Herrings in Soured Cream with Apple

The human condition is a strange one. The closer we get to what we want the more anxious we become. The stakes get higher as we realise that we have more to loose than before. Recently, I have had to remind myself constantly to enjoy the present moment. That despite the pressure, I'm actually spending time doing what I love to do. Writing, cooking, eating... Being able to do this full time is a precious gift and a blessing. And this is the sort of fresh-tasting Polish-style stuff I've been making and eating in the past couple of weeks.

That up there is Rye Pumpkin-seed Sourdough bread, a Beetroot and Potato Salad with Horseradish, Dill and Soured Cream and the famous Herrings in Soured Cream. If you haven't eaten herrings before, then you should try them because they are one of the few sustainable fish left. And once you fall in love with the humble herring, it will grow and grow on you. Here, their saltiness is balanced out by sweet apple. Once you have peeled and chopped the apple, squeeze the lemon over it to stop it from browning while prepping the other ingredients. Then just mix everything together and refrigerate for half an hour before eating with either rye bread or new potatoes.

Ingredients

Matjas Herrings in Oil, chopped

150ml soured cream

1 Tablespoon Mayonnaise 

1 Tablespoon Fresh Dill

1 Apple, peeled and chopped

2 gherkins, chopped into cubes

1 shallot, chopped finely

Fancy sweet potato mash for Halloween

As you may have guessed from the name of this blog, I am a fan of mashed potato. I love it for it's unfussy, simple honesty and rustic charm. I don't write about it because it's a sure thing. Everyone knows Mashed Potato. But today, for Halloween, I decided to dress it up like this

That's sweet potato and sweetcorn mash up there with crispy crayfish, toasted sesame seeds (Oh my God - delicious), green chillies, spring onions and some paprika-infused Argan oil my love brought me from Morocco. I cooked the corn on the cob and unpeeled sweet potatoes together in salted water, until soft. I kept the skin on the potatoes as this is where most of the vitamins are (read: because I'm a bit lazy), and mashed them with more sea salt, black pepper and goat's butter. I then added all the fancy stuff, which you can substitute for other fancy stuff if you like

Grandma's sorrel and yoghurt soup

Whenever I eat sorrel now it reminds me of this lovely day, a couple of years ago, when my grans were still alive. It was just ordinary summer's day then, mooching about, cooking, sunbathing... yet it will always live on in my memory as something extraordinary and special, a reminder that all things pass and to cherish the moments we have with our loved ones. This sorrel soup is different to the cold one I made that day

Once you've got hold of the sorrel, either by foraging or by buying some in an online shop like this one, the soup is very simple to make. It tastes just like the one my Babcia Ziuta used to make, yet the recipe comes not from her but from this lady's grandma

That's the lady who sold us the sorrel at the market. We always wash the sorrel thoroughly first. Fry it in a large knob of butter until it wilts. Allow it to cool for about 20min, then blend. The old method is to push it through a sieve with a wooden spoon, but blending is much easier, so I suggest to do that. Put it in the biggest pan you can find and fill half-way with cold water. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for half an hour. Near the end of the cooking time, we season the soup with salt and pepper and thicken with plain flour, stirring all the time. Bring it back to the boil for 5min, allowing the flour to do it's job.

Before adding the yoghurt, we allow the soup to cool down a little bit again, for about 20-30min. The lady's grandma would have used thick cream rather than yoghurt I expect but the lady uses yoghurt and it works very well. Not to mention being healthier. So you do it like this: put the yoghurt you intend to use in a large cup and add a tablespoon of soup, stir it in. Add another tablespoon and stir it in. Repeat about 5 times. Finally, pour the whole thing into the soup and stir vigorously. Heat the soup a little before serving. Hard boiled eggs inside each bowl are a necessary addition, the potatoes with dill are optional but highly desirable

Ingredients

1 large bag of sorrel
50g butter
3 tablespoons flour
150ml greek yoghurt
Salt and white pepper
Hard boiled eggs

Lazy brunch east-european style: placki with tomato salad

So, it's my first day off in London in a looong time. It's boiling hot. I slept in deliciously until about 11am, then rolled out of bed and warmed up the placki I made for my friend, Ayesha, yesterday. Ayesha loves potatoes. This morning I ate them with salted yoghurt and a slightly spicy cherry tomato salad - just some cherry tomatoes, basil, good olive oil, a squeeze of lemon and some fresh chilli thrown together. Life's feeling pretty good...

Placki are one of the most simple and brilliant things to make. You grate some potatoes (1 per person and 1 extra on top) and an onion, making them as mushy as possible, add an egg, some flour and season with salt and pepper. For 3 potatoes I added about 2 tablespoons of flour. Heat some oil up on a large frying pan and spoon on the mixture on to the hot oil. Fry until brown on both sides, which takes approximately 10min. I make them all first, keeping them in the a warm oven until they're all ready to be eaten, but some like to eat as they go, the choice is yours

Sweet potato and sweetcorn patties aka What to do with last night's mash

The Winter refuses to give way to Spring. It has outstayed it's welcome in the most appalling way here in London. On days like this I can't help but reflect on the passing of time, going through sunny, old photos on facebook, feeling older than I am. I listened to this recording of Sylvia Plath about five times this morning while staring out of my front window at the street - Hackney at it's bleakest. I wasn't being dramatic, it just takes me a while to fully understand poetry, to feel through the words and into the truth that it lays out in front of me. The poetry and the view out of my window just happened to complement one another, and my mood. At least a few ravers pepper this sad street with some bright flashes of lipstick and their determination to have fun. Inspired by the party-goers, I finally decided to cheer myself up with these colourful sweet potato cakes, made from last night's mash

I took the cold sweet potato mash (sweet potatoes, butter and salt), added some sweetcorn, a seed mix (any seeds or nuts you have lying around), some Carribean curry powder and chilli sauce. I then mixed in some flour and an egg and formed it into sticky little balls. I fried these until they were brown and crispy on all both sides, in plenty of oil. At one point, the sweetcorn started popping on the pan, which made me smile and say "yay!". Some things are just fun to cook, little ravers of the food world. I ate these with marinated red peppers

Crispy baby potatoes with red onion, dill and anchovies

I have a rather unusual living situation at the moment in that my friend, Petey, has moved on to my couch for a couple of months. He's leaving for NYC soon to be with his love and needs to save money, so he convinced me that this was a good idea. And since I'm going freelance shortly and could do with a little help with the mortgage, I agreed. So far, it has been (a good idea). We've lived together before and it just kind of works. And after living on my own for over 2 years, it's quite nice to have a bit of variety. The biggest bonus by far is that Petey is a chef, so I get all kinds of treats. Recently, he brought home some of the best anchovies that I have ever tasted in my life. Seriously, I had no idea that anchovies could be this good. There's a hell of a lot of them and Petey was worried that I wouldn't manage to eat them all, but he underestimated my greediness I feel. I have been using them in various ways. Today, I chopped some baby potatoes and red onion, tossed them in olive oil with salt, pepper and dill and roasted it all in the oven for about 45min. Near the end of the cooking time, when the potatoes had already crisped up, I threw some anchovies over the top and gave it 5 more minutes, while boiling a couple of eggs. I ate it for lunch like this and it was more than delicious

Ingredients

Baby potatoes, chopped in half

Red onions, chopped into quaters

Dill, chopped

Free range eggs, boiled

Good quality anchovies

Olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper

Warming lentil soup with crispy-fried potatoes

As much as I love to make plans, sometimes I love to cancel plans even more. This is precisely what I did today, resulting in one incredibly pleasant Saturday. If you are lucky enough to be able to cancel everything and have a duvet day, then I recommend it. This is how I spent mine: drank good coffee while writing in bed; popped out to buy a sausage sandwich from Mess Cafe; drank more coffee while writing some more; cuddled up to Coco the cat; went for an laughably short run, then back into Mess Cafe to buy another sausage sandwich - this time for a homeless person with sad eyes; had a bath; got back into bed and messed around on facebook; drank more good coffee and powered by that coffee I wrote some more; tickled Coco for a bit; surfed the internet; made that hearty lentil soup you see down there and ate it greedily congratulating myself with every spoonful, popped out to get some honey and discovered Malt Extract at Holland and Barrett (if you could have an orgasm from food, then this is the food that would give it to you - enough said); made flapjacks with the said Malt Extract; did a spot of Kundalini yoga and meditation... and here I am now, feeling rather pleased with myself and shamelessly cancelling more plans

 

Ingredients (4 servings)

250 grams red lentils

1/2 red onion, chopped finely

1 carrot, grated

1 red chilli, chopped

1 clove of garlic, choped

1l vegetable stock

Tin of chopped tomates

1/2 teaspoon coriander

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon soya sauce

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon honey

Plenty of water

Potatoes, chopped but not peeled

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

1 duvet day, optional

Fry the onion and chilli for a couple of minutes in some olive oil. Add the carrot, garlic and spices, and fry some more. Add the lentils (I didn't need to soak mine, but soak yours first if this is what it says on the packet) and the stock. Turn the heat down, cover and leave to simmer for 20min. About now, you may want to start frying your chopped potatoes. Do this on a reasonably high heat so that they get all nice'n'crispy. Stir the chopped tomatoes into your soup, and add the soya sauce, vinegar and honey. Allow to simmer for another 20min, then add plenty of water (so that the soup is of a consistency that you enjoy most), season with salt and pepper, and allow to simmer for another 10mins before serving with your crispy potatoes inside.The thing about this soup, is that it's even better eaten the next day, just add more water, simmer for 10 more minutes and add some fresh crispy-fried potatoes

Spicy sweet potato "placki"

Sometimes it takes a cold, dark month and a party full of people you've never met before to make you realize what a good place you're at in your life

My peace of mind hasn't come easily, and I'm trying not to grasp onto it, because I want to be the one who "kisses the joy as it flies", yet for some unexplainable reason I feel very excited about the future

"Placki" are a rustic, Polish dish usually made out of normal potatoes, but on my randomly happy wave I decided to jazz them up a bit, by making them out of sweet potatoes and adding chilli and paprika into the mix

Ingredients

2 large sweet potatoes, grated to mush

1/2 a red onion, also grated to mush

1 red chilli, chopped as finely as you can get it

1 teaspoon paprika

1 heaped tablespoon plain flour

1 egg

Salt and pepper

Light olive oil for frying

Greek yoghurt to serve

Combine all the ingredients apart from the oil and yoghurt. Blend well. Heat plenty of olive oil in a large frying pan. Once it's really hot spoon on a tablespoon of the mixture and flatten down into a more-or-less round shape (or it could be a heart if you're feeling clever). Turn the heat down, cover and fry for about 7min. Turn over and fry the other side for about a little less time - maybe 5min or so. If you are having problems with the "placki" sticking together, simply add more flour. Remove from heat: eat with Greek yoghurt, more paprika and more seasoning if so inclined

Black potato and golden beetroot salad with rainbow chard

...and a side-serving of heartbreak. I'm just kidding - on the side we had 2 delicious, unpasteurized, vegetarian cheeses from The Deli Downstairs: Ardrahan and Triclemore. That's not to say that I'm not heartbroken right now, but I'm not serving that up for lunch. For once in my life, I'm actually dealing with it incredibly well. Everything is much easier when you stop trying to get away from the suffering that is a natural part of life. You know that happiness is just around the corner and it will taste so much sweeter, once you've had a bite of bitter disappointment. It's a bit like this salad come to think of it - sweet beetroot offsetting the bitter chard

 

In preparation for this salad, you need to cook and cool both the potatoes and the beetroot. The beets we peel, the Shetland blacks we leave in their stylish little coats. For the dressing, we grate the horseradish root and mix in a jar with the lemon juice, mayo, olive oil, garlic salt and pepper. I used just an inch of horseradish, which made it pretty mild. Mix the potatoes, beets and leek with the dressing, and place on top of the chard. Eat with slices of cheese on the side, a glass of white wine and pleasant company

Ingredients

Golden beetroot, cooked, peeled and chopped

Shetland black potatoes, cooked and chopped (depending on size)

Leek, chopped

Rainbow chard

Mayonnaise

Lemon juice

Horseradish root

Garlic salt

Olive oil

Black pepper

Icelandic Mashed Fish

Having been working in a Scandi department for 6 months now, I am finding myself under the influence. My style is getting a little bit more cool and paired down, I find myself visiting the Nordic Bakery every time I am near Regents Street, I've even found myself reading an Icelandic cookbook. And this is how mashed fish came into my life

It's like an Icelandic, mashed up, unbaked version of a fish pie really. You boil the potatoes in salted water until soft but still firm (not falling apart), then leave to cool while you cook the white fish, also in salted water - the fish takes about 15min. Take the fish out and flake once it stops burning your fingers. Now, peel the potatoes and chop roughly. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the onion, fry until soft but do not brown. Gently heat the milk in a separate pan. Add the flour to the onions and fry for a minute, before slowly adding the milk and stirring continuously. Finally, add the onions and fish and heat through, season and serve with chives on top and a boiled egg on the side. I added a few tiny particles of a scotch bonnet pepper. I actually wanted to add a cauliflower to the party, but my colleague, Helga, affirmed that this would indeed be a travesty. It's an Icelandic national dish after all -  good job I asked

Ingredients (serves 4)

500g white fish
500g potatoes
1 onion, chopped finely
350ml milk (I used goat's milk)
50g butter
3Tblsp flour
Salt and pepper
Chopped chives and hard-boiled egg to serve

Little hoofs aka Polish gnocchi

I've had a lot of trouble with my hoofs. I'm talking about those little potato dumplings down there. Sometimes the simplest things can be the hardest, because, as we all know from Julie and Julia, simple does not mean easy. And yet I firmly believe that simple is best, in cooking as in life. When you're young and naive life appears to be complicated, but as you get older and wiser you realize that complicated situations are actually incredibly tedious. You just need to be stronger, braver, more honest with yourself that's all. Simple, but not easy

To be fair, the first time I made these I didn't have any plain flour. I had only chickpea flour and self raising, and after the last time I made dumplings with self raising flour, I knew not to use that. They ended up looking like bloated little haggis and tasted like... carpet (don't ask me how I know what carpet tastes like). So I used the chickpea flour. And that was really weird too, although it did make them a pretty colour at least. The moral of this story is to use plain flour

And don't stray too much from the measurements I give you, although I myself use them only as a guide and don't own a set of scales. And don't cook them for too long either, like I did with my first batch. You need to stand over them and watch out for precisely the moment they swim to the top, otherwise you'll have a sticky mess on your hands. Other than that, you'll be fine

Cook the potatoes until they fall apart when you poke them and mash with a bit of salt until they are perfectly smooth. Allow to cool on a surface covered in (plain) flour. At this point, start frying the shallots in the olive oil, season. Add an egg and a cup of flour to the potatoes (see below for more precise measurements). Quickly kneed it all together and roll into three snake-like shapes, just like that up there. Cut these diagonally into little hoofs and throw into a large pan of boiling, salted water. As soon as they swim to the top, remove them from the water and drain. You'll need to cook these in three batches most probably, too many in one go and there'll be yet another kind of sticky mess. Throw the drained hoofs in with the shallots and fry for a brief moment before serving

Ingredients (serves 2)

3 large potatoes

1 egg

200g of plain flour

Sea salt

Handful shallots, peeled and sliced

3-4 tblsp olive oil, or more - don't be shy

Autumn plum dumplings - Knedle

Although I'm back in Autumnal London now, I still have one thing left to tell you about from Poland. It's one of my all time favourite dishes - plum dumplings. We used tiny little plums for these we call "the Hungarians", or if you want to be really precise they're the Hungarian women ("Wegierki"). Don't ask me why in Poland every food has to have a nationality, because I haven't a clue, but it is quite sweet. Unless you take offense at having a plum, mushroom or type of herring named after you. Anyway, these tiny plums fit perfectly, one into each dumplings, but I haven't seen them in England, so you may just need to us half a normal plum. You can also make delicious "knedle" with peaches, if you prefer, or even strawberries, but in my family, it's always been plum

Ingredients

350g potatoes, mashed without butter

125g flour

1 small egg

pinch of salt

250g plums (peaches/strawberries)

100g breadcrumbs

50g butter

Brown sugar to serve

If you doubled the ingredients, you would still only need a large egg. Really for this amount, you need half an egg, but since that doesn't exist (unless you have a quail's egg handy), we used a whole one. This made the mixture a bit wet, but this doesn't matter, you just need lots of flour when forming it. You combine the mashed potatoes with the flour, salt and egg and blend with your hands, until you create a doughy consistency. Then, roll it into a baguette shape, like you can see on the second photo up there. Cover the plumbs with plenty of brown sugar. Cut the baguette shape into even slices, and make a little dent in each one - the sugary plum goes in here. Seal it thoroughly. Bring some water to the boil and place all the dumplings in it. Whilst they're cooking, melt some butter in a frying and add the breadcrumbs - cook until nice and brown. When the dumplings swim out to the top, they're kind of ready, but they'll taste better if you give them a few more minutes - maybe 5-6. Drain them, then transfer to the frying pan with breadcrumbs. Make sure that they are all properly coated and add brown sugar to taste. A great dish for when you feel that first nip of Autumn in the air, the only thing that could have made it better for me would have been a lovely, cold glass of Gewurztraminer

Some Greek foodie things...

It never ceases to amaze me how despite all the differences between the people and cultures around the world, you can find similarities between the various cuisines. So, while you may think sashimi and sake is a flavour exclusive to Japan, I actually ate something very similar tasting in Greece last week

In a small, seafront "mezedopolio" in Kalamos, we ate raw swordfish in olive oil, washed down with raki, which, in my opinion, tastes very similar to cold saki. And sounds almost the same. That potato salad up there is the best one I've ever had, so I asked them for what's in it to make it so good, so here's the list of ingredients, painstakingly translated by my host...

Potatoes

Mayo

Mustard

Radish

Spring onion

Red and yellow peppers

Dill

Parsley

Yoghurt

Needless to say, the potatoes are the star of the show here, the other ingredients are chopped up very small and completely in the background

These are some mastic flavoured sweets I bought for the people at work, and scoffed all by myself. Mastic is a tree resin, which tastes a little bit like honey - it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but being a lover of weird and unusual flavours,  I couldn't get enough of them

So, you could say that the trip to Greece was a massive success, I felt so happy over there that a little holiday home in Kalamos has now been added to my list of wildly improbable dreams. I imagine myself swimming in the crystal-clear sea every morning, buying fresh fish straight from the fishermen for lunch, and drawn-out dinners with friends and family on one of those long wooden tables that all Mediterranean   people seem to have, surrounded by pine trees, of course - my favourite smell in the whole world

Patatas a lo pobre and thyme vinaigrette

Spain feels so far away now. It was an amazing holiday, I haven't laughed so much for a long time, and will always have fantastic memories of chilling by the pool with sangria, strolling around Valencia at night and singing along to crap tunes while driving around. Even La Tomatina seems quite funny now (though at the time we all thought we were going to die). After moving flat, being back at work for a few weeks, and going out just a little bit too much, I am ill and ready for another holiday. But there's a couple more things I would like to tell you about, from the Spanish trip. We were cooking lunch every day, and more often that not we made our version of patatas a lo pobre, with a big salad - its ridiculously easy to cook and it felt right eating it in Spain. We adapted the recipe slightly from day to day. So the one below didn't have any peppers in, another day we may have skipped the chorizo. I found rosemary growing near the villa, and this was a perfect addition to the traditional recipe

Ingredients

Potatoes

Onion 

Rosemary

Chorizo

Green bell pepper

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

You boil the potato slices for about 10 minutes and at the same time fry the chopped onion in another pan. Add the chorizo and rosemary to the pan for about 3 minutes before adding the potatoes, and green pepper. Cook until the potatoes have browned (about 15 minutes). It's fantastic served with aiolli (Spanish garlic mayo)

That up there is a delicious vinaigrette we used for the salad. As usual, the proportion of the olive oil to the red wine vinegar is 3/1. Then I added a crushed garlic clove and fresh thyme leaves, which I also found growing in the wild. Salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar, and it's done. It's best to leave this to stand for a little while to let the flavours fuse together. I love this kind of simple, rustic food because it kind of makes me feel close to nature

Pork chops and sweet potato mash with black-eyed beans and leeks (for a girly lunch)

There are few things better than clothes swapping and a girly lunch on a Sunday afternoon. Now some girls may be satisfied with a chicken salad or something equally dainty, but me and Rubes just ain't those type of girls. I needed to make something warm, comforting, full of flavour, and a bit different. I saw a recipe for black-eyed beans and leeks on 101 cookbooks, which I adapted slightly to go with the pork chops I really fancied. I decided to go for sweet potato mash, as sweet potatoes are so good for you, and I thought they would work with all the other flavours in this meal (which they did)

Ingredients

Pork chops

Paprika

Ginger

Garlic

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Sweet potato

Butter

Garlic salt

Pepper

Leek

Sage

Dried thyme

Tin of black-eyed beans

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

I marinated the pork for a couple of hours in a mixture of olive oil, paprika, garlic, ginger and salt and pepper before baking for about 40 minutes in total. For 35 minutes the oven was on at 180 degrees, and for the final 5 minutes I put the grill on full blast, to crisp up the fat. The mash needs plenty of salted butter, garlic salt and pepper, to balance out the sweetness of the yams. You have the recipe for the black-eyed beans and leeks on the 101 cookbooks website - I simply replaced the butter with olive oil, and added fresh sage at the same time as the leeks. Then replaced marjoram with thyme. We drank a delicious, light prosecco from Treviso that my dad bought me in Borough Market

Auntie Krysia's potato cake

This is a very special recipe that Auntie Krysia has been perfecting for years and years (she's nearly 80). We planned a surprise party for gran, so Krysia (her sister) came down from Olsztyn for the day, bringing her revered potato cake. We warmed it up on the barbeque and ate it with Krysia's homemade cranberry sauce and black pudding. However, it would go well with most meats and sauces, and it was even great cold, eaten as a beer snack

Ingredients

2 kg potatoes

2 tbsp flour

2 eggs

1 tbsp cream

3-4 onions

2-3 garlic cloves

Lots of lardons

Dried marjoram

Salt and pepper

Now, Auntie Krysia is one of those instinctive cooks, who doesn't really measure things out - so all I got from her was that she uses one packet of marjoram and one of pepper. What kind of packet, I don't know, so I'd say add a tablespoon of each to start of with. With the lardons, I also didn't get a quantity, but what I did get is that she gets the butcher to mince them for her, so if you get a packet of lardons, you need to chop them up a bit more. You grate the potatoes as finely as you can, and beat the egg whites, adding the yolks once they are fluffy. If the potatoes are watery, then you need to pour the water out. Add the eggs to the potatoes, with the flour and the cream. Fry the lardons and finely chopped onion until they become crispy, then add them in, and mix everything together really well. Butter a baking tray, and pour the mixture in. Bake for 45-60 min. Then enjoy with family and friends, preferably sitting outside under some trees