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I checked a few of my cookbooks, hoping to find a recipe to start me off, but there didn't seem to be anything even in cookbooks I thought might have a cracker recipe (the Tolkein cookbook, as I thought homemade crackers might do for a Lembas reference, the Food DIY book, as it seemed inline with other recipes Here is the result: Ingredients: Base recipe: 1 c barley flour 1 c wheat flour 1/2 c + 2 tbsp butter

As things are beginning to settle down again though, I have some exciting recipes to share from the last It ended up being a different colour than I had originally pictured, both because of the pectin and because

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.

So I'm a little late in posting this, but we get spectacular apricots here in the summer, so while they were in season I decided to make jam. Rather than going traditional though, I thought I would try something a little different and add port to the jam to deepen the flavour a little. We then had to try them with scones and clotted cream... Ingredients: 2.5kg apricots, stoned and sliced 3c sugar 2 c Tawny port Water 1) Place apricots in a heavy-bottomed pan. Add enough water to cover the fruit and bring to a simmer. Stir in other ingredients. Put a saucer in the freezer. 2) Stir occasionally to prevent the jam from sticking. As it thickens you'll need to stir more consistently. 3) Taste test to check for sugar. I go light on sugar, you might want to use more. 4) When the jam looks as though it has thickened enough, drop some of the hot jam on the saucer from the freezer. If after a minute it 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). 5) To sterilize jars: boil clean jars and their lids for at least 15 minutes. Fill them with the boiling jam immediately on removing them from the boiling water (canning tongs make this so much easier and make it less likely that you'll burn yourself, but you can do it with a spoon or a spatula and a dishcloth). 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. I was very pleased with the result. The balance between the apricots, the port and the sugar was delightful. The jam worked well on scones or muffins but also in oatmeal and such. I will definitely be making this again!

I do love a soufflé, and since our time in South Africa when we got into making both sweet and savoury soufflés on a regular basis, they are something I come back to as an easy throw-together comfort food. With apple sauce and cheese on hand, this seemed just the thing for a light lunch with people coming around. Apple and cheese are flavours which I like so well together, too that it seemed an excellent opportunity to try them in this guise. Ingredients: For the flour mix: 1/4 c flour 1 tsp sage 1 tsp thyme Pepper 2 tbsp butter For the roux: 1 1/2 tbsp butter 1 1/2 tbsp flour mix 1/2 c milk 1/2 - 3/4 c apple sauce 1 1/2 tbsp apple cider vinegar 1 1/2 c cheese, grated (I used medium aged Gruyère) 2 egg yolks For the soufflé: 1 1/2 c roux 7 egg whites 1/2 c cheese, grated 1 tsp sumac 1 tsp thyme Salt and pepper to taste 1) Assemble the flour mix in a small bowl. Set aside 1 1/2 tbsp of this. Use the butter to grease the soufflé dish thoroughly. Dust the dish with the remaining flour mix, ensuring good coverage right up to the rim. Dump any excess flour out. 2) Make the roux. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the flour mix that was set aside, and stir well. Lower the heat and gradually stir in the milk, stirring continuously to avoid lumps. Add apple sauce and vinegar, and stir in cheese. Finally, beat in egg yolks. Set aside and cover the sauce pan to prevent a skin forming. 3) Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form. Mix about 1/3 of the egg whites into 1 1/2 c of the roux in a large bowl. Gently fold in the remaining whites. Salt and pepper to taste. 4) Carefully pour the roux and egg white mix into the prepared soufflé dish. Sprinkle the grated cheese, the sumac and the thyme over the top. Use a butter knife to gently loosen the soufflé from the side of the dish. 5) Place the soufflé dish in a larger oven proof dish at least half the depth of the soufflé dish. Pour boiling water into the larger pan, coming midway up the soufflé pan. Bake at 180°C for 25-30 minutes, leaving the oven door closed until the end of the bake time to prevent collapse. I was pleased with how this came out. I would be tempted to use sliced apple with it next time too, either lining the bottom or arranged on top of the soufflé. Once you sort of know what you're doing, these come together pretty quickly, and I love the cloud of flavoured egg that is scooped out onto plates. It works either as a main or as a side. Caveat. I did make a little too much roux for the size of my soufflé dish and so had some left over to use up in the following days.

Rosehips are ripening, and I decided to use some rosehip purée to trial a new muffin recipe. Hurray for a new rosehip recipe! I also decided to try something new with this recipe and baked these in the air fryer.

I was invited this week to take part in a collaboration on Instagram for International Tea day on the 21st of May and to put together an Afternoon Tea. In planning this, scones seemed almost a prerequisite. Continuing my earlier quest for scones that rise well without self-raising flour, at some altitude and without the taste of baking powder, I decided to try the use of some baking powder and some baking soda. Soda needs an acid to activate it, and without whey on hand this time, I decided to try using honey, which somewhat surprisingly is acidic. I didn't use any sugar and instead used about a tablespoon of honey, and my scones came out quite well. They didn't rise as much as I would have liked, so I will try again, increasing the quantities of soda and honey accordingly, but as a first attempt at this, they came out nicely and had a lovely flavour. Given the absence locally of clotted cream, I used Double Crème de Gruyère instead which worked delightfully. Ingredients: 1 1/2 c flour 1/2 c butter, cubed 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 1 tbsp honey 1/3 c milk 1/3 c raisins 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1) Place dry ingredients in a bowl. Add butter and rub together with the dry ingredients until they form a crumb-like consistency. 2) Add the honey and milk and stir with a fork, forming a thick dough. Mix in raisins and press dough together without kneading. 3) Roll out on a floured surface to about 1 1/2 cm thick and cut out rounds of the desired diameter. Place on a baking sheet and bake at 180°C for about 12 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm with butter or clotted cream and jam or honey for best results. These were very tasty and had a very nice crumb. I would have liked them to rise by about another 1/2 or 1 cm, but I was quite pleased with them doubling in size. They had a taste almost of cinnamon raisin bagels and were particularly nice with homemade Plum and Apple Jam. Book Pairing: I made these while listening to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. it is one of the few of hers that I had not previously read. My sister started reading it aloud to me a year ago on skype but we didn't get very far, so I decided to listen to it on my own instead and wrap it up. I found it thoroughly delightful, if a little frustrating in parts, and Austen's biting satire is as entertaining as ever. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

I wanted to play around with using fresh rose petals and thought a risotto might be a way of playing around with the flavours. It didn't come out quite as well as I had hoped, and the rose flavour was fainter than I had intended, but it was a tasty dinner and an interesting experiment, so I thought it worth sharing. Interestingly, the flavours came out more once I added some honey. Ingredients: 3 tbsp olive oil 1 onion, chopped 1 sweet potato, chopped 3 c fresh rose petals, mostly yellow 1 1/2 c Arborio rice 3/4 c whey 2 1/2 c rosé wine 1 c parmesan 1 tbsp honey 1) Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a saucepan and add the Arborio rice. Sauté until translucent then add the whey. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring frequently. 2) Meantime, heat the remaining oil in a frying pan and sauté onion until translucent. Add sweet potato and cook until tender. 3) Gradually add the rosé to the rice as the liquid is absorbed, and continue stirring. 4) When sweet potatoes are tender and just beginning to brown, add rose petals and cook, stirring, until they wilt. Set aside. 5) When the liquid has been absorbed into the rice and it is tender, add parmesan and stir in. Add honey and then vegetables. Serve hot. This one had mixed results. It may be that the combined whey and rosé were too acidic. Or it may be that the parmesan was too strong a flavour for the poor rose petals. Either way, initially, it was a little disappointing. Once we added the honey, it tasted nice, but not spectacular and the rose flavour was not very strong. I'd like to try rose petals in a water-based infusion next as they don't seem to be very lipophilic. In neither the oil nor the milk have they given up particularly strong flavours when fresh. Still a tasty dinner though, and as far as failures go, very definitely edible, although not what I had been aiming for.

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.

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