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We were having a games night with some friends recently, so I decided to make nachos, as an easy finger-food nibble. Instead of fully loading them, I mixed the tortilla chips only with the Meat Sauce and cheese, and on the side, I had several dipping sauces - guacamole, Carrot Top Pesto, sour cream and this Roast Pepper Dip. Initially, I made this one really simple, with only peppers, garlic, some Kashmiri chilli and some olive oil. The taste test proved it to be rather bland though, so I added some bits. The taste came out quite interesting and unexpected - but tasty. Ingredients: 2 red peppers 1/2 head garlic 1 tbsp olive oil 1/2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder 1/2 tsp cacao powder 1 tsp sesame oil 1/2 tsp Black Sesame seeds Squeeze of lime juice Salt to taste 1) Roast the red peppers and the half head of garlic at 200°C for about 20-30 minutes, until they are soft and the skin of the peppers is beginning to char. 2) Leave the peppers and garlic to cool for a few minutes, then peel the peppers and remove the cores and the seeds. Squeeze the garlic out of its skin and place these and all the ingredients in a blender. Blitz until smooth. Serve with dippables. I was in a hurry before people arrived and tweaked the dip without giving it much thought, or having time to do it properly, so the dip came out a little differently than I had thought, but tasty nonetheless. It is even better a day or two later once the flavours have married. I might make it a little hotter in future, but didn't want to carpet bomb my friends' tastebuds. Then again, as it currently stands it is tasty too, so pick whatever suits your mood!

I've recently gotten into having Golden Milk in the evenings - that is, warm milk with turmeric and other spices. The first time I looked up a couple of recipes to get ideas of spice outlines, as it were, and then from there on out I started playing with the spicing. Some days it would be more golden, with warm spice notes behind it, another much milder, milk with a tinge of yellow and a hint of spices. Some days I include orange peel, sometime almond extract. Sometimes it is simple, just turmeric and one or two other notes, sometimes much more complex, a layering of tones and spices to achieve a rich flavour profile. Here are two of my favourites. Let me know what you think! Ingredients: For variation 1: 3 c milk 1-2 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp honey 1 tsp turmeric 1/2 tsp ginger 1/4 - 1/2 tsp cloves 1-2 tsp dried orange peel 1/4 tsp Aloha Spiced Cacao (original or chilli) For variation 2: 3 c milk 1 tsp turmeric 3/4 tsp cinnamon 1/4 tsp cloves 1 tsp honey 1/2 - 3/4 tsp almond extract 1/2 tsp grapefruit or orange peel (I've used both, but the grapefruit works better and is more powerful) 1/4 tsp Aloha Spiced Cacao 1) Pour milk into a saucepan and place over gentle heat. Add other ingredients and stir gently to distribute evenly. Bring to a simmer for 5 minutes. Taste test, tweak and serve. I find this drink perfect before bedtime. It is warm and comforting and hot milk has a soporific effect. I am a bit disappointed not to have tried this earlier, but I guess now is better than later or never. Let me know what you think of my variants, and what you do for yours!

As mentioned in Day 87 of The Challenge Butternut and chestnut seasons intersect! This was entirely experimental. I saw the title of this recipe elsewhere but didn't look at the recipe and then couldn't remember where I had seen it, so I made it up. I had no idea how this would turn out, but it was beautiful. The balance of sweet to acid with a little spice went very nicely. Ingredients: 1 butternut squash, halved and with the seeds scooped out 500g chestnuts, parboiled and peeled 3-4 tbsp olive oil 2-4 onions chopped 1 apple, chopped 1-2 tbsp apple cider vinegar 1 tsp sumac 1/8-1/4 nutmeg 1/4 tsp cloves 1-1 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp fenugreek seeds 2-3 c chicken broth 1/3 -1/2 c cream 2 tsp thyme Salt and pepper to taste Toasted pumpkin seeds to top 1) Place butternut, chestnuts, apple in a heavy skillet or a roasting pan ( I used my cast iron skillet) and drizzle with 2-3 tbsp of olive oil and the apple cider vinegar to achieve good coverage. Sprinkle the sumac, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and fenugreek seeds over it all and roast for 45 min-1 hour, until the butternut is tender. 2) Sauté onions in the remaining olive oil in the bottom of your soup pot until translucent and even a little charred. Add the contents of the skillet and mix it up ( the butternut should break up easily. Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes, allowing the flavours to meld. 3) Blitz until smooth, then taste test, adjusting any of the spicing or the vinegar. Salt and pepper to taste, and add cream to your taste too. I do recommend some, but how much you do is up to you. Serve and sprinkle with thyme and pumpkin seeds. I absolutely loved this and I am so glad I tried it! The roasting at the start lengthened the cook time a little, but then pulling the soup bit together went really quickly, so it's six and two threes really compared to other souping. The truly lengthy bit is peeling the chestnuts if you use fresh ones, but then I find it quite zen to settle into a task like that. The other option is to use frozen ones that come pre-peeled. In any case, this soup hit all the right notes for me (and hubby and Little Bit) and I hope it does for you too.

As mentioned in Day 80 of The Challenge Quinces are something that (aside from being seasonal! I know! So many seasonal fruits and vegetables in the autumn!) I had only really encountered in jelly or in preserves until recently. And then a couple of years ago a colleague came to work with a bucket of quinces from her garden for anyone to help themselves, and so I started playing around with them. They are like fuzzy green stones, pear-shaped wannabes when they are raw. They need a bit of cooking, usually boiling (I tried roasting one and it sort of worked) to make them edible. This is the first (or one of the first) savoury things I tried with them. As with so many other recipes, it is one I had seen the title of but then lost the recipe link before reading it, so I made it up. Ingredients: 2 onions, chopped 1 tbsp olive oil 600g of carrots, chopped 1 large quince, chopped 1 tbsp honey 2 tsp sumac 1 tsp garam masala 1 tsp cinnamon 1/4 tsp cloves Salt and pepper to taste Herbs de Provence 1) In a soup pot, sauté onions in the olive oil until translucent. Add carrots and quince and enough water to cover it all. Add spices and honey. Simmer for 45 min or until carrots and quince are tender. 2) Blitz until smooth (or almost. Quince won't go silky smooth like some other vegetables). Taste test and salt and pepper to taste. Serve with garlic and thyme croutons. This was very tasty but my husband said he found it too earthy and sweet. Adding the herbs at the end brightened it all up though and brought the flavours into alignment. Some lemon juice might also work. Let me know what you think!

I heard that watermelon rind is edible and that it makes nice jam or chutney so I wanted to give it a try. I celebrated our first watermelon of the season by saving the rind until the melon was all gone and then having a go at chutney. Here is the recipe I came up with. The rind has a mild, but pleasant flavour which I combined with some apple and red onion for a chutney. I did have to blend it a little, which I don't generally do with jams or chutneys as the rind didn't break down much even after considerable simmering. It just stayed in the little cubes I had cut, so blitzing it briefly gave the chutney a more even consistency. Ingredients: Rind of 1 small watermelon, diced 3 red onion, diced 1 apple, diced 3/4 c herb vinegar 1 tsp salt 3/4 c sugar 1 red chilli, diced 2 tsp (or more) red chili flakes - I used pul biber 1) Place watermelon rind in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until almost tender. Add other ingredients and cook for a further 30 minutes or so. 2) Blitz briefly until chunky-smooth (chutney consistency) and taste test. Place in hot, sterile jars while chutney is still hot and seal, allowing to cool. I am really pleased with how this came out. I wasn't sure what to expect nor really what direction to go with it, so proceeded by taste testing and adjusting. The apple went in both for taste and to add pectin to help it all come together. We've tried it with crackers and cheese and a couple of sun dried tomatoes and it held up well! With the next watermelon, I think I am going to try watermelon jam....

I only discovered rose-hips two years ago, My brother-in-law mentioned them as one of our rose bushes wasn't being pruned. My grandmother and I started harvesting them and turned it into a whole enterprise, cleaning them and prepping them. Rose-hips are the fruit of the rose which grows from the base of the bud after the flower becomes overblown - if it is not pruned. They grow wild as well as on domestic rose bushes and can be a treat along a walking trail. They are bright red when ripe and vary in size and shape, some being squat spheres, others being more ovaloid. Prepping them involves removing the seeds and small hairs attached to the seeds as these used to be used as itching powder - less than pleasant if left in food. Removing the seeds and hairs involves either turning the rose-hips into purée by soaking in boiling water then passing through a food mill or a sieve, or deseeding and drying. Both are a bit of work, the latter more so, but worth the effort I find. On their own, rose-hips are quite tart, and are very high in vitamin C. I like the idea of using a food that we had harvested from our garden. More local and organic would be hard to find. It was also a fun time spent together, just the two of us harvesting and processing buckets of rose-hips. Some of these we made jam with and some we deseeded and dried (excellent in porridge with apple juice and cinnamon). Only last year did I start expanding what I used them in, both sweet and savoury, This was an experimental soup, no recipe, just taste test and tweak as needed. Ingredients: 600ml Rose-hip purée 600ml water 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped 1 onion, roughly diced 1 knob of ginger, minced 3 carrots, roughly chopped 2 small-medium potatoes A handful of spinach or Swiss chard or some such 1 tsp honey 2tsp olive oil 2 tsp chilli flakes - I used Turkish Urfa biber -Smoked chilli flakes. A handful of fresh basil Salt and pepper to taste 1) Heat oil in a small saucepan. When it starts to shimmer add onion, garlic and ginger. Stir them and cook until they start to crisp. The browned garlic, onion and ginger add a nice-counter balance to the tartness of the rose-hips. 2) Add the potato and carrot and stir for a minute before adding the rose-hip purée and water, then the rest of the ingredients. Be sure and taste test as perfect tart-sweet-heat balance for me may not be right for you. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with crusty bread and enjoy! As an experiment this worked rather well. It was refreshing but flavourful, especially on a hot day, with mild heat and a well rounded flavour, hitting heat, tart and sweet notes.. We have soup most days for lunch and this provided a tasty variation to most soup bases. I hope you enjoy!

Skip the toast and it's gluten free. Play around with it! This one came out beautifully.

In early December, a very good friend of mine was visiting us and we made Christmas Butterballs to celebrate. True to form, I didn't double-check my pantry first and it turned out that we were missing the necessary walnuts. I gave my friend the choice between almonds and hazelnuts to replace the walnuts. Her response was unequivocal. Hazelnuts! They are her favourite, and although ubiquitous here, since moving to the US, they are less common and harder to find. We made the Butterballs with the hazelnuts, and all enjoyed them greatly, but this got me thinking. A lot of our Christmas Cookies require almonds, but how much difference do these make to the actual taste and substance of the cookies. I enjoyed the hazelnut butterballs but missed the originals, whereas Hubby and my friend both liked them better, so clearly it does make a difference, but how much? So I decided to try the Cinnamon Stars, which have ground almonds as their base, using hazelnuts substituted in for the almonds. And then as I thought about it further, hazelnut and cacao seemed like such a natural pairing that I decided to try some chocolatey ones and some regular ones, each variety with and without icing. Ingredients: For the plain ones: 3 egg whites a pinch of salt 1 1/2 c powdered sugar 3 c ground hazelnuts 2 tbsp cinnamon 2 tsp kirsch For the chocolate ones: 3 egg whites a pinch of salt 1 c powdered sugar 1/2 c cacao 3 c ground hazelnuts 2 tbsp cinnamon 2 tsp kirsch 2 tbsp sugar for rolling 1) Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt to form stiff peaks. Fold in the powdered sugar and set aside 2 tbsp for the icing. If using, fold in cacao at this point. 2) Mix in the nuts, cinnamon and kirsch to form a stiff dough. Roll out 1 cm thick on a sugared surface and cut out shapes. 3) Lay out on a cookie sheet (preferably greased or with a silicone sheet) and ice with a little dollop of the icing. 4) Allow to rest for 5 hours or overnight. Bake at 250°C for 5 minutes. So the consensus was that these were good, and the hazelnuts worked well for this, including with the cinnamon, but... All the cookie cutters are at my house and we are at my parents' so these are all round, despite the name. Small wine glasses are perfect for this. I do recommend a silicone sheet because the plain batch I allowed to cool on the cookie sheet for a couple of minutes, and they were cemented to the tray. Also, I believe that this oven runs a little hot. Pulled out at time, and the second batch at 4 minutes, both batches were a little darker than would have been ideal. Next time, I would do them at 240°C for 4 minutes like the Basler cookies. I also rolled mine out too thin which compounded the problem, so I do recommend making sure they are thick enough. Further, the chocolate ones were too chocolatey and the cinnamon paled into insignificance behind it. the chocolatey ones worked better with the icing as the extra sugar balanced out the flavour of the cookie while the plain ones were better uniced and definitely did not need extra sugar. I would like to try these with only 2 tbsp or 1/4 c cacao instead of a full third of the sugar content - make them hazelnut and cinnamon biscuits with cacao and not chocolate biscuits with a bit of cinnamon and some hazelnuts for texture.

This year, I accidentally planted lemon mint on my balcony instead of a variety I might be more familiar with and like more, like, say, peppermint or spearmint. Ironically, the lemon mint is one of the few of my plants to have flourished this year. I planted more things too early, then we had late snow and frost which wiped a lot of my plants out. I replanted and hoped for the best. Then the spring was very rainy and drowned a number of them. Then we had hail. Twice. A lot of plants were flattened. In and amongst weather catastrophes, was Little Bit, who delights in tearing up my plants by the roots, or picking the leaves off of them to make mud soup in his paddling pool. Through all this, the mint survived. I was delighted until I made tea with it and discovered that the flavour was not quite what I was expecting. I wondered if there had been black tea left in the bottom of the pot? No. I tried again. It still tasted odd: at once muddier than regular mint and more acidic, but without mint's typical freshness. I left the plant alone for a bit and wondered what to do with it. And then I hit on the idea of a pesto. It took a little tweaking, but it worked out well in the end. I had to add a little water to get the blender to work properly, and then it was too wet as well as needing a grounding note, so I added some stale bread to the blender. If your consistency is ok without it though, skip the bread. I also gradually increased the amount of garlic. As the pesto is raw, I was worried that too much garlic would be overpowering, but the pesto really did need it. Here it is. Ingredients: 3-4 c fresh lemon mint leaves 3-4 tbsp olive oil 1/4 c pine nuts 1/2 head garlic 1/4 c water 1/4 c bread crumbs Juice of 1/2 lemon 1/2 c grated parmesan Salt and pepper to taste 1) Blend all ingredients until smooth. Taste test. I am happy with how this came out. It doesn't taste overpoweringly minty (but then, neither does the parent plant) but has a nice balance to it. We had this first with sandwiches. The minty pesto worked very well on wholegrain seedy bread with cheese and sausage for lunch. We have also tried it with spinach and ricotta tortellini, and it was delicious. Little Bit refused to try it, but then he doesn't like any sauce on his tortellini.

I love yogurt. Until relatively recently, though, aside from Tzatziki, it was a sweet food, usually for breakfast. Even plain yogurt, which is more sour than sweet, I considered a food to be had with oats and raisins, or with syrup on a crêpe. For lunch though? Maybe muesli, but even then, I consider that more sweet than savoury, loaded up as it is with fruit. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I discovered borani, a savoury Persian yogurt dish. The yogurt is flavoured with herbs and spices, salt and pepper and served with vegetables. I started out following recipes for it, but have since gone my own way. I've enjoyed playing around with different veggie toppings and herb or spice combos too. It is no longer what you might call "authentic" but it is tasty! I also love that it is tasty eaten at room temperature, and within reason, it doesn't need to be refrigerated. I found that it worked well as a packed lunch when working in a refugee camp, for example, where we had no microwave and no fridge. Here's our most recent one. Ingredients: 3 c yogurt 1 tsp sumac 1 tsp herbes de Provence 1 tsp Thyme 2 c spinach 1 tbsp butter 2 onions, sliced 2 tbsp olive oil 2 tbsp pine nuts, toasted Salt and pepper 1) Strain yogurt through a cheese cloth until thickened to the desired consistency. Mix with herbes de Provence, thyme and sumac, salt and pepper to taste. 2) Wilt spinach and sauté briefly with butter. 3) Heat oil in a frying pan. Fry onions over medium high heat until crispy. 4) Assemble bowls, first a dollop of yogurt, then some spinach, some onions and a sprinkling of pine nuts. Incredibly quick to assemble and at once refreshing and filling without being heavy, this was the perfect lunch last week after a morning bike ride with Little Bit. It was a lot of steep uphill (and then a much quicker descent) so I was happy to be able to plate up something quick when we got home. I made this using home-made yogurt which we'd left out a little too long, so the flavour had ripened a little. For breakfast, the flavour was a bit much, but mixed with herbs and spices for a lunch borani, it was perfect.