Steve and Christina invited us back to their lovely place in Surrey and treated us to a great evening, once again. We’ve eaten very well indeed, I’ve picked up a few things that I will be trying next week and already placed the order with Amazon for some spring roll wraps.

The wraps were Steve’s first course and they were my favourite thing last night. They were filled with some lovely fresh prawns, some thinly sliced, marinated pork, which was quickly pan fried on a dry pan- Steve reckoned all the fat he needed was in the pork and managed to make them taste almost charred, best pork in a long time. There were beansprouts in there, also pan fried on a dry pan, some crunchy greens and herbs- coriander, basil and mint. The wraps, soft, fresh and exciting, all served with sweet chili sauce, I can’t stop thinking about them!!

Then we had a green, vibrant, healthy kale salad from Christina, crunchy, delicious, loaded with fresh prawns, nutty dressing, delicious, but a bit too much, as the main event, Pad Thai that I was so looking forward- I could hardly fit in.

Very exciting main course, again- fresh, slightly sweet, but also spicy, if I ever had a better Pad Thai, I don’t remember.

There was an ocean of wine, a plate of cheeses, but also a wild card- some pork belly, that landed on the table at 11pm and we only managed a piece each.

Phenomenal evening, now I’m going to see if I can reproduce those wraps, or maybe make them more my own?

Florek has been a fan, since he discovered it in Cote last year. Last night I was making 3 different courses for 3 of us, but as it was Sunday, storm Ciara was going mental outside, I had time and I felt like being in the kitchen. So having defrosted 2 lovely tuna fillets I looked up the salad, trying to do it justice, which was fairly tricky, as I myself am not a big fan of it. Gordon Ramsay’s recipe appealed to me for a few reasons, I went with it and Florek announced the dish was excellent, all but the cooking of tuna on my crappy griddle pan let it down a bit.

Started with the dressing; pestle and mortar was used to mash a couple of fresh olives, 2 anchovy fillets, a garlic clove and olive oil together into a paste, then lemon juice and a splash of balsamic vinegar. This was a surprisingly nice outcome. I cooked a few potatoes and French beans, cooled them, same with 2 fresh eggs. Gordon’s suggestion that I particularly liked was browning off the spuds before serving and same with cherry tomatoes- just a few minutes on until they blistered. I skipped the capers, dressed the green salad, arranged the hard boiled eggs and spuds on the plate and finally the tuna. Florek’s enthusiastic and asking for more. 🙂

Having watched all the Aussie Masterchef I felt we needed to make some fresh pasta again, as we don’t use our pasta machine often enough. I started shortly after breakfast yesterday, by roasting off some chopped butternut squash, carrot, a piece of sweet potato, red onion, a couple of cloves of garlic. Seasoned, drizzled with olive oil, it burnt black, while I was busy giving Tesla a clean. 🙂

Chucked the first batch and roasted off the second one. Once roasted and cooled, I blitzed the veggies with some toasted pine nuts and parmesan, it needed just a touch of seasoning and that was that.

Florek made fresh pasta with the help of very eager Izzie, I stuffed it and made into tortellini. Once cooked for a couple of minutes, the pasta went straight into the simple tomato and basil sauce waiting on the stove. We enjoyed it with some garlic baguette and wine. You can’t beat home made pasta! 🙂

I binge watch the first edition of Australian Masterchef on Amazon Prime. Much fresher edition than the one on the BBC, nicer format, funnier, more interesting. No Gregg Wallace. Yesterday the contestants watched a masterclass on how to make a fabulous mashed potatoes. I had time, I had potatoes, I had dinner to make for my family, I thought- alwite, let’s see if it’s worth the effort. First of all, the potatoes were baked in the oven, not boiled, the way I do it. Once baked,still hot, they were mashed through a drum sieve, which is not a gadget I own at the moment, I do have a nice ricer though, which makes a great job too. Which doesn’t mean I won’t ever get myself a sieve like that. 🙂 Also, new to me, but very effective is the use of balloon whisk. So the baked spuds once squeezed through the ricer go into a sauce pan, some hot milk on the side added bit by bit, alongside salted butter. Lots of salted butter. And whisked!!! Hard work that, but boy, once well seasoned that mash was top dollar. For me, a good mash is the sort that makes me stand by the stove and munch on it, while everything else can wait. And I just have one more taste. And one more. And then just a lick.

I had some meatballs from Ikea, which I baked on a bed of mixed roasted veggies. Plus Aussie mash. The child raised both her thumbs up. 🙂

And the person responsible for it is Moka, who cooked us moules mariniere, but without cream, her way, just wine and seafood juice. Before she cooked we visited a very well supplied fish shop, which made me want to eat nearly everything.

We’ve bought a massive bag of moules and some prawns for Orson, then visited a cheese shop. Exceptionally good service and a cheese selection we can only dream of in the UK.

Moka cooked the moules in 2 pans, lots of shallots, lots of parsley, we had a bottle of champagne with them and the baguette and it took us quite a while to finish the lot, but we battled on and succeeded.

And then Moka brought the cheeses out, including this super light and creamy number with truffles (she a trufflefile too, which is very promising for the times I get to cook for her!), a bottle of red was had alongside. We sat by the table for over 2 hours, eating, drinking, talking, laughing and having the best time, while the kids played on the floor with a train set.

I loved every minute of it and returned the next day to the cheese shop to take some home.

11 out of 10. And a standing ovation.

As a carnivore I had to use quotation marks, in order not to insult the proper steaks. I tried one of those in Brasserie Blanc recently; theirs was served with some kind of crumble with traces of truffle and a walnut pesto. That pesto was so finely blitzed it resembled baby food, leaning towards unpleasant, no texture to it at all. I thought the dish would shine under some kind of sauce, creamy, rich sauce. This evening I’ve made it my way and really enjoyed it.

Sliced 2 thick pieces from the middle of the cauli, seasoned with salt and pepper and gently panfried on olive oil and some butter, before transferring to the oven for about 30 minutes in 190 degrees ( kept pricking it to make sure it was still a little crunchy, but cooked).

Last night I saved some of my bechamel, which went with mushroom tortelloni, bechamel heavily spiked with white truffle paste. I covered the cauli with it for the last 4 minutes of the cooking, finished with a sprinkling of parsley and enjoyed with a fresh baguette. Loved it!

From Gennaro’s last book “Pasta Perfecto”. I bought this book having seen him cooking his mushroom ragu on Saturday Kitchen. Tried to recreate it last week, but the mushrooms I had were not exactly what I should have had for that recipe and ended up with a lot of expectations and a mediocre plate of pasta. This evening I’ve tried another recipe, all the ingredients as good and accessible as in the book. A courgette and a half was roughly chopped and panfried till slightly colouring, an equally generous handful of basil and mint, same with parmesan and pecorino, then garlic, toasted pine nuts, salt, olive oil and blitzed into a yummy paste. I served it with conchiglie today, fresh spaghetti will be used next time, that mint in the pesto is a genius idea! 🙂

Cote inspired. We took Mum there on Friday evening and that ‘s what she picked for a starter before mussels( obviously). The prawns were comfortably sitting in a lovely tomato sauce, most likely grilled in it and sprinkled with lots of tiny white croutons. Simple and genius. Mum’s flying back home tomorrow, so for lunch today I tried to make something similar and I think I succeeded. Started with croutons, then made a simple sauce- a shallot, a large garlic clove, a pinch of chili flakes all sweated on olive oil, then about 10 large cocktail tomatoes on the vine, skins off, all cooking down with some seasoning and fresh parsley. Prawns went into the oven nicely tossed in the sauce and baked there for about 10 minutes, till they looked and smelled cooked and happy. Croutons on and onto the table. Yum!

If there was an Olympic competition of making the best mushroom sauce, I’d now have a medal. I spent another productive day in my clean, warm kitchen, while outside it rained and blew. Although it’s Saturday, I opted out of the pizza for dinner, too much pizza lately. I’ve made Izzie’s favourite kluski slaskie instead and with them a mushroom sauce that I was very happy with. All those little jars of truffle goodness I brought back from Italy in summer!!

The sauce started with a chopped and fried shallot and quite a few chopped chestnut mushrooms, slowly fried up, a handful of porcinis and some chicken stock. Black pepper. After about half an hour I added some double cream/flour/water mix to thicken it, 2 tbsps of truffle paste and then blitzed it all into smooth sauce and seasoned to taste. Chopped parsley to finish.

As child was going to eat it, I threw some cooked chopped carrots and green peas in, to make it a bit more nutritious. The said child ended up having 11 dumplings, which made my heart sing!

Chocolate eclairs were had 2 hours later. 🙂

How did I manage never to have made it before, is beyond me. It’s phenomenal and so simple! I came across Donal Skehan making on it on youtube this lunchtime, while I was looking for a review of a kitchen aid mini food processor – it’s on my list to Santa this year. 🙂 I watched the review, then I watched Donal and I decided to make this pasta this evening, as I had little time to enjoy cooking due to school disco.

While the pan of water for pasta was being brought to the boiling point, I threw 2 large, thinly chopped garlic cloves into a generous amount of a good Tuscan olive oil, 6-7 tbsps maybe? The heat was low, as the oil was to get infused with that garlic, rather than get burned and stink the dish out. A pinch of chili flakes went in too. When pasta was ready I drained it and then added the oil with garlic and chili onto it, alongside a generous amount of freshly grated parmesan. Tossed it all well, finished off with chopped parsley and served with a glass of Californian cab sav and of course, extra parmesan. Absolutely loved it and will be making it again very soon!