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. 🙂