Foraging with the last of the Vikings

Papa Johansen manhandling a blackberry bush

“I’ll never retire,” dad spluttered, banging his fists on the kitchen table for emphasis “a true viking dies in battle!” to which my mother and I could only politely smile and exchange all too knowing glances.

No doubt both of us were thinking – uncharitably I’ll admit – that dad’s hopes of expiring in an epic battle clobbering the dastardly enemy were somewhat dashed by his having worked in plastics for nigh on forty years. They’re not a violent lot, the men and women toiling away in ever-shrinking manufacturing industries. Though now that the Tories are back in government who knows, some disgruntled guerrillas up north may see fit to deploy combustible coilers to teach the slash n’ burn Tories a lesson. Days of perforated pipes oozing sewage may lie ahead. Mock the men in plastics at your peril!

Whilst dad may not realise his dream of entering Valhalla on the back of having slain the enemy (who? the Swedes? the Russians? Dad’s sisters? My evil aunts certainly merit a thrashing), he has all the instincts of a true Viking.

Which is why every summer when we go foraging I get distracted by bugs and spiders crawling all over the place and my irascible dad exercises his superb skills as a frustrated forager/farmer/hunter, deploying those great big bear paws to such good effect that we snaffle hundreds, if not thousands of wild berries.

Think the berries are too high up? Dad goes and breaks off a long branch of a nearby tree. A branch that just happens to be a perfect ergonomic fit for yanking a stubborn blackberry bush down from high above.

Start of blackberry season

So off dad and I totter along a path on the outskirts of Chichester, West Sussex and spend a few hours picking wild blackberries one sunny August afternoon, if anything to bring dad’s blood pressure down after his outburst about retirement and subsequent rant about Ganga Rolf, Rollo, the Orkneys and most probably whisky. Any good story dad tells involves whisky.

There were plenty of people around while we foraged; cyclists out for the day, kids being kids and setting fire to public bins, a few grannies out for their daily constitutional giving us the evil eye (grannies know how to harness food from the wild, let me tell you) yet we were pretty much on our own for the duration of the afternoon.

Plenty more where these came from

We may not have had a long, hot and glorious summer but there’s still plenty of food to be found in the wild. Don’t take my word for it, take the big bear Johansen’s. A more resourceful man I have yet to meet. And better father-daughter quality time I could not have asked for.

And when we were finished depleting the West Sussex countryside of blackberries I was of course stuck making all the jam. Plus ça change.

Jam for winter

Daim Cake

Daim, sweet Daim

Daim chocolate and cheese may not strike you as the most kosher of pairings but chocolate cheesecake exists right? Incidentally chocolate cheesecake is considered an abomination in the Johansen household, I mean why mess with sour cream and vanilla, why?!

*Feels a rant coming on*

Cheesecake should only ever be embellished with strawberries. Fact.

Anyway, before I demolish my carefully thought out exegesis on this Very Important Matter (VIM for future reference) let me explain that in the interests of scientific exploration into the umami of pairing chocolate and cheese I baked a Daim cake with Norwegian brown cheese.

*Pause for stunned silence*

Yes, really. I added Norway’s national cheese to this gluten-free Daim cake just to see what would happen. My Dad and I have long speculated that Freia melkesjokolade (milk chocolate to you non-Weegies) was once made with a smidgeon of brown cheese for that extra umami hit. Then Kraft bought Freia and well, melkesjokolade just don’t have quite that same depth of flavour now.

So this VIM had been bothering me for some time and I figured since I had a block of brown cheese languishing in my fridge and a packet of Daim chocolate balls from a recent IKEA raid I’d bake a Daim cake, reasoning that the savoury nature of Daim’s krokan, or salted caramel with almonds, would marry well with the slightly savoury and sweet nature of fudgy brown cheese. This is the result: a Daim and brown cheese bombshell of a cake. It may not be red but it certainly has all the strut and sass of Joan Harris.

You’ll never look at cheese and chocolate in the same way again :)

Daim Cake:

  • 75g brunost (Norwegian brown cheese)
  • 75g milk chocolate with Daim
  • 50g butter
  • 3 eggs
  • 200g ground almonds
  • 200g icing sugar
  • 2 tbsp cocoa
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 pack of Daim balls
  • 100g Milka milk chocolate with Daim (or equivalent amount in chopped up Daim bar)
  • 50g butter or coconut oil
  • 1 tbsp cocoa
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 180 C. Lightly oil a 20cm round cake tin and set aside.Melt the milk chocolate, butter, brunost and cocoa in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan with simmering water until smooth. Allow to cool.In a medium bowl place the ground almonds, cocoa, baking powder and salt and stir thoroughly to distribute the ingredients. Whisk the eggs, icing sugar and vanilla until pale and fluffy.Carefully stir in the melted chocolate to the eggs, stir a couple of times and then add the dry ingredients. Using a large metal spoon fold through 6-8 times until the mixture looks even. Pour this into the prepared cake tin and place on the middle shelf of the oven.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the top looks golden brown, feels firm to the touch and starts to separate from the sides of the cake tin.

Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Prepare the icing by melting the milk chocolate and butter together. Add the cocoa and vanilla. Using a skewer pierce the cake a dozen or so times and while the icing is still warm spread on the cake in two takes to allow the icing to sink into the cake where it’s been pierced. It will look messy, that’s the point.  Sprinkle Daim balls over when you’re done spreading icing over the top of the cake.

Eat on its own, preferably whilst watching a marathon of Mad Men.

For a supply of Daim and Norwegian Brown Cheese head down to the Scandi Kitchen on Great Titchfield Street, W1W 7PP, London. You can also find Daim Milka bars at Waitrose and Sainsbury’s.

Chilled as a cucumber

Chilled cucumber soup with borage and sour cream

It’s the final week before I submit 80 recipes to my editor at Saltyard Books. So far I have 104 and whittling down is not one of my strong points!

Strangely, cooking is the last thing on my mind at the moment though occasionally I catch myself daydreaming about wholesome bibimbaps, sinus-busting curries, slithery pieces of sashimi and tangtastic Key Lime pie so ostensibly there’s nothing wrong with the tastebuds, am just a smidgeon recipe-fatigued that’s all.

Sticking resolutely to the Viking remit I’ve banished pasta, chilli and (too much) garlic while recipe testing.  Thankfully a delivery of spankingly fresh fish from H. Forman & Sons on Saturday made it easy to go Scandinavian with a nutmeggy fiskegrateng or Norwegian cod gratin made to Grandma Johansen’s specifications that evening. Except Granny never wrote down her recipes so I cobbled this together from memory.

Sunday’s aquatic offering was grilled mackerel stuffed with tarragon, parsley, Abba anchovies and shallots, accompanied by sweet n’ sour dill cucumber salad and excellent new potatoes from Waitrose, buttered to within an inch of their cultivated tuberous lives. All in all a successful weekend’s cooking for the book.

Last night I just wanted soup. Cold, cleansing, crisp ,clean, green soup. No fuss, minimal cooking, and with some tenuous excuse to delve into a pot of sour cream.

The result was a chilled cucumber soup with borage and sour cream, knocked up in less than 15 minutes. Borage, incidentally is a perfect partner for cucumber on account of its er, cucumber flavour. And it’s one of the key ingredients in Pimm’s. Hurrah I say.

Chilled Cucumber Soup with Borage and Sour  Cream

For 2 cucumber loving people

  • 1 large cucumber, halved and with seeds removed (I eat the seeds)
  • 300ml stock (I used marigold but chicken stock if you have it works a treat)
  • 1 large banana shallot, chopped
  • 1 bunch of borage
  • 1 small pot of sour cream (Waitrose does a very good one. No scrimping on the fat please)
  • freshly ground white pepper

Sweat the shallot in a small frying pan over a low heat for 5 minutes until translucent. In a blender place your de-seeded cucumber, stock and borage leaves. You can add other herbs to this, the obvious one being mint, but dill, parsley, tarragon, fennel fronds and wood sorrel would all be excellent too.

Blitz everything together in the blender until you have a smooth, Kermit-the-Frog green liquid.

Chill for a few hours and eat with a wodge of sour cream, garnish with borage flowers of any other edible flowers you may have.

And there you have it, the best fast food money can buy, and so easy to embellish if you want to tart up the soup. Try adding North Sea shrimp (I was going to but was tired so I forgot), some salmon roe, flaked hot smoked trout or substitute the borage for dill/mint.

What are your favourite summer soups? Does the thought of chilled soup delight or horrify you? Feel free to comment below.


Photos and recipes from Saturday’s Strawberry Tea!

So Strawberry Tea came and went. Our informal gathering of gourmet gals and two intrepid (well, hungry) gents spent a blissful few hours last Saturday afternoon taking tea and raising money for Breast Cancer Care. I don’t think I’ve seen such a glut of strawberries, or at least not in my Bloomsbury flat; we were awash with crimson goodness thanks to the ladies bringing an exceptional quantity of ripe strawberries!
We sipped Henrietta Lovell’s delicate Jasmine Silver Tip tea, there was Pimms aplenty and after the strawberry scone, gluten-free cupcake and Jarlsberg & fennel muffin scoffing bonanza some of us were in serious need of a reviving tonic before seeing the brilliant Inception down at the cinema. Thanks to Firefly for rescuing us from an early evening siesta!
Indeed a BIG thank you is owed to the generous donations by:
  • And not forgetting the aforementioned Firefly Tonics
Having a gaggle of lovely ladies round to a sumptuous afternoon tea was great fun and I hope we’ll reprise the event next summer on a slightly larger scale. Further fundraising plans for Breast Cancer Care are afoot with a garden party this August, so feel free to check out Niamh Shields’ blog Eat Like A Girl for more details in the coming weeks.
Featured here are some of the recipes used on Saturday which I hope you’ll be inspired by to host your own Strawberry Tea. Please register with Breast Cancer Care for more information and support in hosting a fundraiser. If tea doesn’t really take your fancy then opt for a garden party as Niamh has, or  perhaps a brunch, picnic in the park, a raffle in the office… the possibilities are endless and hosting a fundraiser needn’t be a chore. Get your friends, family, colleagues to support by helping you prepare for an event, however casual it may be.
Incidentally the really beautiful photos come courtesy of graphic designer Ailbhe of Simply Splendiferous. do have a look at her blog for more gorgeous photography, recipes and inspiration in general. Linda of With Knife and Fork posted some Strawberry Tea pics on her Posterous page and Julia author of soon to be published A Slice Of Cherry Pie (Absolute Press) posted a note on her new blog which you can read here

And without further ado, the Strawberry Tea recipes:
Spelt Scones

These scones are adapted from a recipe developed by the head pastry chef at Brown’s Hotel, needless to say we snaffled the scones with liberal helpings of Rodda’s clotted cream, strawberries and an assortment of sour cherry, blackcurrant and strawberry jams!
Makes 20 small or 10 large scones
  • 500g refined spelt flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 2g salt
  • 120g cold butter
  • 75g golden caster sugar
  • 300ml cold buttermilk

Egg wash:

  • 1 large egg, beaten
  • 15 ml (roughly 1 tbsp) whole milk

Preheat your oven to 220 C and flour a baking sheet.

Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a large bowl. Grate the cold butter into the flour and using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. If you have a magimix simply blitz the butter and flour for about 10-15 seconds until it resembles breadcrumbs.

Add the sugar, stir through and then add the buttermilk. Using a wooden spoon mix the liquid and dry ingredients together and place this on a lightly floured work surface. Knead with your hands for a minute or two until the mixture forms a smooth dough. Resist the temptation to over-knead or the scones will be tough.

With a rolling pin or just using your hands, roll out the dough until it’s 2.5 cm/ 1 inch thick and using either a small or large floured pastry cutter press each scone out gently. Place the scones on your floured baking sheet and brush twice with your egg wash.

Bake the scones on the upper third shelf of the oven for 10-15 minutes if small or 20-25 minutes if large. They should have doubled in size and look golden brown on top.

Jarlsberg & Fennel Muffins (spiked with Marmite)


I first concocted these while doing my Masters in the anthropology of food at SOAS a while back, if you like cheesey baked goodies then you’ll love Jarlsberg & Fennel muffins I promise!

Ingredients:

150g wholewheat spelt flour
150g plain spelt flour
100g coarsely grated Jarlsberg
20g marmite
150g whole milk
1 medium egg
40g melted butter
1 tbsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Method:

Preheat oven to 190C. Line 6 large muffin cups with baking parchment, or just lightly grease them so the muffins don’t stick (if you want smaller muffins use a 12xcup tray)

Dissolve the marmite with a tablespoon or two of boiling water, and add to the milk. In a large bowl, sift all the dry ingredients, except the cheese. Stir through to evenly distribute the raising agents.

Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add all the liquid ingredients, stir through a couple of times and then add the cheese. Fold until the mixture looks even and then spoon into the muffin cups.

Bake on the upper-middle shelf of the oven for 25-30 minutes for large muffins and 10-15 minutes for smaller ones.

Fretting about whether i’d have enough food for everyone I doubled this recipe and rather than make a ridiculous number of muffins I baked a small loaf of the remaining mixture. Needless to say this made a great base for grilled cheese the next day. All I did was toast the bread, slathered on some Marmite, lots of Jarlsberg, fennel seeds, mustard powder and cayenne. One for grilled cheeselovers:
Finally there was Nigella’s Chocolate sour cream cake with sour cream icing from her How To Be A Domestic Goddess. I’d heard good things about this *bombshell* of a recipe but frankly was a bit disappointed. The cake didn’t quite pack enough of a punch and was a tad dry. Next time I’ll be sticking to my tried and tested Tropisk Aroma or spiced chocolate cake, a recipe for which you can find here and, for good measure, on Julia’s new blog here!


Strawberry Tea in aid of Breast Cancer Care

Sussex strawberries

Just a brief note to alert you to the Strawberry Tea campaign Breast Cancer Care are running this summer. This is obviously a subject close to many people’s hearts, and I want to do what I can to support Breast Cancer Care as my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer while I was at university. Thankfully the mighty Mama Johansen is now in the clear but for thousands of women breast cancer can be fatal if left untreated, thus early detection is essential to saving lives.

Please click on this to support Breast Cancer Care

So when Julia Parsons of A Slice of Cherry Pie let me know about this strawberry afternoon tea fundraising idea I suggested we join forces and host an event before strawberry season petered out.  I may have eighty recipes to submit to my publisher in two weeks’ time but damnit I can and will find the time to support Breast Cancer Care! And scoff strawberries while I’m at it.

The aim is to host an afternoon tea (with strawberries but I imagine all summer fruits are welcome!) to raise money and awareness for breast cancer, you can have it at home, at work or in a park. I’m hosting it at my Bloomsbury flat this Saturday afternoon and have asked those attending to donate £10 each (or more if they can) which goes straight to the coffers of Breast Cancer Care.

Our informal gathering of food bloggers and friends will, of course, be replete with strawberries but we’ve also snaffled delicious Cornish clotted cream donated from the good people of Rodda’s, lots of homemade jams and preserves, scones courtesy of yours truly made with butter given to us by Lurpak. If time permits I shall bake a big fat sour-cream & chocolate cake for the occasion.

Henrietta Lovell of Rare Tea Company will hopefully approve of her delicate oolong, green and jasmine white silver tip teas being brewed in proper tea pots and lastly I have my eye on a bottle of Pimm’s that is currently languishing on my shelf. Between this and the refreshing drinks donated from Firefly Tonics we are ready to roll!

Fellow food blogger and fundraiser *extraordinaire* Niamh Shields of Eat Like A Girl will be organising a garden party in August in aid of Breast Cancer Care. Why not host your own afternoon tea or garden party? Click on the logo above to register on Breast Cancer Care’s site for further information and a donation pack. Get a group of friends, family or colleagues together and kick off your own fundraising event! Feel free to comment below if you’re hosting a strawberry tea or if you’re thinking of doing something to help raise money for Breast Cancer Care.

Photos and a full report with recipes will be up next week, in the meantime I’m off to source those berries…

Winner of The Camper Van Cookbook Competition!

Wowzer, summer’s in full swing. Having escaped on a press trip to the relative cool of Copenhagen last week it came as something of a shock to return to sticky London!

Yesterday I finally got round to reading each entry for the Camper Van Cook competition and am so bowled over by the range of recipes and lovely stories that accompanied many of them. Thank you all for taking the time to post a recipe!

Picking a winner amongst entries of such a high calibre was never going to be easy and I wish I could award each of those who entered a copy of The Camper Van Cookbook.

Do have a look at each entry here for some cracking camper van cooking ideas to take with you next time you’re on the road, in the woods or by the sea.

And before I announce the winner, special mention must go to the following:

  • Vera for her sorrel soup inspired by blissful summers spent in the former USSR
  • Muesli Lover’s music festival treat Mexican tortilla with sweet potatoes, spinach, chilli and peppers
  • Miss Cholet’s bounty of lovely recipes particularly her Not Spicy Crab Thoran
  • Rose of Rose Cottage’s delectable seared scallops (and a lovely blog she has too)
  • Becky’s invaluable tips for camper van mixes you keep in a jar
  • Will Knightly (aka the rakish @willthecad on twitter) for his penne with anchovies, onion and cream: a holy trinity of ingredients if there ever was one, this boy knows his food. Plus extra marks go to Will for his sheer chutzpah in asking me out on a date as part of his entry. Nice try!

So who won? After much deliberation I chose Ailbhe of Simply Splendiferous’s recipe for patatas a la pobre, or poor man’s potatoes. Ailbe’s entry had all the elements I was looking for: a charming tale of journeys Ailbhe and her husband Tony took throughout Europe with their 1970 Mark II VW campervan; a classic and utterly delicious Spanish dish cooked in a rustic cazuela and lovely photos to boot. Coupled with a little sketch Ailbhe had drawn of Spanish peppers, I was sold. Congratulations Ailbhe, a copy of The Camper Van Cookbook is winging its way to you this weekend! Do have a look at Ailbhe’s entry here and watch this space for more cookbook and other food-related competitions.

Have a great weekend! Sig x

Something for the Weekend

Big fat juicy strawberries from Whole Foods

Midsummer is the most evocative of times, that “school’s out *hallelujah*! ” feeling still hasn’t disappeared even as I hit my thirties (or as I like to say, entering my prime). As a kid Mama & Papa Johansen dispatched me to visit the Johansen elders in Aurland, a tiny village nestled in one of the most picturesque parts of western Norway at the end of a long fjord surrounded by rather foreboding mountains. This is Peer Gynt country, or so Norwegians would have you believe, where mischief and melody reign. Midsummers in Aurland were spent hiking through the valleys, fishing in the Aurlandsfjord, and foraging for wild strawberries. Aside from all this frolicking in the wild we grandchildren generally putzed around on the farm, picking fruit and playing games and pestering my grandmother for her delicious sour cream waffles. Let’s not mention the model-esque and seriously evil aunts, suffice to say they make Attila the Hun look like a gentle soul.

I often get asked how fruit can possibly grow in Scandinavia. “Um, it’s not the North Pole” I reply, indeed midsummer days are so long that it never gets dark. The extra UV light coupled with a temperate climate during summer makes the region ideal for growing plump summer fruit such as strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, plums, apples, pears…you get the idea. Nothing will ever taste as good as my grandfather’s crimson Senga Sengana strawberries, the fecundity of his crops enhanced with what he called “super-dung” from the neighbouring farmers. Lord knows what his turbo-powered fertilizer contained but I’ve yet to find fruit as rich in flavour over here as the kind I grew up with in Aurland.

So in this vein of nostalgia I spend every June hunting down the best strawberries this side of the North Sea. Thus far, between M&S, Waitrose, Riverford Organic and Whole Foods the latter’s strawberry supplier wins hands-down. Typically as I mention this I’ve realised the Whole Foods strawberry carton and label have been thrown out but you’ll have to take my word for it: delicious, juicy and intensely fragrant English strawberries, just as nature intended.

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Camper Van Cookbook competition deadline extended: Friday 25/06!

The Camper Van Cookbook (saltyard books)

It was inevitable, run a competition for two weeks and get a flurry of requests at the last minute for an extension to enter. No problemo amigos, you’ve got til midnight this coming Friday 25the June to submit your stonkingly good recipe for 2 rings, minimal washing-up! Further details here.

Looking forward to seeing your recipes!

The Road to Abergavenny

Classic VW campervan (image from tch.net)

Earlier this week a flock of food bloggers decided to go on an adventure.

Lest you think we’re on a mission to eat the most pies in a day or planning a gourmet gallop around London (fun though both activities would be), come September we’re heading to Abergavenny Food Festival.

In campervans.

It may sound bonkers but travelling to a food festival and staying in a campervan actually makes good sense. Last year Linda of With Knife And Fork and I drove from London down to Abergavenny and were both immediately taken with the charm of it all. It’s a food festival that feels like a village fete. People are friendly and courteous, a welcome change from the grumps of hardened Londoners.

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Competition: Win The Campervan Cookbook

Summer’s finally arrived!

As you can imagine, my cup runneth over at the sight of English strawberries. Wimbledon’s round the corner, the World Cup is about to start, there are a myriad festivals and outdoor events running until September and most crucially…the Pimms is flowing. Oh yes, and the beer, the wine and the bloody marys.

Much as one seeks comfort in winter’s rib-sticking stews, not to mention the excuse to eat indecent amounts of pongtastic cheese, this is definitely the time of year when everything, for better or worse, is illuminated. Time to cut down on the cheese sadly, there are hotpants to be worn.

Perhaps such exuberance for summer stems from growing up in a country where winter drags on for what feels like eternity, so what better way to celebrate warm sunny days and al fresco dinners with a holiday camping outdoors? Nothing beats that sense of adventure and freedom when on the road, driving a VW campervan cross-country and soaking up all the sensory joy that is summer; the colours, the smells, and not least…the food.

Raspberry season can't come soon enough

Come mid-June, the west coast of Norway fills up with campers from all over Europe and on my grandparents’ farm us grandchildren would pick berries and sell them to these happy campers (the phrase had to make an appearance somewhere in this post) so I was thrilled to see my publishers Saltyard Books‘ first cookbook The Campervan Cookbook packed with 80+ recipes from campervan enthusiast Martin Dorey and Sainsbury’s Magazine editor Sarah Randell receiving rave reviews in the Telegraph, the Independent, the Daily Mail and from fellow food blogger Fiona Beckett.

The book is primarily a cookbook with brilliant recipes for every occasion, be it barbecues, afternoon tea or ideas for what to do with freshly caught mussels, mackerel or how to make jam jar cocktails. There are invaluable tips for foraging, shrimping, prawning, and crabbing, the latter being a favourite pastime when I was a kid. This book is about how to cook with a limited larder of ingredients without depriving yourself, or resorting to baked beans every day. As Fiona says, even if you have no intention of going camping, this book makes you want to. Just take a look at some of the photos below:

Time for cocktails

Shrimping and prawning!

Mackerel and mash

The Campervan cookbook is essentially a bible for adventurous and outdoorsy gluttons who want to make the most of summer’s wild offerings, I certainly count myself as a freedom-loving glutton and if it weren’t for the small matter of squeezing into those hotpants then Martin’s cheesy eggy bread would be my go-to dish pretty much all summer.

To celebrate the start of summer Saltyard Books have kindly given me a copy of The Campervan Cookbook to give away to a reader who relishes exploring the outdoors and raiding nature’s wild larder as much as Martin, Sarah, the Saltyard crew and I do. As the subtitle of the book is Life on 4 wheels, cooking on 2 rings and Martin reputedly loathes washing up, here is the competition:

Submit your favourite recipe for cooking a dish on 2 rings with minimal washing up. Extra points will be given of course for anecdotal flair (ie, where did you first cook the recipe, and it doesn’t have to be on a camper van), wit and liberal use of Marmite (just kidding, but I do like Marmite). If you have a blog, post the recipe on your blog and leave a comment below with a link to your recipe. If you don’t have a blog but fancy winning the book, feel free to write the recipe in the comments below or if you’re feeling bashful and don’t want to publicly share the recipe please email me signejohansenATgmailDOT com

Deadline is Monday 21st June 2010 and the winner will be announced later that week with their recipe posted here. Look forward to seeing lots of entries!