Spicy Red Tomato, Pepper and Squash Chutney

The last of the tomato and pepper plants in the greenhouse are fading now that the days are getting shorter. So we've picked what was left, ripe or no.

Time for another batch of chutney.

I've been looking at recipes for indian tomato pickles, and so whilst this recipe is based on the Red Tomato Chutney from Home Preservation of Fruits and Vegetables, I have completely changed the spices used, and substituted peppers and squash for some of the tomatoes.

Ham Risotto in the Rice Cooker

I make a lot of Asian-inspired rice cooker dishes, but tonight I fancied a more European flavour to my rice.

Rice cookers can be subverted into cooking a risotto. The trick lies in how a rice cooker works. A basic rice cooker heats the carefully measured water and rice mixture until the water evaporates, at which point the temperature rises above 100C and the rice cooker switches off.

To cook a risotto, you need to add more water than the rice needs to cook through, and manually switch off the rice cooker when the rice has finished cooking.

Best of all - with the rice cooker risotto method, there is no need to stand over the pan constantly stirring and adding liquid!

Butternut Squash and Fava Bean soup, with a Morrocan twist

It's Friday, which means that it's time to invent something to use up whatever odds and ends there may be in the kitchen.

There's a butternut squash lurking from last week's veg box, and a tub of homemade stock in the freezer that needs using up, so it looks like we have a soup.

Now vegetable soup generally means some lentils or split peas to thicken and add protein. So an excuse to try the British-grown split Fava beans from Hodmedods that arrived in a Flavrbox. And then there's the tin of Ras el Hanout, that arrived that way too, ready to give a mild spiciness to it all...

Time to get out the pressure cooker.