Missing Italy, not sure if there will be enough cash around to pop out for a week this year, so this evening I made a very simple, yet great risotto, accompanied by a simple green salad and a rustic baguette and  served it with very cold wine wine and loved every bit of it.

Risotto, as simple as they get, chopped shallot fried on butter, arborio rice added for a couple of minutes to soak it all in, then hot chicken stock, gradually poured in as well as wine wine. Some grated parmesan at the end, it hardly needed any seasoning thanks to good chicken stock. At the end I added a good handful of chopped fresh tomatoes and fresh basil and that was it. It was the simplicity that made it so tasty, I guess.

My green salad was mainly rocket, some more tomatoes, roasted pine nuts, good olive oil and good, thick balsamic, plus parmesan shavings on top. We destroyed the lot. Yum.

On a Specials Board at work we now have a spider crab tartar, awesomely presented with some poached quail’s egg. I’m not huge on crab, but shrimps I’d eat every day if I could. I got some creamy jalapeno sauce from work last night and made a starter for us this evening. I threw the shrimps into the boiling water for a minute, chopped them up when cooled, mixed with chopped avo, chopped coriander and good amount of jalapeno sauce, seasoned well and put into the rings. Served with a crispy Ryvita thingy, just for the texture. It’s getting some good reviews on Facebook. 🙂

Last time I had knedliki was years ago at home, when mum and dad went to Czech, shopping for various stuff and got them among other treats, that were difficult to get in Poland. Barbora got me a couple from her Czech deli, so this evening I made a nice, rich beef goulash, slightly spiced up with paprika and enriched with Guinness. I wanted the beef to fall apart, which it did after nearly 1,5 half of stewing, 2 onions,  a carrot and a handful of dried mushrooms did a nice job too. Knedliki themselves are quite bland, like a part- cooked bread roll, so they need a strong sauce to lift the dish. I served it with broccoli and tomato salad. Nice, warming and very filling.

As much as I love scallops, I hardly ever cook them, somehow I prefer when somebody does it for me, like The Chief last Wednesday, when we ate at Dinings. My scallops tonight came from Dinings though; Cathal said that buying them in Waitrose is lame and that I should get some from work, at a decent price, the quality however will be out of this world in comparison to the supermarket ones. So I did. Goemon gave me some shells as well to present the dish in a posh way.

I’m busy redecorating the bedroom today, so dinner had to be relatively quick;  I marinated the scallops in a mixture of chilli garlic paste, sesame  oil and soy sauce, nothing measured, as usual. 🙂  I pan fried them and served on the bed of green salad with some fried rice on the side. Very pleased with the result. Chocolate fondants are in the oven as I write, green tea ice cream ready. Then it’s back to painting for me and washing up for Florek. 🙂