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Challenge update: On day 9, we had a beautiful roast veg salad, with corn, courgette, beetroot, feta, mushroom and onions, with roast artichoke and home-made aioli. We also pre-prepared cabbage dumplings ( inspiration from our Persia cookbook by Naomi Duguid) for today, Day 10. A little labour intensive but worthwhile. It was pre-prepared however as she recommended serving cold. We found however that the dumplings were much tastier hot than cold. Also, as good as the dumplings were, the filling is worth making on its own. The cabbage wrapping did add something, but not necessarily enough for it to be worth the work.

As mentioned in Day 6 of The Challenge This started as part of a soufflé craze the we and some friends went through in South Africa. I can't remember how it started, but for the year that we lived there we made all sorts of soufflés, sweet and savoury, most of which were without recipes, just trials of our own devising. This particular one appeared after Thanksgiving. We had cooked down a whole giant pumpkin to make pie and had extra pumpkin pie filling, so we used it to make soufflé. I really enjoyed revisiting it, on request of a sister. Soufflés unfortunately have a reputation for being delicate and difficult, but I've found that essentially a medium-thick roux with the right number of egg yolks and stiff egg whites mixed in usually comes out perfectly (unfortunately this one deflated before I managed to take a picture, but it had risen beautifully and was light and fluffy). Ingredients: 3/4 c pumpkin purée 1/2 c brown sugar 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1/2 tsp of ground ginger 1/4 tsp of ground cloves 1 tbsp melted butter 1 tbsp milk (or condensed milk, but this will make it sweeter. Do feel free to adjust this and the sugar to suit your tastes.) 2 tbsp of orange zest 2 egg yolks 6 egg whites Butter and cinnamon sugar to coat soufflé dish 1) Preheat oven to 200°C. Mix pumpkin purée, brown sugar, spices, butter, milk, egg yolks and orange zest. Beat whites to stiff peaks. 2) Add 1/3 of egg whites to pumpkin mixture and gently mix it in, then fold in remaining whites. 3) Butter a medium-sized soufflé dish and sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar OR prepare 6 individual ramequin dishes. This allows the soufflé to rise without sticking to the sides of the dish. 4) Bake for 25-30 minutes for a medium-sized dish OR 8-10 minutes for individual ones WITHOUT opening the oven door until the end. It should be firm but soft and airy. Serve plain, with cream, ice cream or meringues. I love this soufflé! The original pumpkin pie recipe that we used is my husband's grandmother's, but the soufflé is entirely ours. Just as good this time as previously, and definitely worth having a light dinner and this afterwards. Do eat it fresh out of the oven as it collapses quickly and just isn't the same. A similar concept does work for cake mixes too, like black velvet or carrot cake, or other soufflé bases like baked apple. Let me know if there's another one you would like me to post on here :)

Challenge update: I originally had other plans for today's dinner but received a new cast iron crêpe pan from my father today, so I had no choice but to try it out for dinner... Traditional fillings and a trial couple at the end too, with dates, pumpkin and mozzarella. Recipe here!

Challenge update: Picnic on a hike for lunch and then sandwiches for dinner made way for... Pumpkin pie soufflé this evening. Because we are responsible adults making completely responsible and healthy choices at all times. It was a request from a sister, to include this recipe on the site, and, tough as it was to fall on that sword, we did so for the sake of the blog and the challenge, and it was totally worth it :) Here is the recipe.

As mentioned in Day 6 of the Challenge Courtesy of my husband who had complained about not having time to cook recently and said that he wanted to make ramen noodle soup at some point. So while I painted the crib, he made dinner. Light and refreshing, filling and very tasty. Easily tweaked to be vegetarian, too. Ingredients: 2 noodle nests 1 knob of ginger, grated Half a head of garlic, grated 2 carrots, grated Handful of batwing mushrooms, 1 cup of spinach 1 cup of cabbage, chopped 3 cups of chicken broth 1 1/2 tbsp cooking sake 2 tbsp soy sauce 4 cups of water 2 tbsp peanut oil 2 eggs A handful of chives 1) Fry garlic and ginger in oil until golden brown and fragrant. Add water and broth. 2) Simmer for a few minutes before adding carrot, cabbage and batwings. Add sake and soy sauce. Cook 10 minutes. 3) Add spinach and noodles and cook until done. 4) Meanwhile boil eggs for 1 minute then remove from the heat and leave for 10 minutes. Peel, slice in half and place them on top of the noodles with chives. This came out super tasty. Not too heavy after a hot day but still filling and nourishing. It would have benefitted from a handful of fresh coriander instead of chives had our plant not gone to seed... I was very grateful to hubby for cooking it and hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

As mentioned in Day 5 of The Challenge This was another experiment. It being mid August, it's been rather hot here the last few days so the desire for a cold soup at lunch was strong. My basil plant is doing tremendously well now that I've figured out where it is happiest on the balcony. It was going wild, bushy and quite tall, so I thought a cold basil soup might be refreshing for lunch. I had no real idea of how exactly to go about it until I started, but start I did and this is what it got me. Just skip the goats cheese to make this soup vegan. Ingredients: Fresh basil, about 5 cups pre-chopping, roughly chopped 1 tbsp olive oil 3 cloves of garlic, sliced 1 onion, chopped 2 carrots, roughly chopped 1 small potato, chopped 1 tomato, chopped 2 cups of spinach Black pepper and salt, to taste 1/2 tsp sumac 2 tbsp lemon juice Thick sliced bread - 2-3 slices per person Goat cheese - 1 slice per bread slice Cherry tomatoes 1) Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and add onions and garlic. Sauté until translucent then add carrots and potato. Allow to cook for a few minutes until softening, 2)Add the tomato, spinach and basil. Add water. Simmer for a couple of minutes then remove from the heat. Blend until smooth. Add pepper and sumac and the lemon juice. Chill 3) While the soup is chilling, prepare the crostini. Put the bread under the grill in the oven at about 200°C for a few minutes, then once the first side is toasted, flip them over. Allow the second side to toast for a few minutes then put the cheese on top and allow to melt and begin to crisp at the edges. 4) Slice the cherry tomatoes in half and place on top of the goat cheese for 5 minutes. Serve warm with the chilled soup with an extra splash of lemon juice or balsamic as needed. As an experiment this worked rather well, although I think in future it might benefit from cooking a bit less and from a reduction in spinach to really allow the basil to shine through better. It was flavourful and refreshing though, matching beautifully with the goat cheese toasts. A worthy use of my basil plant!

Challenge update: Today was really bat-wing mushroom day. We have a whole packet of them dried and rehydrated a bowl full yesterday, so they went in lunch and dinner today. The miso soup, with tuna and cucumber, was tasty and very quick and easy, a bonus with an 8 month old and a crib to paint, and the ramen, courtesy of my husband was refreshingly light and yet tasty and satisfying after a very hot day. Both were a success and truly hit the spot. Here is the bat-wing ramen recipe.

As mentioned in Day 3 & 4 of The Challenge I love curry. It is one of my favourite foods. Some have heat, others don't. Some curries are vegetarian while others are unashamedly carnivorous. The colours, the smells and the flavours are all enticing. A year in Nepal gave me a good spice tolerance and an appreciation of the different flavours. I love that curry comes in so many different forms, from different places across the globe with different spices and blends. I have a spice cupboard that is too big for my own good. Not everything in it is labelled, others have labels like "soup spice", a meaningless name given to a blend by a spice vendor somewhere. I cook mostly by taste and smell, and the imagined combinations of things matched mentally before they are added. Most of my curries are probably not recognisable as any specific thing to anyone native to anywhere that actually makes curry, and I would love to have all the know-how about using spices, and which to add when in order to layer flavours that I might, were I from one of the cultures, but instead I play and experiment. And usually, things turn out well. This was one of those. I wanted to test the properties of fenugreek seeds a bit more, we had a pumpkin that needed using, and I thought it might go well with the sweeter spices that I wanted to use. This curry does not pretend to be authentic anything, or from anywhere except my kitchen, but it's good. Ingredients: 2 tsp mustard seeds 2 tsp cumin seeds 2 tsp fenugreek seeds 2 tbsp peanut oil a handful of dried orange peel 1/4 - 1/2 pumpkin (small), cubed 1 red onion and 1 white, diced 1 head of garlic, sliced 1 large knob of ginger, peeled and diced 2 long red chillis, sliced 1 tbsp red curry paste 1 courgette 2 carrots 1 red pepper 1/4 - 1/2 white summer squash 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp urfa biber (Turkish pepper) 1/4 tsp cloves 2 tsp cumin 3 c water 2 tsp Aloha Spiced Cacao Juice of 1/4 lemon 1) Heat oil in a pot. Add seeds and orange peel. Cook until the spices are fragrant and the mustard seeds start to pop. I tried a fenugreek seed at this point and it was sweet and perfumed, only the slightest hint of bitterness. 2) Add onions, garlic and ginger to the spices and cook until translucent, then add the pumpkin. Turn the heat down and, adding 2 cups of water, simmer gently for about 20-30 minutes. 3) Add other ingredients except for lemon juice and simmer further until vegetables are tender. 4) Add lemon juice 5 minutes before dishing. Serve over rice and eat hot. This turned out beautifully. It was warming and had some heat to it but without blowing your head off. I thought the spices played off each other particularly nicely. The cocoa spice was a late addition to add a deeper note that was lacking, and then the lemon juice came in to brighten it up. I had intended to toast the seeds instead of frying them, but was distracted by Little Bit's dinner, and had intended to add red lentils (initially I had planned on dal for dinner before things evolved), but forgot those too until doing clean up at the end. Overall it was very satisfying and I would definitely make it again. It did have a bit of a dry tongue after effect though. I am wondering if that was the fenugreek. My husband's guess was the cumin, but that was minimally dosed. I've never had that effect before despite using a lot of cumin all the time. Something to investigate further.

Challenge update: My basil plant has gone completely wild, so I decided it was time for a trim and made basil soup with goat cheese toast for lunch. It turned out well but could have done with longer to chill. Dinner was quick and easy after painting a crib until I lost daylight - omelettes with curry paste (I know this is turning up a lot, but I have a jar in the fridge and so...) and vegetables. Quick easy and filling. Recipes to the basil soup is available here .

Challenge update: Day 3 was left-over day, so nothing to write home about. Day 4 we had a pumpkin curry, continuing to explore the uses of fenugreek seeds. It was nicely balanced, although needing a slight tweak due to a dryness in the after taste. The spice leanings were sweeter, with cinnamon, cocoa spice and cloves along with the fenugreek seeds. It did have some heat though, and I feel that the balance of sweet to savoury, low and high notes and deeper and brighter notes was successful. Served with rice, it made a very good supper. Find the recipe here!