Ingredients:
-1 large acorn squash
-1 cup ricotta cheese (approx)
-1 egg
-1 stalk celery
-1/4lb fresh prawns
-3-4 mushrooms
-salt, pepper

What to Do:
Cut squash into 1” thick slices, remove seeds. Chop mushrooms, celery and prawns (save a few to garnish later). Mix together cheese, egg, celery, prawns, and mushrooms. Add salt and pepper to taste. Fill the squash slices with cheese mixture. Bake at 375’F until squash is knife-tender. Place reserved prawns on top to garnish and broil for a few mins until golden.

Ingredients:
-2 large bunches of collard greens
-1 ham bone
-1 tbs honey
-1 tbs butter
-2 cloves garlic
-salt, pepper
-1/4 cup chicken stock (approx.)

What to Do:
Wash and chop greens. Mince garlic and fry in butter until fragrant. Add ham bone and greens, sprinkle on some s&p, add stock and honey. Cover and cook until tender.

Ingredients:
-1lb green beans
-1/2lb baby scallops
-1 clove garlic
-1 tbs olive oil
-1/3 cup hazel nuts (approx.)
-3 tbs chicken stock, wine or water

What to Do:
Trim and wash beans. Crush hazel nuts and mince garlic. Fry hazel nuts in oil until fragrant, add garlic and scallops, sauté for about a minute. Remove scallops and add beans and chicken stock. Cover and steam beans until tender. Once beans are tender, add the scallops back in and continue to cook for another minute or two before serving. Do not cook the scallops; they’ll become dry and chewy.

Basic Cheese Cake and Variations:

Crust:
-200g graham crackers
-100g butter
-1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)

*Crush crackers, melt butter and mix everything together. Press into cheese cake pan or a springform pan to form crust.

Filling:
-450g cream cheese
-450g sour cream
-200g sugar
-5 eggs

*Everything should be at room temperature. Cream cream cheese until fluffy; add eggs one at a time. Add sugar once all of the eggs are incorporated. Lastly, fold in sour cream. Pour filling into curst. Bake at 325’f for about 1h to 1h15m with a pan of water underneath the cake. The cake should jiggle like jello when done (it’ll firm up when cooled).

Variations:
Cream cheese and eggs are the “base” of the cake, thus their amount should not be adjusted. Sour cream and sugar are the “helping hands” which means they can be adjusted to accommodate whatever flavors you want the cheese cake to have. For example, if you want mango cheese cake replace ½ or all of the sour cream with mango purée and reduce the sugar to make up for the sweetness that the mangos bring to the cake. You must also remember to match the texture of the mango with the sour cream by adding approx. 1tbs corn starch (mango purée is not as thick as sour cream, if no thickener is added the cake will be too “runny”). With that said…if you want a coffee flavored cheese cake replace part of the sour cream with coffee, add some starch to thicken the coffee, keep the sugar the same since coffee is not sweet.

For peppermint cheese cake (pictured above) reduce the sugar to 100g and fold in 100g crushed peppermint candy….you can also just add peppermint oil.

Marbled Cheese Cake:
After making the batter, save a couple tbs and mix it with some coloring, jam, juice, etc… Pour the rest of the batter into the cake pan, drizzle the colored batter over the top. Use a sharp knife to drag the color batter around to create a marbled appearance. Bake as usual.