harvest them in time for Thanksgiving. When I did harvest them on the Thursday of Thanksgiving, two days before our dinner, I was rather bewildered when the first one left the ground. Had I broken it? No. There were root hairs hanging from the bottom of the carrot. That was all there was. Each of the carrots, 2 cm or more at the top, was only 2 to 3 cm long. I cleaned them up and supplemented them with store-bought carrots for Thanksgiving dinner and laughed off the failure. The tops were big and bushy though. I didn't want to just chuck them in the compost, especially given how meagre the carrot harvest had been. Some went into the stuffing instead of celery - which couldn't be had even for ready money - but that still left me with a big bunch. Needing to clear it off the counter before cooking Thanksgiving dinner, the cleaned greens went in the blender with olive oil, lemon juice and water and became Proto-Pesto. For a while, that is all it was, as we ate through leftovers. This proto-pesto proved very handy though, on savoury French toast, in the Leek and Cheese Tart, and the Pumpkin and Stuffing Casserole, and in little leftover pies. The Proto-Pesto then went in the freezer to await the end of the festive season, with all its traditional meals, time away and masses of food. This week I pulled it back out though and turned it into pesto. It is tasty as a dip for tortilla chips, or spread on little puff pastries with tomato paste and parma ham, with or without cheese, and of course, the classic, with pasta. I still have some left, so we'll see what we use it for! Ingredients: 1 very large bunch of carrot greens (6 ish cups when chopped) Juice of 1 lemon 1/2 c water (or enough for the blender to be able to run) 1/2 c olive oil 1/2 c parmesan 1/4 c ground hazelnuts 1 tbsp sumac 1 tsp dried orange peel Salt to taste 1) Blend all ingredients together until smooth. Taste test and adjust as necessary. Add to pastry or pasta, use as a spread, or simply dip. Enjoy. This one has been a while in the making, given that I started it way back at Thanksgiving, but it was worth it. I enjoyed it every way we've tried it so far. Book Pairing: When I first made the Proto-Pesto, I was listening to the Bayou Trilogy by Daniel Woodrell. I enjoyed it, but it is definitely Grit Lit, which I sometimes have to be in the mood for. Finishing this Pesto and making my little Pastry Swirls, I was listening to Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. I didn't really think about it while cooking yesterday (there was rather a lot else going on), but reflecting back now, the difference in tone in these two books is striking. I enjoyed both a great deal, but in very different ways and for very different reasons.

And freshly baked ginger snaps This was my first original cookie recipe, all my own rather than just tweaking of an original.

Note: Toying with how to make this recipe keto, it occurred to me that it might be possible either to

For World Environment Day on June 5th I was invited to take part in a collaboration making plant based, sustainable meals, and this is the one I came up with. Everything , or very nearly, was locally sourced from local farmers or foraged by Little One and I. After a visit to a local farmer, where I picked up yellow carrots, I started playing around with ideas of what I could make using those. Then there was local barley from the mountains on sale in the grocery store, so I decided on a tart, grinding the barley for the crust. For the other components of the tart I decided to go pick nettles for a pesto, which eventually ended up being nettle and dandelion, and to make ricotta with milk from the local dairy. I found other edible wild flowers too, so those were incorporated into the plan. I am really glad that I agreed to take part in that collaboration as otherwise I wouldn't have necessarily put all these components together, and it was really fun and came out super tasty! Ingredients: For the crust: 1 c barley flower (I ground up whole barley in the coffee grinder) 1 1/4 c whole meal flour 1/4 - 1/3 c cold butter 1/3 c milk For the pesto: 3-4 c nettles, washed in vinegar and then steamed til just wilted 1-2 c dandelion leaves 2 cloves garlic 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp vinegar juice of 1 lemon a little water Salt and pepper to taste For the tart: 7-8 yellow carrots, quartered or eighthed lengthwise 1 c pesto 1/2 - 1 c ricotta OR Goat cheese 1-2 tsp wild thyme 1 1/2 - 2 tbsp honey 1 tbsp olive oil salt and pepper Wild flowers to top: Clover Wild thyme Wood sorrel 1) Make the crust: Place flour and barley flour in a bowl and cut in the butter in small dice. Rub butter into the flower with fingertips until a crumby mixture forms. Add milk and mix until just combined. Chill 30 minutes. 2) Make the pesto. Place all ingredients in a blender and blitz until smooth. Taste test. Dandelion leaves can be a little bitter, so add some lemon juice to counterbalance this if necessary. 3) Assemble the tart. Roll out the crust to the size of your tart plate, and line the bottom of the dish with it. Spread the pesto over the base and then arrange the carrots over the top radially. Dollop the honey and drizzle the olive oil over the carrots. Mix the wild thyme into the ricotta and then spread the ricotta over the carrots. Salt and pepper to taste. Bake at 190°C for 35-45 minutes, until the crust is golden and the carrots are tender but not soft. 4) Allow to cool a little and arrange the wild flowers over the top (optional). This was beautiful! All the flavours balanced each other beautifully, with the bitter dandelions and sweet carrots and honey and the acidic lemon and the creamy cheese. The tart was hot, the flowers fresh, the pesto deep, the lemon bright. And the colours truly popped! Eating it, it occurred to me that goat cheese could work very nicely on it, so when we heated it up on day 2 I added some and it did indeed work very nicely. Otherwise, more ricotta could be nice but is certainly not essential. I was really interested to see how the crust would come out. I don't often cook with non-wheat flours, and some I have used, like rice flour, I am not a fan of. Grinding my own grain into flour was certainly a first too. It came out very well. A little toothier than regular crust because there's only so fine I can get flour in a coffee grinder, and a little sweeter. It was a bit darker too, and I must say that it came out looking a little rustic (which matched the wild flowers, so that's fine.) The only potential change I would make otherwise would be to begin roasting the carrots ahead of time, or parboil them next time to kick start their cooking process. Otherwise, I am thoroughly delighted with this dish, as were Hubby and Little One.

Recipe Cook time: 20-30 minutes + chill time 4 hours to overnight -- Portions: 4 -- Difficulty: Easy