I have a new love – pesto. I’ve always liked pesto but I’m re-discovering it and have never had it in a soup before. For Week 26 of the Cookbook Challenge, theme of Green, I did a Pistou Soup from cookbook “5 Nights a Week” Ingredients: 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 leek (white part only) finely chopped 1 carrot, cut into 1cm cubes 1 large potato, peeled, cut into 1cm cubes 2 cups...

Cookbook Challenge week 22, the theme is Red. When I think of red I think of beetroot, strawberries, tomato and paprika. Fortunately I couldn’t find a recipe that combined all of those ingredients (!) so I decided to have my main ingredient as paprika. I have a beautiful Hungarian cookbook, Culinaria Hungary. My mum bought me this book when it became apparent that I wasn’t very good at learning...

Week 17 of the Cookbook Challenge, theme is Vietnamese. The only remotely Vietnamese recipe I have in any of my cookbooks is Rice Paper Rolls, which I did back in week 10. On a recent trip to Vietnam I fell in love with Pho – a traditional and popular soup with rice noodles and thin strips of beef that you can have for breakfast, lunch and dinner…and for only about 70c a bowl it’s not just...

Week 16 of the Cookbook Challenge and the theme is Noodles. Surprisingly not a lot of my cookbooks have any noodle recipes in them. However as often happens, Jamie came to the rescue with the Ministry of Food book. Speaking of Jamie, if you haven’t already make sure you see his speech on educating kids about food at Ted.com Ingredients 1 tablespoon mixed seeds (pumpkin, poopy, sunflower) a small handfull...