My favourite rosé and eating art

For me, summer means rose. I start drinking it around April or May, on warmer days, to remind myself that summer is coming, and don't stop til October. That way, the great British summer feels as long as it possibly can

I want to tell you about my favourite rose so far this year, which I get from my usual wine shop in Old Street. I fell in love with it immediately, as it was unlike any other rose I have tried. With men, my life has shown this to be a bad tactic, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. Yet with wine, it hasn't let me down yet... therefore please meet the charming Chateau Larroze 2008

This isn't a fruity rose, it's rather complex and unusual, and I'd say it would go well with equally intense and perhaps garlicky fish and vegetable dishes, as well as tangy goat's cheese. I know it's weird to call a rose "intense", that it's a word reserved for red wine, but I don't care, there is something intense about this rose. It's also a bit farmy, and a bit flowery. And there stops my trying to describe it how it tastes - you just need to go and try it!

As you can see up there, the colour isn't exactly pink either, it's more like a "coppery peach" I have decided

The other thing I would like to mention is my current obsession with a programme called "Eating Art", which you can watch on Sky Player. I am rewarding myself at work with these - so I watch one a day, after some part of my job which I don't particularly enjoy doing - they've been great motivation! I haven't watched them all yet, but so far "Square Meal", which talks about Cubism's relationship to food, has been the best in my opinion. I always had a feeling that art and food were in linked in some inexplicable way, and now here we have it - proof! Though, as it turns out, it is actually perfectly explicable

Finger food: hummus, pastries and greek salad

I love eating outside! The weather was so crap all day on Friday, and then as we left work, the sun came out - what a miracle! I had a couple of old friends, Rob and Jim, coming over for dinner, and decided to cheat a bit and just do mezze-type finger food, and concentrate on the vodka martinis rather than spending lots of time in the kitchen. It took me just an hour to put everything together before they came round, and then we went for drinks in the courtyard for half an hour while the pastries were baking in the oven. We ate moroccan style humus (without tahini) and pitta chips, pastries with feta and spinach and moroccan-spiced lamb, and a greek salad.

Ingredients - hummus:

Tin of chickpeas

Half a teaspoon cumin

Half a teaspoon paprika 

Juice of half a lemon

Salt

About a tablespoon olive oil

With the hummus, I just blended the chickpeas, lemon juice, salt and spices in a blender, slowly adding the olive oil into the mix. I wanted to use dried chickpeas originally, as I prefer their flavour, and even soaked some overnight, but then I realized that I would need to cook them for ages and promptly changed my mind. You may think I was being lazy, but it was a Friday night, and sometimes the priority has to be to have a good time! I cut the pittas into strips and stuck them in the oven for about 20 minutes on 100 degrees C, while waiting for my mates to come round. For the greek salad up there, I just used cucumber, tomatoes, feta and onion. Dressing was the simplest possible - lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, which I put it on immediately before serving. When my friends arrived with the ice, I made dirty vodka martinis, with an unusual spelt vodka I picked up in Poland. I have recently learnt that I needn't have spent lots of money on the vodka, because the best vodka martinis I have tasted, at Milk and Honey in Soho, are made with Wyborowa - a cheap Polish rye vodka - apparently the rye cuts through the brine really well. Still, mine were pretty good too. I make dry ones, so all you need is vodka, and olives in brine. They say you should never shake a martini, so I just stirred the vodka ice, and brine for a minute or two in the cocktail shaker, and drained into a chilled glass. I can't say how much vodka and brine I used exactly - I like it quite dirty, so I'd say about 2 parts vodka to 1 part brine, but it's entirely up to you

Ingredients - pastries:

Feta and Spinach

Packet of puff pastry

Bag of fresh spinach

200g feta

Juice of half a lemon

Salt and pepper

Butter for sticking

Moroccan spiced lamb 

(Adapted from A new Book of Middle-Eastern Food by Claudia Roden)

Packet of puff pastry

Half an onion

300 grams minced lamb

Cinamon stick

Teaspoon grated fresh ginger

Pinch of paprika

Salt and pepper

2 eggs, beaten

Olive oil for frying

Butter for sticking

With the feta and spinach pastries, I simply shredded the fresh spinach and blanched it for 5 minutes. When you drain it, make sure you get as much water out as possible, by squishing it with a fork. Then put it in a bowl, with the lemon juice and feta, and keep squishing, adding the salt and pepper at the end. My Greek friend who taught me to make these folded them in little triangles, but I find that you don't get that much filling in there, so I do squares - putting the mixture in the middle,  folding once over and sticking the sides together, into a pillow shape. For the lamb pastries, you brown the onion for about five minutes before adding the minced lamb and spices. You use a fork to break the meat up while it is cooking and it needs to cook for about 10 minutes. Then turn the heat off and pour over the beaten eggs. Use the same fork to push and blend the eggs into the lamb mix. Then allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. I was supposed to roll this into cigar shapes, however, wanting to put as much lamb in as possible they turned into sausage roll shapes. The thing with pastries is that anything goes really - as long as you get the filling right, they will taste lovely. I cooked them at 180 degrees C for half an hour. This recipe will make 24 pastries all together, which was way too many for just three people, but they are quite nice cold the next day too

Sweet summer soup - strawberry and rhubarb

The cuisine that I remember from my childhood in Poland was always seasonal. We would eat this kind of cold soup on hot summer days, sitting under a fruit tree in someone's garden or dacha. You can use all sorts of fruit - sour cherry soup is one of my favourites, but these type of cherries are practically impossible to get hold of in the UK. Strawberries by themselves make a lovely, sweet soup, but it lacks a certain depth of flavour, whereas adding rhubarb gives it a sweet-sour taste that we poles love so much

Ingredients

2 litres water

 80g small pasta shapes per person

1kg strawberries

2 large stalks of rhubarb

4-5 tablespoons caster sugar

1 teaspoon cloves (about 7 or 8)

Half a vanilla pod

Large single cream

The above quantities make about 8 portions. You start off by peeling the rhubarb and cooking it in the water, with the cloves and vanilla, until soft, which takes about 20 minutes. While it's cooking, mash the strawberries and sugar with a potato masher. Add these to the pan. Put the heat on low and cook together for at least another 20 minutes. In the meantime, cook the pasta shapes in plenty of water with some salt in it, as you would normally. I used sconcigli, which worked fine, but it would have been even better with smaller pasta shapes. Then let the soup cool - my mum always puts it ouside for an hour - before  adding the cream. Serve the soup at room temperature, on top of the pasta shapes

As you can see, it's like summer in a bowl. Needless to say, this isn't the sort of soup you would serve as a starter - it should be served during the day, as a light lunch, on it's own. I have never known any child that doesn't love this soup, and some people, like myself, never quite grow out it

Chilli and beetroot red velvet cakes

I am discovering that there are certain advantages to being single: you are no longer ruled by your mobile phone; you don't have to rush, or even look at the time; you can watch anything you want on TV; and you have the freedom to eat red velvet cakes for dinner, if you so please. Tonight, I so pleased. As you have probably realized due to the lack of cakes on this blog, I do not bake often. I dislike measuring ingredients and being precise. With cakes, you need to measure, as I have learnt through many bad experiences

I first ate red velvet cakes a few months ago, when my friend from work brought them in. As she is now on a diet, I can't rely on her to make them anymore, and this is why I have had to venture into cake making territory myself. I have adapted two recipes for this - the cake itself is from the Green'n'Blacks chocolate cookbook, whereas the icing is from the Hummingbird bakery. I wanted to use the beetroot to colour the cakes in order to make them healthier, but they turned out less red and more brown. My own tweek to this recipe is using chilli chocolate, as well as adding a pinch of chilli powder, which gives it a bit of a kick. You start off by preheating the oven to gas mark 180/ gas mark 4. Sift together the drinking chocolate and flour, mixing in the sugar. Melt the chocolate and butter together and puree the beets. Whisk the eggs, then add the beets. Add the chocolate and beet mixture into the dry ingredients and keep whisking/blending. Now, all the recipes say to bake this for 50 minutes, but mine were ready after 40min. For the icing, mix the butter in with the icing thoroughly, then add the cream cheese and blend. I used the whisk for this. Once the cakes had cooled, I used a spatula to cover them in icing, putting the the mini marshmallows on top, as decoration. You will need to use either quite strong cups or double up, so they don't get too out of shape. I doubled up, but as you can see they still got slightly deformed. Next time, I will definitely use hardcore, strong cups, so that they look even prettier. I may even get a special tray...

Ingredients

100g drinking chocolate

230g self raising flour

200g caster sugar

100g dark chocolate (with chilli is possible)

125g slightly salted butter

250g cooked beetroot

3 large eggs

Pinch of chilli powder

Icing:

300g icing sugar

50g butter

150g cream cheese

Mini marshmallows

By the way, this recipe makes about a million cakes. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but more than 24 anyhow, so you may want to halve it if you do not want that many...