As part of smugly congratulating myself on cooking 100 new things, I had a scroll through my round-up posts, and thought I would list down my very favourite and/or most momentous recipes from the year. [Most momentous because I’ve listed the first Ottolenghi salad I made, and I know I am tediously repetitious on the subject, but every single one of his salad recipes are the best salad ever. But I can’t make an entire list of Ottolenghi salads. So the first one can stand in for all of them.]

1. Carrot Soup with Tahini and Roasted Chickpeas, recipe number 3 featured in the first round-up. It was one of those recipes where I really appreciated how all the slightly fiddly steps came together into essential flavour components.

2. Slow Braised Pork Shoulder with Cider – recipe number 4 in the first round-up. My first real attempt at braising and with such a spectacular result.

3. Date & Spinach Salad – my first Ottolenghi recipe! Recipe number 22 in the third round-up. It was the first in my “holy hell, this salad is amazing – oh, it’s an Ottolenghi recipe” revelations for the year.

4. Thomas Keller’s recipe for roast chicken – recipe number 39 in the fifth round-up. It was so very simple and resulted in such perfect juicy chicken.

5. Tourtiere – recipe number 54 from the sixth round-up. The first time I’d made a proper meat pie in this way, and this pork pie has a wonderful combination of flavours.

6. Strawberry & Rhubarb Pie – recipe number 71 from the seventh round-up. Mostly because it reminds me of this period when we were eating ever so many strawberries, strawberry and rhubarb is such a wonderful sweet/tart combo, and it was an amazing pie.

7. Shooters’ Sandwich – recipe number 97 from the last round-up. Just a truly awesome sandwich, and I like how portable it is.