The best homemade pasta yet

For the record, the food obsessed waitress is a waitress no more, as Rhubarb was closed down last week by BAA, due to the imminent refurbishment of Terminal 3. The former waitress has therefore a lot more time to spend in the kitchen and going through her cook books, she does not have to work weekends and has a lot more time to cook.

So tonight we thought- it’s been a while since we made some pasta. Florian did all the pasta work, Oluta has baked chopped pumpkin along with some shallots and 2 cloves of garlic and lots of olive oil. She then roughly mixed it with some crushed amaretti biscuits and parmesan, seasoned well and stuffed ravioli with it.

We served it with a simple tomato and basil sauce, which was great with the pasta sweet stuffing. We were truly proud of the results of our messy kitchen tonight.

I realize the presentation was not exactly a Masterchef kinda thing, but we didn’t care, as it tasted fantastic…..

My Mom’s cheesy cookies

These are so simple and quick, as well as usual, no sugar added! All that is needed are 3 equal parts of flour, cooking margarine and Polish white cheese, the same as for pierogi, to be obtained from a good Polish deli. It’s my  Mom’s recipe.

Those 3 ingredients get mixed together into a sticky dough, it needs to be rolled out and with a small form cookies are cut out and baked until golden, so about 18-20 minutes.

When out of the oven I sprinkle them with generous amount of icing sugar, necessary, as no sugar is needed to make them.

Awesome with coffee.

First attempt of a mango souffle

They look gorgeous, don’t they?

That was the second take on them on Friday evening, the first ones were definitely not cooked and as I had some mango puree left, I quickly whipped up the second batch, Florian made sure the temperature in the oven is 375 exactly, like in the recipe and in they went. They were much better than the first ones, but still only half cooked, the lower down, the more raw they were.

Bea reckons it might have to do with uneven temperature in the oven or the ramekins.

All I know- the cooked bit tasted lovely and I’ll keep on trying until they’re perfect.

To be continued….

A bit of Japanese

Sushi!!!!!!

Love sushi ever since Ubon times, love it to bits. Don’t love Yo Sushi, don’ t love supermarket sushi. Don’t love industrial cheap sushi, that should be banned. If sushi- either very good, which means expensive, or- homemade. Of course it looks nothing like the professional one, but the one I made today tasted awesome. I used sushi rice, flavoured it with some flavouring I bought a while ago in an Asian supermarket, added some rice vinegar, almost too much! I bought  a nice salmon fillet, a tuna  fillet and 3 tiger shrimps, a nice, ripe avo, nori and got cracking. I fancied spicy tuna rolls, like those we used to have every day in Ubon times. I chopped my tuna and mixed with some mayo, lots of chilli sauce and some chopped scallions. The other rolls were with fresh salmon and avo, with the fried shrimp ( I did not attempt a shrimp tempura roll, not just yet). I made 3 nigiri with tuna, which was so fresh, that it had to be done and one inside out thing with the spicy Japanese thing I found on the Posh Shelf in Waitrose.

We loved the result tonight. I thought I overdone the vinegar, but it was full of flavour and the spicy tuna rolls I’m well proud of.

The thing to master now is presentation.

The French rule!

We spent last weekend in Normandy with Moka and Ivan. On Mont St Michel we tried the omelettes the island is famous for- the most expensive lunch in my life, but hey-

It looks enormous, but it was light and fluffy, with lovely salty fried ham served on the side. Great stuff!

The day after Ivan had a seafood platter for lunch;

That was refreshing change after the horribly overcooked shrimps we came across the night before.

Yum!

Baked nectarine delight

Much prefer nectaries to peaches, as the peaches skin gives me shivers for some reason. Maybe peeling them would be an option…!

There’s a recipe for a “Berry slump” in one of the Good Food editions, which I have tried and loved and this evening I made it with nectarines and a pear, a lonely one from the fridge. It was lovely.

I prepared the nectarines by quickly softening them with some sweet wine and small amount of sugar, place them in a baking dish and covered by a dough made of 50g of butter, 50g of self raising flour, 50g of caster sugar, some vanilla essence and one egg. Beat it all up, pour over the nectarines, generously top with flaked almonds and bake in medium hot oven, gas mark 4 I’d say, for about 40 minutes, till risen and golden.

I baked it this evening and dug into before serving dinner, it was so yummy. Served with ambrosia.

Kluseczki z dziurkiem.

In Poland we call them kluski slaskie, dumplings from Silesia, totally easy to make- with the right type of potatoes. I made them tonight, so that Zoe could taste something very Polish.

For the dumlings I boil some potatoes, squeeze them through the ricer when still hot, form them into a flat kind of ball and take out a quarter of it. Replace the missing quarter with starch- potato flour, excellent way to measure out the amount of the flour needed, my Mum’s way of doing it. Add an egg to all that, together with the quarter of potatoes taken out previously and quickly work it into a nice soft dough. The less floury kind of potatoes, the better, as the consistency required is quite rubbery. A thing to remember is to work that dough quickly and don’t keep it waiting, it gets loose.

Once the dough is done, I make it  into a small roll and cut out small bits, form them into balls, flat them out slightly and make a little hole in the middle with one finger, hence the name which Florian bastardized a bit- kluseczki z dziurkiem. 🙂

They finally get thrown into a pan of boiling, salted water, boiled for a few minutes, about 4-5, not too long, they have to keep their shape but not be raw in the middle.

I served them today with a good beef stew, at Mum’s we always have it with meat and sauce.

Pierogi

One Polish dish that I cook most often would be pierogi. Florian loves them cooked, left to rest and fried crispy.

The filling is made of boiled and pressed potatoes, chopped, fried onion and a Polish white cheese, that can be obtained from any Polish shop. It is crucial the cheese is the right one, it can’t be replaced with cottage or ricotta. It’s all mixed up and seasoned well.

The dough is simple- flour and some warm water with a drop of milk. Rolled on, I use a glass to cut rings, place a teaspoon of filling on each and close them tightly, sealing the edges well, so that they don’t open when cooking. I boil them for about 4-5 minutes,  serve them with chopped, fried onions and – if I have some- sloninka, pig’s lard, a cholesterol bomb, a flavour like nothing else.

A lovely, quick lunch

This pretty looking salad is easy, yummy and lovely.

All it takes is some rocket, some parma ham slices, a few cherry tomatoes, 2 hard boiled eggs- boiled for about 6 minutes, no more, some red grapes for sweetness, a nice, ripe avo and some parmesan to finish. And that’s it! The dressing on the salad is the usual and lovely olive oil and balsamic and on the eggs just a tiny bit of mayo.

It always works.

Success after burnt caramel

Yesss, I have burnt caramel, first time ever. Might say it was Dustin’s fault, as I only popped out to the garden to throw a ball at him. When I came back it looked like a lava and was steaming too! 🙂 Having turned off the fire alarm I started again and coated some chopped bananas in it and  added some Havana rum.

I whipped some double cream with sugar and lime juice.It is a dessert inspired by Heston’s banana Eton mess, slightly changed and simplified by me, as usual. I toasted some hazelnuts, which turned out to be a lovely crunchy addition to the whole thing.

The bottom of the bowl was graced with some crushed meringue, then caramelised bananas, lime cream, some hazelnuts and like this again. I finished it off with some grated lime zest. After 3 hours in the fridge it tasted really lovely.

On the joys of cooking and eating