That will be my staff meal for everyone tomorrow. A wee bit bigger portion though.

I bought 2 kinds of nice chorizo from Waitrose’s counter this morning, the more spicy it is, the better for this dish, if not spicy, can be played around with using some chilli oil or chilli garlic paste, that I still happened to have had in the fridge. I fried it up with some chopped onions, celery, an aubergine, a few cup mushrooms, added a can of good passata and adjusted the flavours with some seasoning and chilli stuff. Cooked the pasta, tossed it in, a generous amount of lovely fresh rocket on top and parmesan. Yum.

Ewa and Kris came over today to dine with us, so I slaved in the kitchen for the first time in a while. The weather was nice too, that’s why the dining table was taken outside again. The starter this evening was a cute little onion and cheese tart. I made a quick shortcrust pastry from flour, butter and water, blind baked it and then filled with spicy onion chutney, blue stilton and baked off. Served with rocket and parmesan salad. All the diners enjoyed it and there was nothing left.

The main- lamb shanks, this time done properly in red wine and chicken stock with veggies, in the oven for nearly 3 hours, nicely came off the bone  (speaking of which, Ewa’s dog enjoyed all the bones some hours later). I served it with mash mixed up with some fried leeks – Nick’s suggestion.

We finished off with lemon pannacotta. No stress here, but I’m taking the remaining one for The Chief to taste tomorrow. Bit nervous, but looking forward to some constructive criticism.

Mum is visiting, due to her birthday treat dinner in Dinings. In fact, Mum should be at home at the moment, if certain person hadn’t screwed up her return plane tickets. Certain person did, however , so certain person had to buy two return tickets last night and 200 quid later she could get over it. This afternoon, to make life sweeter, we made karpatka.

The two pastry bases needed to make it are similar to the classic choux pastry. Mum used a glass of water that she boiled and melted half a margarine in it, took it off the heat and added a glass of plain flour mixing vigorously. After it all cools down a  bit, 5 eggs are added, one after another, all worked in before the next one is added. The pastry is to be nice, smooth and shiny. A teaspoon of baking powder and the pastry is ready to be divided in two and baked for about 50 minutes each in 180 Celsius, if still moist inside, needs to go back in to dry out.

The filling is made by cooking budyn, a Polish simple powdered dessert similar to custard, made with milk. For our filling I prepared budyn according to the instructions on the packet PLUS a table spoon of plain flour, it has to be quite thick. When cooled, I blitzed it with half a margarine and some vanilla sugar.

The cake is finished off with a generous amount of icing sugar.

Sunday’s all about good dinner. Must be home made, planned, tasty and worth putting on the blog. Today it was pasta again ( I’ve been wondering, if I had to choose what my last meal on earth would be, it’d be between Italian, some awesome stuffed pasta or Japanese, but I’m yet to try the wagyu beef nigiri with truffle salsa on top, so good thing I don’t need to decide just yet ).

It was supposed to be ravioli, but when Florek rolled out the pasta for me, my fingers somehow shaped it into tortelloni, for a change. The stuffing was very simple, just sauteed, finely chopped shitake and cup mushrooms with some onions and parsley on butter, seasoned with salt and white pepper.  Boiled for about 3 minutes.

The white wine sauce was suggested by Nick, who always seems to have a selection of good ideas up his sleeve whenever we discuss food at work. What an excellent and simple sauce! 2 chopped shallots quickly panfried on butter with a handful of fresh thyme, 250 ml of white wine in ( we went to Majestic to stock up today,  among other things we got 2 bottles of a lovely fruity Iona sauvignon blanc, it was a great and refreshing thing to have in the evening! now I regret we only got 2 of those), 200 ml of double cream added when the wine reduced a little, a touch of dijon mustard, some black pepper, lemon juice, strained and poured over pasta with some freshly grated parmesan. I loved the flavours.  Really did. Could have had more!!! 🙂

There wasn’t a great deal of cooking and skills involved tonight. I went to Waitrose and when passing by the meat counter I heard a fillet steak calling my name loud and clear and when I looked at them they said- ” We’re here!!!! where have you been? buy us, buy us now!!!” (yes, I did have 3 glasses of wine before turning on my laptop). 🙂

The dinner consisted of roasted potatoes, roasted they way Hugh F- T likes them, quickly boiled for 5 minutes and then thrown on a hot tray with hot olive oil, nicely seasoned and roasted off until nice, brown, lovely and soft inside and crispy outside. The fillets went on a griddle pan to be cooked medium rare and served with béarnaise ( shop bought), the asparagus was guickly steamed and thrown on the pan with the steaks and seasoned while it finished off and finally just a simple rocket salad with pine nuts. And a glass of Shiraz.  One of the nicest meals I can think of.

Gnocchi have been sitting in the fridge, bought as a meal for a person, whose girlfriend works in the evenings. Girlfriend decided she actually felt like gnocchi, so she made a nice, thick sauce based on fried pancetta lardons, fresh celery, mushrooms, canned tomatoes, a good splash of sweet wine, fresh oregano and basil and thickened it with cream and flour for extra healthiness. 🙂

I preboiled the gnocchi for a minute or so before they went into the sauce, all nicely covered, then placed in individual baking dishes, covered with grated parmesan and baked for about 30 minutes.

Served with rocket, avo and parmesan salad and a nice glass of vino rosso. Yum.