originals: Spanish fondue carbonara or whatever

When I was a kid, because that's how I now see myself when I was in my early 20s - as a kid, the connection between my mood and cooking was much simpler. When I was happy and satisfied, I made tons of crepes, when I was sad and frustrated I baked bread everyday. I'd spend hours in silence, crying and kneading, before I was finally diagnosed with severe depression. In the meantime cooking became more of a source of joy than just a way to cope with stress. I started cooking for others. I started cooking for men, finding yet another way to pleasure them. In the last years I understood to full extent what it means to put love into what you cook. I grew, I bloomed, as a person and as a chef.

Now I hit a wall. With no-one to cook for and no strength to get up from bed I lost 20 lbs, because I simply can't be bothered. There's this expression in Polish, loosely translated to "to eat through one's reason," or something - that's what I do now. I explain to myself that I need to eat. Cooking is mostly out of the question. That makes days like today special.

I'm still browsing through recipes, a lot, and bookmarking, a lot. Mark Bittman's Cacio e Pepe spent some time among my saved links and today it seemed like a good thing to try. Simple enough, comfort-foody enough. I forced myself to go shopping in the cold (-14 degrees), dragged myself back to the apartment and, I don't know, something just happened. That small, barely noticeable magic, when you look at the ingredients around you and just allow yourself to be silly and have fun.

In my fridge, there was an open bottle of my favourite white, vino turbio (cloudy wine), that I just brought back from Spain. Why use water, when you can use fresh, tangy, slightly yeasty wine? The cheese and the wine mixed together immediately reminded me of fondue, and I simply can't have fondue without a ton of nutmeg. So there it went. Freshly ground pepper, freshly grated nutmeg, a touch of cayenne for that extra kick, not that it needed one. Bittman wrote to use good olive oil, and there it was, on the table, a 5l bottle of the most amazing Spanish olive oil so delicious, I could drink it just like that, from a glass. I couldn't wait for the pasta to finish cooking, I checked it every five seconds. I started thinking of something more to add to the sauce to stop doing that. Egg-yolk, why, yes, please. As far as I'm concerned egg-yolks should go into everything.

Believe me, the result was stunning.

"We're completely different in the way that we cook. She's always looking for new recipes and trying them out, I just go through the fridge and the pantry, see what we have and try to figure out what to make from it." That's what he often said about us. Now he's gone. So I guess I have to do both.

seasonal: grilled asparagus with oyster mushrooms

Finally! Spring! Asparagus!

This is a quick one - I trimmed and scrubbed the asparagi (I love to think this is the proper plural form) and grilled them with a dash of unfiltered olive oil, some salt and freshly ground black pepper.
At the same time I sliced the oyster mushrooms, chopped a large shallot and fried them on butter until they relinquished all liquids (also with salt and pepper). Voila!

You can't see it on the picture, becuse the dish was already a mess when I figured it out, but parmesan shavings really bound it together, elevating it from different ingredients thrown on a plate to a proper dish.

originals: the Ruskies experiment

After a good run of making ruskies, I found myself with a couple of ingredients I didn't know what to do with. I made this amazing moroccan-style vegetable and chickpea stew (from The First Mess) for my fiancé's mother's and sister's birthday (I was looking for something vegan and gluten free to accommodate for everyone's needs) and was left with a couple sweet potatoes I never used before in my kitchen. So the idea came - let's make ruskies with sweet potatoes.


Long story short, I decided to substitute the regular onion for red one and the quark for smooth goat cheese. The red onions are slightly sweeter than regular ones and goat cheese works well with sweetness and balances it awesomely (I didn't want to make a dessert, after all). I think I did just fine, thank you. So the filling is:

• 200 g sweet potatoes, cooked, pureed
• 200 g white goat cheese (if given a chance, use one that's a bit harder, more like feta)
• 100 g red onions, chopped finely
• butter

The rest goes basically the same as with the ruskies - melt butter, cook onions (but not too much, let them be a bit crunchy, this makes the bite more interesting with different textures and stuff). The dough is the same, only this time it's additional point is that it's almost translucent and the pierogis look preeeettyyyyy (colours!). I make these smaller than regular pierogis, so I use something slightly smaller than a regular glass to cut out the circles.


They are pretty flavourful, they can work as a single dish, but they're also awesome as a side, which I tried out with steak and basil sauce. Enjoy!

- who asked for the Ruskies? - no-one, they came uninvited

It could seem that unemployment (self-employment, as we're calling it in Poland) would result in an increased frequency of posts on this blog, but, truth be told, the lack of structure to run away from has proven to be just that - lack of structure. But I didn't stay away from the kitchen. I just lacked the concentration to write about it.

This is the first of two posts documenting an experiment I made, and it's about the base. Lack of jobs equals lack of money, so I was trying to come up with something cheap that will last for many days. I thought of the cheapest kind of pierogi - the ruskies. The great thing about pierogi is that once you make a shitload of them, you can freeze them before cooking and eat them for weeks to come.

The recipe is pretty simple and the results are great. The unique thing about this kind of pierogi is the dough. It's a bit like magic, watching how gluten works and stuff:

• 1 glass of all-purpose flour
• 3 tbs of vegetable oil
• salt
• 1/2 cup of boiling water

See? Cheap, it doesn't even need egg. Mix the flour with the salt, add the oil, mix a little and then add the boiling water and, watching the amazing transformation, work the dough until it becomes a smooth, even ball, no clumps etc. It can be hard at the beginning (hooooot), but push through it!

The filling is more time consuming (unless you have a batch of cooked potatoes - the ruskies are a great leftover dish), so, actually, it's good to start with that. (The amounts are for a rather small batch).

• 200 g fat quark (the Polish type - twaróg)
• 200 g cooked, pureed potatoes
• 100 g onions, chopped rather finely
• 3 tbs butter
• some salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper

In a heavy pan melt the butter and slowly cook the onion until it's translucent and golden. In a large bowl combine the potatoes and the quark, then add the onion (try to get as much of the melted butter from the pan as possible, the filling will be a bit smoother and tastier then).

The rest is simple, turn on a good show on your laptop, roll out the dough (it's good to divide it in four parts, rather than roll it out all at once, and always remember about sprinkling some flour on the table and the rolling pin), cut out circles with a regular glass and make pierogis until you're have no more filling. Cook in salted, boiling water until they all float to the surface. Serve with fried chopped onion (like you used for the filling).

That's it when it comes to the ruskies. The next post will be about my own, new version, that I don't know how to call. Yet.

(The title is the punchline from a Polish communist era joke. It goes something like this: a cook in a bistro calls out "uskie!" - no one answers - after a while she calls again "ruskie!!!" - still no answer - after a couple of times she yells "who asked for the Ruskies?!?" and finally someone answers "no one did, they came uninvited")

seasonal: chanterelle and goat cheese trottelloni

When it comes to seasonal food, chanterelles for me are the most elusive. You can import fresh asparagus from Peru and pay a shitload of money, you can grow tomatoes all year long in glasshouses (and complain about their lack of flavour), but you can only get fresh chanterelles for these few weeks a year.

I have a few good recipes for stuff more elaborate than scrambled eggs with chanterelles (although that's actually good enough for me) and perhaps I'll manage to share them with you before the season is over, this is one of them. When it comes to chanterelles, simplicity is key, less is more - you wouldn't want to kill their flavour with too many ingredients. So, here we go.

pasta dough (I know this is not the classic italian recipe, it's more of a Polish dumpling dough recipe - you can use your favourite, I just got used to this one):

• 2 cups of flour (the thinner the better)
• salt
• 1 large free-range egg (if you don't have those - buy some and stop buying other ones right this instant)
• a cup of water (you may not use all of it, remember)

Sieve the flour to a large bowl, add salt and the egg - knead. Gradually add small amounts of water and knead further, until the dough is smooth, without any dry lumps. If you added too much water and the dough it too sticky, add some flour and knead again. Put the dough in a plastic bag and in the refrigerator - believe me, it improves the doughs quality when it comes to the next steps.

filling:

• cleaned chanterelles
• shallots
• butter
• soft goat cheese
• salt and freshly ground pepper

Sorry for not giving you exact measurements, but there's just no way to do this, you have to go with your gut here. But, let's say for a medium bowl of chanterelles (while they're still in one piece) I'd take 2-3 challots and ca. 100g goat cheese.

Chop the chanterelles and the shallots rather finely. Melt some butter on a pan, according to your preference - I always use a lot of butter, but I understand people who don't. When the butter melts fry the challots on medium heat until they're translucent, salt them and add the chopped chanterelles - fry them for a little while, until they're a bit softer. Turn off the heat and add the goat cheese. Season with salt and pepper, stirr until it all combines and put it aside into a bowl to let it cool down. Cold filling, especially butter-based, is much easier to use than warm one.

Now, off to occupational therapy. It's good to have someone to help you and/or a few episodes of something good to watch. This will take you some time.

Cut away a fist sized piece of dough, leave the rest in the fridge. Sprinkle the table with flour, rub some on your rolling pin and roll out the dough as thinly as you can. Thick dough overwhelms the filling and throws off the texture balance of the dish. Using something like a espresso cup or larger vodka glass or similar in diameter (I'd say about 4-5cm?) cut out circles of dough. Prepare some cloths and a tray spirinkled with flour to put the ready dumplings on. Now, to the folding.

I called this shape trottelloni (from German Trottel - fool, that's my sense of humour right there), because first of all, it's so easy a fool can do it and, most of all, I couldn't find a proper Italian name for it - went through all the possible shapes of stuffed pasta and didn't find it. If you know a proper name - please share.

So, it goes like this - with an espresso spoon, put some filling in the middle of the circle, fold it in half and press the edges together. Then take the corners and, bending the dumpling, press them together too, just as you can see on the picture with my messily-manicured fingers. Repeat until you run out of dough and filling.

If you run of dough first, you can either make more, or freeze the remaining filling for later. If you run out of filling, roll out the remaining dough, sprinkle generously with flour and leave to dry. When dried, roll it into, well, a roll and slice thinly - you now have some homemade pasta you can store for later.

Back to the trottelloni. Get some salted water boiling, throw the trottelloni in and boil until they all float to the top and a few moments more. Serve with sage-butter. Enjoy.

If you made more than you can eat, you can easily freeze them (before cooking, clearly) - first on the tray you used to put them aside, and when they're already frozen you can put them in a freezing bag - they shouldn't stick together anymore.