I am known amongst those closest to me to be a woman who loves to cook but also an extremely picky eater. It is these two things that led to this challenge.With the help of my sister, I will cook every single one of the recipes from Allegra McEvedy's 'Around the World in 120 Recipes', aiming to do three recipes a week. Why this specific book you ask? Well, it's simple - we wanted adventurous and varying recipes and this book gets great reviews!!
Follow this blog and you will see how my tastes progress as I experiment and how we inspire our weekly menu. We're cooking each dish for a family of three adults and a toddler. Obviously some of the recipes won't necessarily be suitable for the toddler but we'll try and vary as many of them as possible so that she can enjoy the experiment too!
The whole household is looking forward to this challenge because, like many others, we have dug ourselves into a little bit of a food rut. With three working adults, all with their own favourite dishes, it becomes more and more difficult to come up with new and inventive dinners that aren't too time consuming to make.
So, challenge accepted! Lets see how this goes!
As for the directions of the recipe, it wasn't too tricky. It calls for the artichokes and parmesan to be whizzed in the processor. The main problem here was that the recipe said it should be whizzed enough to combine, but remain chunky. However, Soph's processor is far too good because before I knew it the mixture was super smooth. After consideration, we thought this could also have been due to the fact that we used jarred artichoke hearts (which the recipe says is perfectly fine), since these would likely be softer than if we had cooked them ourselves. We decided the creaminess wasn't too much of an issue though and carried on. After all, creamy asparagus dip still sounded great to us. 
Once everything is combined, it says to cook in the oven until brown on top but wobbly in texture. I dislike the use of the word wobbly here - I don't think it's descriptive enough and it doesn't make it sound particularly appealing. But, nevertheless, we did as instructed. 
Once it baked, we rested it for about 10 minutes before tucking in. The result was absolutely fantastic. There was only one small problem with it. My selective memory failed me and, even though I was warned by Soph several times that the Cayenne pepper we have is extraordinarily hot and that I should put in less than the recipe says, I added the full amount and so there was definitely a Cayenne pepper taste to the dip. So next time we will definitely add less Cayenne pepper.
As it turned out, we also had an American guest over when we did this recipe so we also got her opinion. Our guest liked it but said it should really have been chunkier - which we also felt would have made it better. 
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