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Last night at dinner, à propos of nothing whatsoever, Little Bit declared amusingly that he wanted to make pear sorbet... with spices, maybe...and squeeze in some lemon. So today, that is what we did, although at the last minute, he decided against spices. What better occupation for a snowy day, with the thermometer at -10°C all day, than making a frozen dessert? I must add though, that having received a new ice cream maker for Christmas (the 30-year-old one from my parents finally gave up the ghost), I was not opposed to this idea. Below are two variations on the method, one with an ice cream maker, and one without. Ingredients: 2 c of pear, chopped up 3/4 c water 3/4 c light brown sugar juice of 1 lemon 1) Bring water and sugar to a boil, then reduce heat. Stir until the sugar has dissolved to create a simple syrup, then set aside to cool. 2) Blend pear, lemon juice and syrup until smooth. Taste test. 3) Set aside in fridge until cool, then pour into ice cream maker as per instructions. OR: 2) Place pear chunks in freezer, spread on a tray in a single layer, until frozen. 3) Blend frozen pear, lemon juice and simple syrup. Taste test and place in freezer. I had wanted to make this with either maple sugar instead of the brown sugar or a dash of maple syrup but discovered that I was out of maple sugar, and the only maple syrup in the house was bourbon flavoured, so I gave that a miss. On the whole though, I was very happy with both the sorbet and the ice cream maker. The sorbet was nice and simple. Most importantly though, the instigator of this whole thing was happy with it. Definitely a keeper! We tried it on its own, then also as a Sundae (on Saturday) with toasted almonds, warm chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Oh the decadence! I might still try another version with some cinnamon and maybe a little of something else, or an elderflower and pear sorbet, but that is for another day. For now, there is very tasty sorbet to eat.

Inherited, I think, from my grandmother, one of my favourite flavour combinations is maple walnut. As I have been playing around with making bagels, I decided I wanted to try to apply that flavour combo to bagels, although I have never seen that before. I didn't however, want to make a sweet bagel, so rather than using maple syrup or maple sugar to impart the maple flavour, I decided to use ground fenugreek, often used as a maple substitute. Ingredients: 2 c whole meal flour 2 1/4 c white flour 1 1/2 tsp fenugreek powder 2 tsp maple syrup 1 1/4 c water 1/2 cube yeast 1/2 tbsp salt 1/2 c walnuts Cornmeal Maple Syrup 1) In a small saucepan, heat the water to about body temperature - it should be warm, but still cool enough that a (clean) pinky finger dipped in it is comfortable for 10 seconds. Dissolve the yeast in the water with the maple syrup and leave for a few minutes. 2) Combine flours, fenugreek and salt in a mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. Add yeast and water and stir together, gradually incorporating flour from around the well. When the dough has come together, knead on a clean, floured surface for about 10 minutes until the dough is homogenous and elastic. Towards the end, knead in the walnuts as you go. 3) Place in a clean bowl and leave to rise, covered, in a warm spot for an hour, or until doubled in size. 4) Knock back the dough and divide into 8 roughly even balls. Here you have two options. Either: roll into snakes, then join the ends of these to make rings or: Roll into balls, then poke a thumb through the balls. With your thumb in the hole, gradually widen it, working the dough around so as to have an even, uniform thickness to the dough with a round hole in the middle or: create a ball and push it down over a bagel mould. 5) Place rings on a baking tray sprinkled liberally with cornmeal, cover and place in the fridge for 8 hours or overnight to proof. 6) Remove the rings from the fridge. Fill a heavy-bottomed pot with water. Stir in maple syrup. There should be enough maple syrup for the water to look like moderately strong tea. Place a test ring in the water. If it floats, you are ready to go. If not, dry it off and allow the bagels to come to room temperature. 7) When the water comes to a boil, reduce the heat to bring the water to a simmer. A few at a time, poach the bagels for about half a minute on each side, then fish them out and drain on a wire rack. 8) Sprinkle the baking tray with fresh cornmeal, then place the drained bagels back on the tray and bake at 240°C for 15 - 20 minutes until golden. These came out very nicely, and I was very pleased with the way the flavours came out. This is definitely one to make again, especially with homemade cream cheese and honey, or even just butter, to melt into hot bagels... I was channelling my grandmother and must thank my sister for getting me into making bagels with a gift of moulds for Christmas last year. (I forgot to take a picture of the baked bagels, so here are some everything bagels instead).

Easily tweaked to be vegetarian, too.

We had leftover Broccoli and Fennel Tart for lunch, but not enough of it for a whole meal. We are going away for the weekend so I wanted to draw down on what we have rather than picking up more food. With a kilo of carrots in the fridge and a large chunk of ginger, a warm "salad" seemed ideal, especially for a cold, rainy day. It could just as easily be served over rice or couscous or something and become a more substantial meal though, or even have chunks of meat added to it to make it a main. We had it as described here below though, and aside from maybe a little fresh coriander, I wouldn't change anything. I spiralised the carrots and ginger (my first time spiralising ginger. I got mixed results), but they could just as easily be chopped or julienned. It was just the quickest, easiest way for me. Ingredients: 5 carrots, spiralised 3 inches of ginger (ish) spiralised or chopped 1/2 head of garlic, crushed (ours was a very big head. If yours is smaller, 1 regular head should do). 1 1/2 tbsp peanut oil 1 tbsp soy sauce 2 tsp pomegranate molasses 1 tsp nigella seeds 1/2 - tsp Aloha Chilli Spiced Cacao 1 tsp white sesame seeds 1 tsp black sesame seeds 1) Heat oil in a small wok or a frying pan. Add ginger and garlic and fry until fragrant, allowing a few of the pieces to brown a little. Add carrots and stir. 2) Add other ingredients aside from sesame seeds and cook for 5 minutes until the carrots are beginning to become tender. Add sesame seeds and cook for another minute, then serve. This was super tasty! I would not change anything. I had help cooking it (hence the second spatula in the picture) and Little Bit could stuff it into his mouth fast enough once it was ready (after brief protestations of "hothothot").

Over a year ago, I made mead. It came out a little rougher than I had hoped, but much better than I had feared. I decided at that point to leave it to age to see whether it would improve, and planned also to try mulling it in the winter. For some reason, I never got around to mulling it last winter before finding out that I was expecting a Littler Bit, and therefore no longer drinking boozy things. It was therefore only now, with a Littler Bit happily swaddled in her Moses basket, that my sister, hubby and I decided to try mulling the remaining mead from a year ago. And how glad I am that we did! Don't worry if you haven't tried brewing your own, store-bought mead will work too, so don't let that stop you. Ingredients: 6 c mead 1 tbsp maple sugar 1 tbsp honey 1 tbsp dried orange peel 1 cinnamon stick 6 cloves 1) Place all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, and cook for about a half hour or longer to allow spiced to infuse. Drink hot. We very much enjoyed this. So much so in fact, that we are brewing a new batch of mead in order to have some for mulling purposes at Christmas. We did discover that leaving the mulled mead overnight, it was even better on day 2. I may even mull it a day or so early next time.

We also discovered that the scones made good picnic food, alongside our vegetarian Scotch eggs.

I really liked the first Rose Cake recipe I came up with in versions 1 and 2, but I wanted to try again using fresh petals. To try out two different ways of incorporating the rose into the cake, I split the butter cake batter and tried two versions. In version 3, I soaked the petals (mostly red this time) in the milk and then strained them out and continued with the batter normally. For version 4, I blitzed red rose petals into the milk before incorporating this into the batter. This turned out to be the best version, so it is the one I am including below! For these cupcakes, I made a butter frosting, incorporating rose petals blitzed with milk into a normal butter frosting. It was beautiful! This frosting also worked very nicely with lemon cupcakes, too, just, you know, if you're in that kind of a mood. Ingredients: For the cake: 1 3/4 c sugar 2/3 c butter 2 eggs 2 3/4 c flour 2 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 1/4 c milk 1/2 c fresh rose petals, roughly chopped For the frosting: 1/2 c butter, soft 1/2 - 3/4 c cream cheese, soft 1c (ish - this boils down to taste) powdered sugar 1/2 c fresh rose petals, roughly chopped 3 tbsp milk 1) Blitz together milk and rose petals. Let sit for 30 minutes to allow the rose flavour to infuse the milk. 2) Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. 3) Mix flour and baking powder together, and add alternately with milk, starting and ending with flour. Mix well and pour into a prepared pan or cupcake tins and bake 30 -35 minutes at 177°C. Remove and cool on a wire rack. 4) Place butter and cream cheese in a bowl and beat until fluffy and homogenous. Gradually add the powdered sugar, taste testing until you like it. 5) Blitz rose petals with milk until smooth. Incorporate into frosting. Frost cake or cupcakes. I added slightly too much milk to my rose petals, so the frosting came out as more of a drizzle than a frosting, but it was very tasty just the same. The cake was light, fluffy and moist with a very nice crumb and a delicate rosy flavour. It was slightly bluish though because of the colouring of the rose petals once blitzed. I do want to try it with yellow rose petals for comparison, but so far, I am more than happy to stick with this.

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.

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!

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.