Prunes wrapped in cured bacon

I'll tell you something- this is remarkably easy to make. And kids can make them too, as it's fun!

Type of dish: starter, snack
Cost: medium
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 2-8
Time: 20 min
Preparation time: 10min
Baking time: 10 min
Oven temp: 180C

What you need to prepare this dish:
Shallow baking dish with parchment paper, toothpicks

Ingredients:

• 1 packet dried prunes
• 20-30 strips of cured smoked bacon / or regular smoked bacon
• lamb lettuce

How to prepare:
Heat oven to 180C. Wrap each prune in a strip of the bacon. Put a toothpick in each prune and place it in the baking dish. When you've wrapped all the prunes, pop the dish in the oven for 10 min, then take them out. Best served warm, not scalding hot!

Serving ideas:
You can place them on a plate, or in a tartelet dish filled with some lamb lettuce with a little vinaigratte for color. Or instead of putting the prunes on toothpicks, try putting them on wooden skewers. Yum.

More of an apero table

If you were ever curious how the table looks when we're cooking... Here you go!
We are currently trying to post all the recipes we made here, but if you see something we didn't and need the recipe, feel free to comment!

The exceptional Salmon Paste

There's lots to be told about salmon. Lots of recipes, but most of them involve salmon, lemon juice and fresh dill. This recipe is no exception, but it's so good, I can't not post it. Best with a fresh baguette, that's all I'm saying. We tried it on toast fours, on baguette, on cut precel bread and it was always yummy.
Check it out:



Type of dish: snack, starter
Cost: medium
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 4-10
Time: 30 min
Preparation time: 5 min
Serving time: 20 min

What you need to prepare this dish:
Blender, bowl, knife, spoon, cutting board, toaster (additional), pastry bag with a regular nozzle (like and "O")

Ingredients:

• 250grams of smoked salmon
• 1 tbsp of fresh cream
• 100 grams mascarpone cheese
• 1 tbsp dried dill
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• pinch of salt
• pinch of pepper
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 baguette/ or 2 pretzels/ or  half a loaf of toasted white bread

How to prepare:

Prepare your blender. Put in everything apart from the bread, and blend until the mixture resembles a cream cheese and the salmon is evenly shredded. Taste a bit to see if it needs more lemon juice or salt, or pepper. Cooking is all about tasting, people! Besides, why would the cook go hungry? :)
Put the paste in the fridge to cool down a bit, and cut the bread into desired slices. Triangles, squares, or just cut the bread in 4-5mm slices. If you're using white bread, you're in for more fun. Toast it in the toaster or your oven, cool it down, cut off the edges and cut to the shape you want it. Take your salmon paste out of the fridge and put a teaspoon on each piece of bread you have, or, if you have to make more, put the salmon paste in a pastry bag, and squirt out the amount needed.
Garnish with fresh dill and lemon wedges on the side.

Lazy or what? Black olives fragrant version

 

I love these olives. They're my best friends up to 3 weeks if I make a lot of them. It's worth making more, as they always dissapear faster than estimated. Which is nice too. Great for a snack, great for an apero, they are always welcome here:)

Type of dish: starter, snack

Cost: medium
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 1-9
Time: 90 min
Preparation time: 10min

What you need to prepare this dish:

a large clean jar with lid, cutting board, knife,  colander

Ingredients:

• 1 jar of pitted black olives
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled
• 2 twigs of fresh rosemary
• a bottle of olive oil

How to prepare:

 Drain the olives in the collander, shake around so they won't have more water in them. Cut the garlic in slices, strip the twigs of the rosemary leaves. Put some garlic and rosemary in the bottom of the jar, fill up a quater of the way with olives, put in some more garlic and rosemary, again with the olives, and repeat untill you have no more olives left. Next pour in the olive oil, gently tapping the jar to get the air out of the olives and the olive oil in them. Put the lid on, and store in a dark , cold place, not exactly the fridge, but it can do if your fridge doesn't go into minus temperatures.  After an hour, the olives already have a delicate garlicy- rosemary taste. Utter heaven!

Gosh, another soup: Gazpacho

You probably might be bored with all the tomato soups we have here going on, but this is served as a starter so we really don't care more than we have to. Another classic, served in wine glasses, but if you have more guests, think about shot glasses or regular drinking glasses. It's really good for using leftover pieces from tomatoes, cucumbers and bread. Kind of a trash soup, I guess, best served chilled:)

Type of dish: soup, starter
Cost: medium
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 4-8
Time: 15 min
Preparation time: 10 min
 
What you need to prepare this dish:
hand blender, table spoon, large bowl, cutting board, knife, serving glasses

Ingredients:

• 1 can tinned tomatoes
• 1/2 cucumber/ pealed
• 1/2 bell pepper
• 2 slices of bread
• 2 medium tomatoes
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 5ml olive oil
• 1 cup of water
• Splash of tabasco

How to prepare:

Put everything in the large bowl, except for 1/2 a tomato, and about 1/5 of the cucumber. Cut out the seeds from the tomato and cucumber you set aside and throw it in the bowl. Stirr a bit and turn on your blender. Blend until you see no more big pieces.  Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge to chill. As they say, revenge is a dish best served cold, and the same is with gazpacho. Cut the remaining veggies into small dice and set aside for serving time, as you can put half a spoon in each portion you serve.

Additional information:
If you have some chives you can decorate the gazpacho with a few springs. In France, now very popular are Verrines, which are nothing else but food put in shot glasses. Apparently, very fancy, but in Poland, we have other uses for shot glasses, thats why we use any glases. Wine, or beverage ones. Or, if you're not having a party but just want good food, take a bowl, you don't need our permission to use one:)

Delicious ham roll

Look at these yummy suckers... They are soooo good! I was oficially introduced to them while visiting in Marseille our friends Olga and Ben ( Hi guys!). They are easily made, are delicious and they shut up crying kids ( tried it, it works). We made about a ton of them for our apero party for the Duka contest, and they are a blast!


Here's your how-to:

Type of dish: snack
Cost: medium
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 4-9
Time: 30 min
Preparation time: 25min

What you need to prepare this dish:
cutting board, sharp small knife, butter knife, toothpicks, plate to serve

Ingredients:

• 200 grams of ham ( if you have access to polish ham, try searching for szynka litewska)
• 2 packages of cream cheese, philadefia type
• 1 bunch of chives
• additional for the garnishing- either more chives or use fresh chopped dill

How to prepare:
Using the butter knife, fluff up a bit the cream cheese, so it's easier to spread over the ham slices. Chop finely the chives on the cutting board and leave it there for a sec. Take a slice of ham, spread thinly some cream cheese over the ham, and sprinkle some chopped chives over the chesse and start rolling the ham into a tight long roll. Next, cut the roll in bite sized pieces. If you're picky about the size ann inch long will be great. Pierce a toothpick in each roll and put on a plate. Sprinkle with leftover chives or dill. Ready to gobble up!

Long time no see

Hello everybody! Happy New Year 2012 and happy february, while we're at it:)
We are really sorry for the looooong delay, but sometimes things happen. Like jobs. Or vacations. Or holidays, go- aways and other work which comes around sometimes.

But here we are again, ready to roll. And boy, do we have a lot of recipes to share with you!

We also are taking part in a Duka contest, so that was awesome too! 3 days of preparing for 1 photoshoot and one big dinner for friends:) But it was worth it. It always is:)

Now, the big question is: what to post first?
Right now, we're in the middle of baking a cake to celebrate. Because it's soooo cold here (-12 during the day), we're making a fruit cake, to bring a bit of summer back to us. This is also the forgiving time, when we can cook fat, full of carbs and sugar meals and get away with it. Why, you ask? Because it's cold, it's winter , and it seems that it will never go away. That's why. So tartiflette with a healthy (or maybe not) dose of Reblochon cheese; or lots of puff pastry with good things inside.
 This is the time of year when everybody will forgive you for that kind of cooking, because it's what gets them going:)
So,check out the next post for yummy food!