lime and goji berry quick bread with white chocolate drizzle

I am pleased to be participating in the Paper Chef cooking challenge. It resembles a lot of our daily cooking conundrums: looking at a disparate group of ingredients and wondering what to make. The Paper Chef challenge assigns four randomly picked ingredients and food bloggers try to make something out of them.

Paper Chef #57

Foodies in the US and Japan and many other parts of the world will be familiar with the "Iron Chef" cooking show. Great chefs are put up against one of the iron chefs in a rather over-the-top and dramatic cooking competition to see who can make the most spectacular food from a host of regular ingredients and one special ingredient - say octopus. There is a somewhat similar TV show in Britain called "Ready, Steady, Cook!" Paper Chef is based on a somewhat similar idea... and you're invited to take part!

pumpkin and peach salad with lemon grass dressing

This is salad that definitely got me out of a rut! The Paperchef challenge this month made me put together ingredients I would not have thought of combining before. But the results were brilliant. The challenge required that I use pumpkin, peach, capers, and lemon grass. Capers, mostly from France or Italy, and lemon grass, from Asia, do not seem like obvious friends. But they taste great together, and made a delicious main dish salad.

cranberry and date jammy biscuits (for Paperchef)

I seem to have an incurable sweet tooth. I have stopped trying to be rid of it and now I just try to manage my sweet intake. I enjoy three squares of dark chocolate each evening and looking forward to them keeps me from bingeing on sugar most of the time. And as for desserts, I have decided recently that it would be sensible to only eat dessert on social occasions. Then I really enjoy the company and the sweet stuff, and on "ordinary" days I avoid eating a whole batch of cookies myself.