Three ways with Marrow

I work in Isleworth, so for the past year and a half that I have been here, the only distraction I have had is walking around Tesco's in my lunch hour. You can, therefore, imagine my joy to have recently discovered Osterley Park - a neo-classical mansion house with massive grounds, with cows and ponies, and lots of old, old trees. There is also a farm shop. And it's cheap! So this is how I came to be cradling a marrow on my way home from work the other day, my bag having snapped under the strain of the huge vegetable

I have never cooked a marrow before, so I decided look to the internet for inspiration, as you do. What I found was a world disturbingly obsessed with stuffing marrows. After having carried the marrow like a baby for about two hours, I was reluctant to then start stuffing it. It seemed a bit harsh. So I disregarded all the suggestions, and went with my gut instincts to treat the marrow with a measure of tenderness. I split it into three and each piece made two portions of food. So for one pound, you're getting great value for money with this one!

Marrow Curry

Chunks of peeled marrow

Onion

2 inches fresh ginger

2 garlic cloves

2 green chillies

1 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp turmeric

Tin of chopped tomatoes

Pinch of cinamon

Sesame oil

Pinch of cinamon

Fry the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli in the sesame oil for a couple of minutes, before adding the turmeric and chilli powder. Stir it in well and add a tablespoon of water, so that the spices don't burn. After another couple of minutes, add the chopped marrow. Make sure it's well mixed with the curry spices and oil, and cover the pan. You want to cook it like this for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Finally, add the tin of chopped tomatoes and cinamon, and cook for a further 20 minutes or so. Serve with chapatis, naan or rice

Fried Marrow (1 portion)

Thickly sliced mallow

3 tbsp plain flour

Garlic salt

Black pepper

1 tsp paprika or cayenne pepper

1 egg

Olive oil for frying

Dipping sauce of your choice

This was delicious and so simple to make. I combined the flour, salt, pepper and paprika, and beat the egg. The marrow was sliced into 2 cm thick pieces and peeled. I made sure the whole bottom of a frying pan was covered in the oil and heated it up to sizzling. The you dip the marrow slices in the egg, making sure all sides are covered, and immediately into the flour mixture. Lower it into the oil carefully, and fry until golden - it will take about 5-7 min each side. I used a Caribbean chilli sauce for dipping, a bit of sour cream wouldn't have gone amiss

Roast Marrow

Marrow chunks

Red pepper

Yellow pepper

Leek

3-6 garlic cloves

Thyme

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

My friend told me that in Spain, marrow is often roasted with red peppers. I ate this as a light supper, then took the leftovers to work and stuffed them into a baguette with some goat's cheese for a delicious sandwich. I don't think I need to go into a great amount of detail about how I roasted the vegetables, so just a quick rundown - peel and chop the marrow into bite-size cubes; deseed and chop the peppers; and wash and chop the leek. The garlic cloves I bruised with the side of a knife and didn't even bother peeling. Cover everything in plenty of olive oil, and season with thyme (fresh or dried), as well as salt and pepper. Roast for about an hour at 200 degrees C, moving the vegetables around every 15 min or so, so that they brown evenly with lots of crispy bits. Long live marrow, the gentle giant!

Blueberry pasta - not at all weird

I know, I know, it sounds weird. But in Poland we often eat pasta in sweet dishes. And it is so delicious, and so easy to make that I had to write about it. At this time of year, blueberries are in abundance, so we use them. As you can see down there, they are not exactly like the blueberries that we get in the UK, they are smaller and harder, and taste a bit different too. But I expect that you can replace the blueberries with a different variety quite easily, because, well, why not? You can also use a different berry altogether if you so choose, I think blackberries would work well for instance

Ingredients

Pasta

Blueberries

Sugar

Sour cream

You simply cook the pasta as normal, in salted water. In a separate pan, you cook the blueberries, along with the sugar. Add the sugar according to your own taste. Then combine the two, and stick a dollop of cream on top. Didn't I say it was easy?

Sweet herring salad - summery Polish food

So as you know, I have a bee in my bonnet about Polish food being misrepresented in the UK, with, for example, bigos being served on food stands in the summer. Why anyone would want to eat heavy sauerkraut stew on a hot day is beyond me, and it would be unheard of for someone to serve you that in the middle of summer in Poland. For dinner, we may have a soup, like chlodnik or botwinka (a sour soup made from young beetroot leaves), followed by cold meats and salads (though a pot of homemade lard with tasty crispy bits, next to a jar of home pickled cucumbers is not uncommon, I must confess). This a herring salad, which is particularly tasty, and combines sweet, sour and salty in a way that pleases the Polish palate

Ingredients

3-4 salted herring fillets 

3 hard boiled eggs

Tin of pineapple

Cup of sour cream 

1 tsp sugar

Chives

Mayo to taste

A little bit of pepper

The herrings my mum bought were very salty, so we soaked them for 20 min in cold water, before chopping them into bite size chunks. The eggs and pineapple were chopped into the same sized bits and added to the bowl. We mixed the sour cream and sugar together and added a couple of tablespoons of mayo. Then poured the sauce onto the salad and mixed well, adding pepper to taste. Once the salad was transfered to a serving dish, we sprinkled it with finely chopped chives and chilled for 20 min before serving. Great with ice-cold vodka!

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