I did this week's challenge with my 4 year old daughter. The cupcakes have a cookie on top, so we analysed the difference between a cookie and a cupcake.

Of course we also discussed the phases of the moon. Note that we did the phases of the moon as seen from the southern hemisphere as that is where we live, which is different from the northern hemisphere.

Overall we had a lot of fun! The cupcakes were super yummy!

I'm from Scotland, where our most (in)famous culinary delight is haggis - a kind of sausage thing, I guess, made with sheep's heart, lungs, and liver, with onion, oatmeal, and seasonings. It has a very peppery taste and a coarse texture, it can take some getting used to, and while I'm not its biggest fan, I felt I had to use it for this week's challenge.

Chicken balmoral is a butterflied chicken breast, stuffed with haggis, and then wrapped in bacon and roasted. I've never done it before and was sure I was going to mess it up, so I'm really, really happy it came together so well - probably my biggest feeling of satisfaction in this challenge so far. The chicken wasn't overcooked at all, it was lovely and juicy, and the bacon (which I glazed with honey for the final 20 minutes of cooking) was nice and crispy. The haggis added a really interesting taste and texture, for a really quite delicious bite.

With it, I made a whisky peppercorn sauce - as the chicken was roasted, I didn't do my usual pan sauce version, but made it ahead of time. I first toasted and grown black, white, and green peppercorns, before pounding them in a mortar and pestle - not to a complete powder, I wanted some texture and some of the rougher peppery flavour to still come through. I then sautéed finely diced shallot and garlic in butter for a few minutes, before adding a tiny amount of tomato purée, and deglazing with some Auchentoshan single malt. Then, homemade chicken stock, soy sauce, and Worcestershire sauce to taste, before adding the peppercorns, and some fresh thyme, rosemary, and a bay leaf. Once it had reduced, I removed the herbs, and added cream until the consistency was where I wanted it.

Served on top of mashed potatoes (impulsively added some mascarpone, they were NOT healthy), peas, and roasted purple sprouting broccoli. Felt quite luxurious, I'll 100% make this again.

For this week’s prompt, I leaned into the idea of transforming ingredients that were historically dismissed as scraps or “garbage food” into something beautiful and delicious. Offal dishes exist because people refused to waste what they had, and then turned those overlooked cuts and ingredients into cultural staples.

This plate is my nod to that tradition of resourcefulness, creativity, and flavor‑first cooking.

🍽 What’s on the Plate 🍽

🐄 Braised Oxtails: Creamy Arborio rice folded with peas and finished with fresh parmesan.

🍄 Mushroom Risotto: Aborio rice folded with peas, and finished with fresh parmesan.

🎣 Fried Catfish: Catfish has often been labeled a “bottomfeeder” or garbage fish. But fried catfish is one of the best examples of turning an undervalued ingredient into something amazing.

🫘 Bright Summer Bean Salad (Repurposed Leftovers): A chilled salad built from pinto and black beans, fresh corn, zucchini, summer squash, calabacita squash, carrots, sweet onion, and red bell pepper. The dressing is a zesty mix of lemon and lime zest and juice, white balsamic, champagne vinegar, and seasonings.

This salad was actually a leftover from earlier in the week, and it ended up reshaping the entire plate. I scrapped my original planned sides because the salad was perfect for a chilled summer accompaniment.

This plate is a celebration of resilience cooking: taking undervalued cuts, scraps, and leftovers and turning them into something intentional, flavorful, and delicious. It’s proof that “garbage food” was never garbage. It's just been waiting for someone to do more with less.

This recipe has 8 grams of fiber in it.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/767814516-broccoli-and-potato-soup

This came to me pretty instantly, I've had it before and it's fun to make, delicious, and unusual (in Scotland).

The chile con carne is an amalgamation of a few recipes for Texas chile con carne that I've seen, with a few (but hopefully not too many!) unconventional steps. For the spice mix, you toast a mix of chiles (I used guajillo, ancho, chipotle, and árbol), then blend with onion, garlic, tomato purée, and a spice mix - I used Mexican oregano, smoked paprika, and toasted cumin seeds, coriander seeds, and black peppercorns.

After that, I heavily browned some beef brisket, cut into chunks, in a pan, working in batches. Then, I cooked off the spice paste, before adding the beef back in with homemade beef stock. I added apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and the very traditional soy sauce, until it was where I liked it, and then simmered it for about 4 hours until the meat was very tender. Smoky, great level of heat, very filling and, to me at least, very Wild Western.

One thing I hadn't cooked before was cornbread, so I made the brown butter cornbread for Serious Eats (recipe here - they also have a chile con carne recipe that was one of the foundations for mine). It was really, really good, nice and fluffy inside with a crispy crust and a nutty flavour from the brown butter.

With both of the main Wild West elements together, I made guacamole and a vaguely Tex-Mex-inspired salad with corn, coriander, tomato, and bell pepper, some white onion, grated cheddar, coriander leaf, sour cream, and lime wedges. Very satisfied!

This year’s meta comes with an open door and a very flexible guest list. Each week, a friend selects an unexpected party guest to appear at my table and I imagine how they might review the main offering.

My unexpected guest this week is Conan O’Brien. A comic and relentlessly curious traveler with a gift for turning the unfamiliar into comedy, his thoughts on these anticuchos might have unfolded something like this:

“First of all, I love that someone looked at beef heart and said, 'You know what? Dinner.' That's optimism. That's confidence. But then you take a bite... and it's incredible. Smoky, charred, tender… it's got this deep, beefy flavor that makes me wonder why I've spent so much of my life eating the boring parts of the cow. This dish somehow makes me feel like I've stumbled into the best street food stand in Lima at two in the morning. I don't know why it's two in the morning, but that's when all great food memories seem to happen."

Currently traveling so sadly this is the best I could do.