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.

Our favourite Sunday lunch, when the bread gets a bit stale and can be used and still enjoyed. I slice it thickly and spread some shop bought pesto on it, a  drizzle of olive oil and quickly fry it on a dry griddle pan. When crispy on both sides I top it  with a mixture of chopped tomatoes, olives, a shallot, fresh basil and olive oil, well seasoned.

A touch of parmesan on top finishes it off nicely.

I’ve been feeling like scallops for a while and looking at, serving and tasting all this gorgeous food at work is not helping. Florian is not into scallops, unless as sashimi, with a slice of lime. This is why I hardly ever cook scallops at home, but this week Florek is in China, so I treated myself.

With a little help and instruction from Alex, as well as sample of the sauce he uses to make them at work, I seasoned them with salt, tapped one side in flour and tossed them into a hot pan, where the baby asparagus was being griddled for a few minutes with some olive oil.

I like my scallops just cooked, kind of medium rare, so after a minute of each side I poured Alex’s dressing and finished them off. I served them with some turmeric rice and griddled asparagus. Nice, but not sensational.

Our tonight’s dinner was very simple, but what we loved about it was a variety of different flavours and textures on the table. So there were home made sausage rolls, raw sausages wrapped up in puff pastry, seasoned with fennel seeds and covered in parmesan and then baked off. There were potato wedges, spicy with cayenne pepper. There were  marinated red peppers, that I stuffed with chunks of cheddar and warmed up until the cheese melted ( next time I will close them with toothpicks, so that the cheese stayed inside), sooooo simple, but surprisingly yummy. And there was a rocket, avo and parmesan salad. And some nice English ale to go with it all. Yum.