All posts by Ola

I love eating. Even more than I love cooking. My Mum got this thing into me, being a working woman with two kids and still managing to put a two course dinner on the table for us every day. My meals are a lot simpler, I cook for two, with Florian being my most devoted fan and audience. There is nothing more rewarding than a nicely turned out meal. There is nothing more enjoyable that a great plate of food in a decent restaurant with a glass of great red in a nice company. Hence this blog, to share ideas and joy of good food. Bon Appetit.
Good Food

15 minute meal.

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Jamie Oliver’s, naturally.  I’ve been waiting for the episode with the recipes for steamed buns, that he puts on the table and says- imagine putting this on the table- boom! They looked wonderful. And I’ve always been a pig for Chinese food. Finally, last Thursday I caught that episode, took notes of all the recipes, ordered a bamboo steamer from Ocado and this evening made the whole thing.  Olutafied, as ever, I had to. Jamie boy makes those meals a bit too healthy  sometimes, so I decided against steaming my chicken, I fried it. 🙂

The buns. Super easy recipe. A 400 ml can of coconut milk and 2 of those cans of self raising flour. Pinch of salt. Kitchen aid.  The dough was very runny, messy and difficult to work with, but I was doing as I was told, as always on the unfamiliar territory.  They steamed in the wok for about 15 minutes using the muffin paper cups and they  looked exactly like on telly.  They tasted ok and were very, very filling, however I couldn’t, for the live of me taste any ducking coconut!!!Maybe coconut cream next time? Some toasted desiccated coconut? We both really liked them though and I’ll be looking at more recipes with steamed buns.  If I could make those super light dim sum things with hot pork inside, I’d be super happy.

The chicken was awesome. And will be done again this way. A quick marinade of hoisin sauce, a juice of half a lime, some salt, sesame seeds. A few chestnut mushrooms.  Quickly pan fried, finished with fresh chili and coriander- from the garden. Loved it! Fresh, exciting, oriental.

Also present were some steamed broccoli and pak choi, a bit overcooked, but eaten nevertheless. And a little cucumber salad that I won’t bother with any more, so average it was.

I’ll definitely be doing more buns, more steaming and more of that yummy chicken.

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Good Food

A rather nice Friday dinner.

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Majestic delivered today 24 bottles of Asahi, which they had on a nice offer, 24 bottles for £24. There had to be burgers to go with it. I had some from Ocado’s counter, the Aberdeen Angus ones, with them brioche buns buttered and toasted. Green salad, fresh shallot, plus some of the processed cheese that melts so nicely. And fries.

Yum.

Baking

Chocolate and coconut thingies. :-)

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In mojewypieki.com I found a tempting recipe for Raffaello babeczki kinda things. Nearly made them long time ago, but when ordering Raffaello from Ocado I found out a box costs £5, I thought I’d wait till I go to Poland. Sure enough, same big box of lovely coconutty balls in Biedronka were 13 PLN.

Last night when checking up the recipe again I read the comments underneath, some saying the white chocolate cream was far too sweet. The alarm bells went off in my head, remember 3BIT cake from the same website that ended up in the bin, due to sugar overload.

I ended up making the muffin bases nearly exactly the way recommended in the recipe, if  I had checked I had enough desiccated coconut and some kind of coconut liqueur- it would have been exact.

Kitchen aid whipped 150 g of soft butter with 120 g of caster sugar, 3 whole eggs went in, 120 g of plain flour plus 1,5 tsp of baking powder. 70 g of desiccated coconut recommended was replaced by 20 g of coconut and 50 g of ground almonds.

This amount made me 12 large muffins, which baked for over 20 minutes in 180 degrees.

When cooled I spooned out some holes, filled with strawberry jam( next time it will be raspberry and fresh raspberries, for the tang), 3 small blueberries in top. Then the Dr Oetker chocolate cream, finished with toasted desiccated coconut and a Raffaello ball on top.

Very pleasant, not too sweet. Next time I think I’ll try some kind of white cream, but for now some of these will travel to Swindon tomorrow.

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Made in Poland

Racuchy.

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A classic from my Mum. I’ve never made them before, but I’ve been looking at some ways of getting Izzie to like apples. So I asked Mum for a recipe, made the racuchy and served to Izzie for supper. She liked the soft, yeasty dough sprinkled with icing sugar, but spat out the apples.  Back to the drawing board. 🙂

Mum only uses fresh yeast in her cooking and baking, so I called in the bakery this morning. I used about 30 g of yeast, some sugar and less than a mug of warm milk, a couple of spoons of flour  and made “zaczyn”. Allowed it to rise a few minutes and froth gloriously, then added more milk, more flour, an egg yolk, a bit of melted butter. The texture was to be like very thick cream. Then another 15 minutes of resting. Thinly sliced apple pieces went in and I pan fried them in batches, using the lid and finishing in the oven, as they needed to be cooked inside all the way.

Sweet, filling, satisfying. 3 hours later craving a sausage, therefore chipolatas in the oven. 🙂

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Baking

Rhubarb tart.

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Recipe taken from mojewypieki.com. Baked, rested, placed on a chopping board in the evening sun, sprinkled with icing sugar. What’s not to like 🙂 ?

For the basis of the tart I used a tall glass of plain flour, 4 tbsps of icing sugar, 1/4 tsp of baking powder, 90 g of chopped butter, a splash of cream, 2 egg yolks and some cold water to bind it together.  When ready, it chilled in the fridge for 30 minutes, while I peeled and chopped my rhubarb, about 3 pieces of it, roughly 350 g. I quickly pan fried it with 3 tbps of sugar- not enough, I later decided,  then drained.

The oven was ready waiting at 180 degrees, so I coarsely grated  the pastry onto the bottom of the tin, flattened with fork and baked till lightly golden for about 15 minutes. Then some jam went on, strawberry was recommended in the recipe, I used what  I had the remains of in the fridge- pear and some blueberry too. Then the rhubarb, some raspberries for colour, then a bit of breadcrumbs and finally, what we call in Polish “kruszonka”. A delightful, crunchy topping, a bit like on a crumble, but better. And kitchen aid makes it perfectly. 90 g of flour, 50 g of sugar, some vanilla paste and then 60 g of hot, melted butter.

The tart baked in 180 degrees for about 30 minutes. When done, some icing sugar and ready to be devoured. 🙂

 

Good Food

New signature pizza.

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The masterplan was to make ravioli, fill them with a selection of lovely, fresh mushrooms from Whole Foods and drizzle with truffle oil.  But having spent most of the day DYI’ing, like good christians that we are, we couldn’t be bothered with making pasta, so I made pizza dough instead. Chopped and fried the mushrooms and pan fried them with lots of pepper and salt. Less is more, when it comes to pizza, so all I put on it was tomato sauce, grated cheese, some cherry tomatoes, the said mushrooms and baked it. When ready, some fresh thyme from the garden added lovely aroma, parmesan shavings and that truffle oil sealed the deal. Sooooooo good! 🙂

Baking

Strawberry and poppy seed mousse cake.

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In the recent GF it stands as a “Queen of hearts” cake, but theirs has hearts on top, mine has flowers, due to not having a heart shaped cutter.  I baked the base last night, this morning made the mousse and the rest, then spent 30 minutes cleaning the kitchen. This cake belongs to the “Lots of pierdolenie” category, should one like that exist. 🙂

So, for the base;5 egg yolks got beaten with 160 g of caster sugar. A zest and juice of 1 lemon added( can’t taste any, to be frank),85 g of self raising flour, 25 g of ground almonds and a tbsp of poppy seeds, all taken care of by the kitchen aid. The egg whites whipped separately got added later, to loosen up the mixture. It all baked for about 25 minutes in 180 degrees.

This morning sliced horizontally, strawberries placed tightly around the edges, then all covered by the mousse. For the mousse I blitzed 400 g of strawberries with about 5 tbsps of sugar- less than in the recipe, I though 200 g was a bit mental.  I then passed it through a sieve to have it nice and smooth. Warmed up, melted 4 gelatine leaves in. Whipped around 350 ml of cream and added the strawberry mixture. And finally the top layer, which took a lot of time. I drew a template dividing it into 16 small squares, cut through some and filled in with strawberry jam. Sprinkled the other ones with icing sugar. Set in the fridge for a couple of hours.

The cake’s light, refreshing, easy to eat. It will be great in summer. Dustin has just licked the remains from Florek’s plate. 🙂

 

Good Food

Proper baked beans.

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Sometimes on Saturday mornings I finish my coffee and turn on “Saturday Kitchen live”.  In it I saw Tom Kerridge’s recipe for proper beans on toast. Tom said that once one tries it, there’s no way back to the canned alternative.  Well, there is a way back, I’d say, as canned alternative doesn’t take 12 hours of soaking the beans and then over 2 hours cooking. But it’s worth it. Super rich flavour and I still went easy on vinegar.

So, about 150 g of haricot beans were cosily soaking over night and most of the day. Then drained and boiled for nearly an hour.

Some bacon, chopped and fried on rapeseed oil, chopped onion and a crushed clove of garlic, then 200 g of passata, a splosh of ketchup, 4 tbsps of brown sugar, about 70 ml of white wine vinegar ( recipe called for red, I had none) and about 250 ml of water- all this went in and was brought to the boil. Then the beans went in and it all cooked down slowly for over an hour.

Tom also baked the soda bread to go with his beans, I served mine with rustic French baguette.  One thing can make it better- the marriage with some grilled chipolatas. Next week. 🙂

Good Food, Room for improvement

Beef Stroganoff.

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Jamie Oliver’s, from 15 minute meals.  I’m not sure how genuine a recipe it was, but we ate it all, it was good, but not amazing in any way. Not enough garlic? Boring( chestnut) mushrooms? Sirloin not awesome enough?

While my rice was cooking I chopped a red onion and a couple of gherkins, poured a bit of gherkin water on it and tossed well.  Chopped my mushrooms, fried them with some crushed garlic, added half of that onion/gherkin mixture to the pan. Then added my sirloin, thinly sliced, seasoned with salt, pepper and smoked paprika.  Finished with doubled cream, tossed well again. Jamie used yoghurt in his, I had no such ideas, yoghurt is good for breakfast, not for dinner. 🙂

Nice, tasty, no fireworks.