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.
Filo pastry has been bought today and I thought it would be nice to make some spring rolls. The filling was a veggie one, maybe next time I’ll play around with some seafood. This time it was a mix of bean sprouts, carrots, mushrooms and leeks, all chopped to look like sprouts.I quickly fried them on the wok and flavoured with soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil and sugar. When it cooled slightly I wrapped it in filo, not tight enough, cause they were a bit too oily- and deep fried them for about 3 minutes. I served them with some Blue Dragon sweet chilli dipping sauce. They were very nice, for a debut.
With the rest of the filo I think I will try to make a baklava tomorrow.
I had a trial shift at Dinings last night.
Dinings is a place that looks like a bunker, it’s tiny, 11 tables downstairs, 6 at the sushi bar, tiny kitchen, everything is tiny. But the food……my God. It felt like coming home, although I didn’t come for dinner ( damn! ) but for a trial. Surely thanks to the Chefs’ training at Nobu the food looked incredible and smelled just like heaven. Even the smell of hot sake, of which I’ve never been a fan was pleasant. The smokey kitchen when tobanyaki was getting prepared- down the memory lane. But most of all the sushi. According to Fuku san, whom I’ve known from Ubon, I’ve done a good job last night, so I was pleasantly surprised with 2 small boxes of sushi to take home with me. The smell of this beautifully flavoured rice was killing me on the train back home. There was also a salad, green salad they serve with some chilli dressing with tempura prawns as big as a small fist, the image of it is still in my head.
Well, whether I’ve done well enough to get the job I will find out when they call me.
Tick, tock..
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.
Jamie Oliver again.
Florian loves his pesto, but the traditional one, the basil, roasted pine nuts, parmesan, garlic and olive oil pesto. Actually once, when he made it himself and added far too much garlic, it was one of the best ones ever.
But today I tried something that Mr Chav calls ” Sicilian pesto”, it would be worth asking Michele what he makes of it.
No expensive pine nuts, almonds instead, some basil, parmesan, garlic, chillies- the red ones and…tomatoes. Lots of olive oil as usual, seasoning and blitz to a nice paste. It was surprisingly good, but not as awesome as the traditional basil pesto.
But still, let’s have it…
As much as I’m still pissed off with Ramsay, had to put it in the title, cause I used his recipe. Simple recipe from Good Food, none of the ” reduced fat yoghurt” nonsense, just 300ml of double cream, 75 ml whole milk, 100g of sugar- a bit less I think, Florek reckons it’s just as sweet as it should be and- gelatine. If leaves, about 1,5 leaf, if sachettes, I dissolved one and used half of it. Consistency was perfect.
Gelatine dissolves first, left to await its turn, cream, milk, sugar with a good spoon of vanilla paste slowly brought to simmer. When cooled a little, I added gelatine and poured it all into my cool, new silicone thingies that are meant for baking muffins, but I want them for panna cotta.
It took them about 3 hours to set in the fridge.
The compote- Oluta happened to have a bag of frozen raspberries in the fridge, so she chucked it in the pan with a bit of water and honey and simmered for 10 minutes. That simple. That beautiful.
One of my most favourite dishes of all times. I make them at home sometimes, but at Mum’s they taste like heaven.
The stuffing is made of beef, chicken or turkey’s meat, boiled for hours, preferably when broth was made the day before. The meat is finely minced together with any veg or mushrooms from the broth, and seasoned.
The dough is made the same way as for kluski śląskie, the only difference is the flour, plain flour this time. To remind; boiled potatoes squeezed through the ricer, one egg and the amount of plain flour equal to the quarter of the amount of potatoes. Worked quickly, it doesn’t like to wait around.
Unhealthy as it is, it’s served with fried słoninka. Yum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is so unsophisticated, that it’s not even funny. Zapiekanki can be made out of many things, it’s a good way of using left over veg and stuff from the fridge. In my experience it tastes best in Poland, at Mum and Dad’s allotment, baked over the fire in an old pan.
For me the perfect zapiekanka must have 2 key ingredients; potatoes and bacon. Tonight I used potatoes, one sweet potato, some carrots, a parsnip, boiled it all and left to cool. I pan fried some pancetta cubes along with some cup mushrooms and a large red onion, as well as one sad looking pak choi ( and it does not have much to do with the fact that we’re going on holidays in 2 days and need to empty the fridge).
Cooled veggies get chopped and layered in the baking dish with the fried stuff, some grated cheese, spring onions, some dried herbs and seasoning. A drizzle of olive oil and into the oven for about 30 minutes, just to give it all a crunch and melt the cheese nicely.
Warning- it’s very filling. Lovely, simple winter supper.
Ps. It’s snowing again, BIG, good luck to Heathrow…..
The original sashimi salad I was hoping to come close to is one of Nobu’s signature dishes and is served with tuna. Sadly, there was no tuna in the fish counter in My Favourite Shop today, so I went for salmon. I tried to prepare it the way the guys in Ubon did, the tataki style- well seasoned and quickly seared on all sides. The method says you should dip the fish in ice water to stop the cooking process, I didn’t and it still worked.
The dressing was my favourite back in Ubon. I found the recipe in the internet-
All the ingredients are to be combined apart from the oils, which only go in once the salt has dissolved.
The salad itself is just fresh green leaves with some bean sprouts, the sliced fish placed all around and the generous amount of dressing poured all over. I served it with some veggie fried rice on the side. Florian’s plate was clean after a few minutes, which means it was good. 🙂 And pretty, thus 2 photos.
