I’ve never cooked venison before. I’ve had it in places, liked it a lot, but only today decided it is time to broaden the horizons. Ocado brought me two venison steaks, I flipped through GF mags to see what I could do with them and opted for a porcini mushroom sauce and mash. First cooked the mushrooms, picked in the woods of southern Poland, let them cool and drained the stock. I fried a shallot, added chopped mushrooms, some of the stock and then finished with a mix of the remaining stock+ flour+ double cream+ seasoning, mainly pepper. And a touch of coriander, there was no parsley in the house.

I fried my steaks, like I would do with beef fillet, then coated them in the sauce and served with mash and tenderstem broccoli.  Very much enjoyed the gamey taste of the meat with the mushrooms and pepper, a glass of Argentinian Malbec  helped too. Yum.

This week we eat only scraps, hehe, fillet steaks on Wednesday,  lamb shank yesterday,this evening scallops, tomorrow tuna tartar again. 🙂

That’s my first cauliflower puree, so I researched it first and decided not to go with Hairy Bikers, who suggested cooking the cauli and then leaving it to dry and then blitzing with cream; I went with fucking Gordon- I cooked the florets in milk, then blitzed, but with gruyere cheese, seasoned well with salt, pepper and nutmeg. My panfried scallops sat on the puree, crispy bacon on top, a few rocket leaves.

That was also my little Pizia’s  first taste of cauli, she licked quite a bit off my finger. 🙂

The name for those dumplings I just made up, as pyzy n Polish would be similar, but stuffed with meat. The kind that nobody on earth makes better than a certain Bozena in a distant Stronie Slaskie.  I’m so fond of them, that when I affectionately call my daughter “Pizia”, it does have something to do with a lovely dumpling as well as her own name.

The dough is made with cooked and riced potatoes, cooled and mixed with plain flour and an egg. The amount of flour is difficult to get right, as the dough must be soft and springy, too much flour and one ends up with heavy, unpleasant thing in the stomach.  If I were to say roughly how much, I’d say a bit more than a quarter of the amount of potatoes, but carefully applied. More flour can always be added, can’t be taken off though.

The stuffing, super simple, a shallot, chopped cup mushrooms, a bit of pancetta, all seasoned, lots of pepper.

Ready dumplings are thrown into boiling, salty water and cooked for a few minutes, until floating and a bit longer, raw dough is not pleasant. Finished with crispy pancetta. Very enjoyable.

A very good idea for a quick dinner, that can be prepared ahead and then chucked in the oven.  My cod was simply seasoned and then covered with a cosy duvet of  breadcrumbs, parmesan, a clove of garlic and some coriander, plus a touch of seasoning. A drizzle of olive oil and in the oven it went, sitting on a bed of chopped cherry tomatoes.  What was in the oven already, sitting there  for a good 40 minutes, were dauphinoise potatoes, but sweet potatoes. That was the nicest thing that happened today, easily. Will be repeated this Saturday, Ewa and the chap are coming over.

🙂

Two immediate observations; the title sounds like bad Chinese and the photo is probably one of the least successful ones ever.  I will however post it, as a document of my today’s efforts. I bought some lovely looking, dark red lamb shin from the butcher’s with the thought of braising it tonight .I invited Robert, our still landlord, maybe the last ever landlord we have! Always nice to invite someone over when cooking lamb, as Mr Banks is not a major fan.

Instead of braising it in red wine, as usual I attempted to try my mom’s method; rubbing the meat in the marinade made of garlic paste, salt, black pepper, herb pepper, hot paprika and olive oil , stewing it in its own juice plus some roughly chopped onions towards the end of the cooking. I did all that, but the appearance of the meat was not very good, I thought if I served it alongside the mash and red cabbage, it will look most unattractive. So I thickened the sauce a notch and made a sweet potato and regular potato mash then piped it on top of the meat, as if making a shepherd’s pie, only the lamb was not minced. It looks a bit like dog’s dinner ( and a happy dog it would be I bet!), but it was very tasty and enjoyable.The meat could be cut with a fork, so tender it was.  Served with a side of red cabbage, recent favourite.

I was surprised how quickly this plate of food came together. And how tasty it all was. And textures worked.  Ocado brought me  some lovely cod fillet this morning. I went easy on salt bearing pancetta in mind, seasoned it well with pepper though. Lovingly wrapped, it was then panfried on olive oil with a touch of butter and a few cherry tomatoes and whacked in the oven for 5 minutes, while french beans were cooking and gnocchi were panfried.

We finished all of it, it was a lovely meal after a rather shitty day. It looks like we won’t be moving in our dreamt new house in October, like we hoped. And Robin Williams decided to hang himself last night. 🙁

An idea came from “Come from dine with me” ( of all places…!), when looked up online it had great reviews, so I ordered everything from Ocado and made it this evening. A bit like poshed up fajitas, I’d say. Fajitas with chicken we have often, so I’ve done the filling pretty much the same way; fried the red onion, some garlic, red pepper, some chili, some ground cumin and onto that went chopped chicken thighs. A new thing for me to buy and use were the refried beans, quite nice for the texture. Also added was a can sweetcorn, then some seasoned passata. And fresh coriander on top. All this went into the tortilla wraps, but I chose to use a dish a bit too small, so ended up not folding the ends, like described in the recipe. The filled up wraps went onto the passata, then grated cheddar on top and into the oven.

Served with delicious guacamole and a crunchy salad. Will be a regular on my weekday menu. 🙂

Ps. Rather difficult to take a good photo of it…..:-)

Chateaubriand I was one of the first dishes uploaded to the blog, 4 or 5 years ago. I think the August weekend with excellent food and wine will become a tradition, so we splashed £60 on a piece of beef, £18 on a bottle of Amarone, baked off some dauphinoise potatoes, made side dish of glazed carrots and Jedrus made blue cheese sauce. He authorized me to publish the fact, that he used some blue stilton, a small clove of garlic, some cream, parsley and a splash of mayo,lovingly blizted it into smooth, beautiful, unhealthy sauce. We served it alongside of bernaise and pepper sauce, both hardly touched, so good the cheese sauce was.

The fillet itself cooked just like a steak, only an XL size, rested, soft, flavoursome, amazing. Life is good.

Ken made it last Saturday, I liked it so much I had to make it.  The basic recipe is Delia’s, I have adjusted vinegar, following Ken’s advice.

I blanched 5 large tomatoes and peeled them, used only their flesh, discarded the seeds. Half a large red pepper, skin removed, a clove of garlic, about 10cm long piece of cucumber  and a few leaves of basil all went into a blender. With all this about 2 tbsps of olive oil, 1 tbsp and a bit( I kept on tasting and adding) of white wine vinegar, salt, pepper and also- my personal touch- a splash of chili oil, that gave the soup a bit of a kick.

Blended it all until nice and smooth, then chilled for 2 hours. Served with crusty bread, didn’t bother with croutons. Nice, light supper eaten in the garden after a hot, productive day.  Will be done again.