‘You like tomato and I like tomahto...’, the best ever tomato soup…

Well, there are as many types of tomato soup as many people on Earth. 'You like tomato and I like tomahto ...' I don’t know the person who doesn’t like tomatoes, not to mention tomato soup, on which most of us probably grew up. From childhood, I remember the one with sour cream and rice or pasta made with chicken broth made on previous day. Then, in busy student days, when there was no time to cook proper food, there was a trend for a readymade hot cup of Knorr tomato soup and I wasn’t that bad, I have to admit! Later, after the first visit to Italy, we tended to prepare this lovely tomato, basil and parmesan cheese with garlic croutons. Since we have an access to a variety of spices and products of the world, our famous tomato soup transformed with each cooking - once delicate in flavour and creamy and spicy with a hint of the smoked paprika, and another time with plenty of rosemary and yoghurt ... I could go on and on about it... After all these experiments, it was time for something more traditional with a hint of something new... While searching for inspiration, we combined a few different recipes we’ve known already and in this way we came up with the best tomato soup we’ve ever eaten. 

Our tomato soup 

1kg San Marzano tomatoes 

2 large carrots 

4 garlic cloves 

1 large onion 

½ l vegetable stock 

sea ​​salt 

Freshly ground pepper 

Pinch of smoked paprika powder 

Olive oil with white truffles 

A few tablespoons of Greek yoghurt 

Pasta 'Stellette Stars' (small, in the shape of stars) 

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Wash the tomatoes, peel them and cut crosswise. Peel the carrots, onions and garlic. Arrange all the vegetables in a baking dish, sprinkle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake for approx. 1 hour. Remove from the oven and peel off the skin from the tomatoes. Using a blender, puree all the vegatables until you’ve reached the desired consistency. We like more lumpy consistency rather than completely purred. Add your vegetable broth and smoked paprika powder and season with salt and pepper as you like. Lastly, stir in two or three tablespoons of Greek yoghurt. Serve with the pasta stars previously cooked. And sprinkle the soup with some truffle oil as you serve. 

There are few versions of the Gershwins’ ‘Let's Call The Whole Thing Off' song... however, our favourite one is that sung by Elle Fitzgerald and Luisa Armstronga, which you can listen here as you eat your favourite tomato soup :)

Enjoy! 

Eat, eat, and your appetite will come... :)

Oh Dear... it’s one of those days that you've got no appetite and most of all I can't eat anything. But the dinner with friends is set for 2pm... Mamma mia! What am I going to do now? I flip through the culinary books and magazines nervously but none of the recipes satisfy my capricious taste today...I look at photos of beautiful dishes and they do not move me somehow... After half an hour of browsing through I find it... Yes yes, I got it!!! I yell at the entire kitchen... and at that moment the phone rang - 'Beloved, we just left the house, and will see you in an hour...' - announced friends. OMG, and I haven’t even started... oh well, I have to quickly think of something to impress them before the main course and even stimulate the appetite for what is about to begin. And once again, I realized why I love the Italian way of eating, relaxing and indulgence in the kitchen... They are the ones who invented antipasti, appertizers... or whatever you wanna call it... 

The history of antipasto traces back to the ancient Romans who featured antipasto as a stimulant before the main meal. It evolved from two very different cultural conditions – extreme wealth and the poverty of necessity. The wealthy used the antipasto as a prelude to a multi-coursed banquet. For the poor, antipasto was a street food eaten while working or shopping. 

Like the opening credits for a film, the appearance of the antipasto announces to the crowd that something special is about to begin. Even the sight of small appetizers beautifully prepared can change the mood of gathering, luring guests to the table... And their main purpose is to stimulate the appetite (which I need today) and the taste buds without a sense of fullness. It is served cold or at room temperature, its components as colourful as possible. But most of all, they need to encourage your guests to start the meal... even if your appetite is not agreeing with you today... 

A good antipasto plate will always have some combination of fresh melon or tomatoes, thinly sliced cured meats like prosciutto, marinated olives or mushrooms, vegetables, cheese, and seafood. Look what we did...

Rocket Salas

Serrano Ham thinly sliced 

Honeydew Melon bites

Thin flakes of Parmiggiano Reggiano

A pinch of freshly ground pepper

A few drops of raspberry-blasamic glaze

Recipe for Raspberry -Balsamic Glaze

2 cups fresh raspberries

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar 

2 tablespoons sugar

In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring 1 cup raspberries, the balsamic vinegar, and the sugar to a simmer. Allow the mixture to simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 15 to 20 minutes. The balsamic glaze is done cooking when it has reduced in volume and thickened.

All components of your antipasto arrange on the plates, sprinkle with freshly ground pepper and drizzle with rasberry-blasamic glaze. Serve before main meal and you'll see the faces of your guests! They will be delighted!

Enjoy!!!

Late Night Baking...

It happened… I decided to learn to bake cakes... I have to admit that I never had a particular spirit either a will for baking. And the first and the only attempt to bake a Brownie was a total failure. My Brownie had a rather runny consistency and we could easily sip it from the cup.... heheheheh 

In this way, I gave up all the baking attempts for years. However, since I’ve managed to bake some beautiful loaves of bread, I thought why would fail to bake some simple cakes... and succeeded!!! A few days ago, we enjoyed our scrumptious, homemade banana bread. The reason I chose this for my big baking return is that the recipe is so easy to make and obviously because of bananas.... who doesn’t like bananas? It's one of those fruits that you can do absolutely everything - from the cocktails and cold and warming desserts to cakes and muffins... And I even noticed that lots of my British friends enjoy their double toasts with slices of banana in the morning.... to one's heart content!!! 

As always before the great kitchen challenges I searched the Internet totally and I found this great recipe, the effects of which can be seen below. This bread is perfect for breakfast or unexpected Sunday visit of your friends... Literally super fast....

Banana Bread 

Makes 1 full-sized loaf or 2 small loaves 

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. 

In one bowl, combine: 

1/2 stick (4-5 tablespoons) butter, softened 

2 eggs 

2 or 3 very ripe bananas 

2/3 cup sugar 

Use a potato masher, fork, or spoon to squish the banana and mix the ingredients together. It is alright for there to be small (1 centimeter) chunks of banana in the batter, but you want most of the banana to be reduced to mush. 

In another bowl, combine: 

1 1/3 cup all-purpose unbleached flour 

3/4 teaspoon salt 

1/2 teaspoon baking soda 

1/4 teaspoon baking powder 

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional) 

Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix until the ingredients are blended together. 

If you like, stir in additional ingredients here, such as chopped walnuts or pecans, dried cherries or apricots, or chocolate chips. A handful (about a half a cup) is about right. 

Pour the dough into greased baking pans and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Small loaves take around 30 minutes, a normal-sized loaf takes around 50 minutes. 

Remove from the oven. This bread is great warm, but it is excellent cold too. 

After they have cooled for 5 or 10 minutes the loaves can be removed from the pan to cool. Once they are cool they can be individually wrapped and frozen. 

Enjoy and have a lovely evening! 

Dear Francesca...

I guess, we all have a big shelves full of cookery books in our kitchens. But there is always the one that we use mostly, we love it for its recipes and the style of the author.... Some time ago, I stopped buying the ‘just cookery books’ as I call them. I love those books that are much more than wonderful recipes with photos, they tell stories, give a vivid and fascinating insight into the authors’ lives  and you can read them again and again and again... not only in a kitchen...

And definitely Mary Contini is one those authors that I can endlessly read and laugh at her little charming story where she unravels to her daughter Francesca, the family story like a precious thread. It’s full of warmth, love and respect for traditional Italian attitudes to food as the cornerstone of a nurturing family life.

This is how she wrote to her dear daughter Francesca....

‘’Dear Francesca,

When your dad was very young, he spent many long summer holidays with his grandparents, Annunziata and Luigi. He learned to speak Neapolitan, to understand the Italian mentality and to enjoy the best Italian food. Annunziata loved him with a passion and cooked for him all the best she could afford. She was an instinctive cook. She never read, never owned a cookery book, but had learned from her mother and mother-in-law how to feed a family. Like us all, she did have one or two blind spots. She knew that her grandson loved gnocchi. She always made them for him the very day he arrived. He enjoyed the ritual of pleasing her by eating two or three platefuls. Her gnocchi were quite heavy and, as she got older they got heavier. By the time she was eighty-five, they were referred to as ‘pietre di piombo’, ‘lead stones’ – though never in her presence.

On honeymoon, when we visited, she insisted on showing me how to cook her gnocchi for my new husband. It was now my duty, after all to provide him with all his needs. Gnocchi included!!! To prove to her how he loved her, and I suspect to let me know who was going to be a boss, your dad ate not one, not two but three huge plates of ‘stones’... Let me just say that it took him three days to recover, and he didn’t quite keep up his air of authority at all times....

These are my mummy’s gnocchi. Many Italian women add some baking powder to prevent them being heavy. Mummy uses a little self-raising flour to the same effect. You need to choose floury potatoes to make gnocchi. Waxy or new potatoes don’t work.’’

450g floury potatoes, such as Maris Piper, Kind Edward or Desiree

1 organic egg yolk, beaten

200g plain flower

20g self-raising flour

Maldon sea salt

Moreover:

100g butter

100g sun-dried tomatoes, chopped

150g mixed olives, pitted

Handful fresh basil leaves, roughly torn, plus extra to garnish

150g ball mozzarella, drained

Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling

Method

1. Boil the unpeeled potatoes in a large pan of water until tender. Drain and, when cool enough to handle, remove the potato skins. Mash until really smooth.

2. Add the egg yolk, plenty of salt and the flours and blend everything with together with clean, floured hands. Turn out and knead on a floured surface for a few minutes.

3. Put a large pan of water on to boil. Cut the dough into 4 and roll out each piece to 2cm ‘ropes’. Cut off at 2.5cm intervals and cook the gnocchi in the boiling water, in batches, for 3-4 minutes (4-5 minutes, until risen to the surface.

4. Preheat the grill to high. Heat the butter in a large ovenproof frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add the gnocchi, in 2 batches, and cook until crispy and golden. Return all the gnocchi to the pan. Add the tomatoes, olives and basil and warm through.

5. Tear the cheese over the gnocchi, pop the pan under the hot grill, until melted and golden. Serve, drizzled with oil and the extra basil.

Mary Contini continues to her daughter... 

‘’....Traditionally, gnocchi were made by eye. The women never weighed the potatoes and flour. They just judged when they had added enough. Use the recipe above as a guide and make them how you like them.

Francesca, don’t let Nonna Annunziata know that your dad likes my gnocchi better than hers!...’’

I did my gnocchi according to Contini's recipe and they tasted absolutely scrumptious.... finally, I found the best consistency of gnocchi.... thanks to Mary and Francesca..... 

Enjoy yours!!! 

Fragment of the book 'Dear Francesca. An Italian journey of recipes recounted with love.' by Mary Contini. 

Sweet returns…

We're back... After several months of absence we are back blogging again... We laughed with Jarek that it begins to be our ritual that every year, around May, our culinary activity goes out of the window, cookbooks become overlapped with a nice layer of dust, our everyday screaming food processor suddenly does not want to utter even a whisper, various products and delicacies hiding in cabinets are not tempting us with their flavours and aromas, and our culinary afflatus together with spirit go on holiday... even random peeping to our favourite blogs from time to time, somehow do not evoke more emotions... whether this is lack of time or post winter fatigue... who knows? well, it’s time to come back from these holidays!!! And so, today the kitchen looks like a hurricane flew across it – the food processor dance into its own rhythm, my laptop lying quietly on a refrigerator and  displaying five different recipes for muffins. Pots and bowls are flying all over the kitchen, beautiful smell of cinnamon spread in the kitchen air and me.... Excited and impatient, I stand at the oven and pierced with culinary thrill of excitement waiting for the cinnamon - plum muffins....

Cinnamon - Plum muffins

Ingredients for 12 muffins:

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonated soda

2 eggs, beaten

120 g caster sugar (I put 60g)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

half cup of oil

300 g Greek yogurt

6 plums, cut into small pieces

For sprinkling:

1 / 4 cup Demerara sugar

Preparation:

Traditionally beat the eggs lightly then add the yoghurt. Combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, bicarbonate soda, little pieces of plums in a separate bowl. Add the dry mix to the wet mix until combined. Spoon into muffin tins, sprinkle with Demerara sugar and bake in the oven at 190 degrees for about 25 mins or until golden brown. Cool on wire rack. 

Enjoy!!!

May returns...

So there we are again, after the season of long weekends and and family visits we are back. Summer has finally entered into our lives and there is no way to avoid thinking about a sunny places where you can enjoy culinary delights. Places like Spain... again. Hehe, well, we like to go back there with our senses at every opportunity. The idea of the day has started with the fact that I visited the charity shop and on the shelf I noticed two wine glasses that I just knew that were going to be great on our dining table. Two high, made of slightly thick greenish glass which beautifully fits the vision of summer, sun and house wine. So without hesitation I bought them (for the entire £2.5) and happily started to going back home. Along the way I thought about what to cook for a dinner...
I have had the glases so perhaps I should have the wine too. Red one will be great I thought, in contrast with the color of the glass. It would look nice if table will be set with different sort of food. At this point, I was on the verge of thinking... Tapas! Well, just an idea for a meal. Along the way home I visited the store and yet bought a cured ham and 300 grams of lean beef. An vision of the dinner appeared in my head. Just few more things, the Greek style yogurt, cucumber, mint - all have probably guessed, it will be also Tzatziki sauce this evening :) - and I've already got everything that we missed in the refrigerator.

As a result, on the table were:

Grilled Beef with feta cheese
Pork loin wrapped in ham and also grilled,
Baked potatoes in olive oil with chilli
Olives
Dried tomatoes
and
Salad with iceberg lettuce and tomatoes

If it comes to the pork I thought that the meat well-seasoned and baked by Daria's mom will fit perfectly into our culinary journey. So the Polish pork has become a part of the idea of ​​tapas.

How? Here is a recipe for ham and pork in a long time maturing ham:

Chopped pork into three 1 cm thick slices. Then cut each slice in half, put half of the red grape on each of them as well as a small sprig of thyme and then wrapped in a slice of ham. After drizled it with olive oil grill for about 15 minutes.

Ingredients:
3 slices of homemade roast pork loin
3 large red grapes
6 slices of cured ham
6 small sprigs of thyme
2 tablespoons of olive oil

Beef with a Greek touch
Diced beef marinated with pressed garlic, balsamic red vinegar, a pinch of pepper, dried smoked paprika, a pinch of chilli flakes, basil, oregano and a pinch of salt. I put it all into the tarracota cassuelas tossed with olive oil and leave for half an hour then I put it in the oven set on a grill option. Mixing from time to time to make beef crispy each side after about an hour I added finely diced feta cheese and added to my beef for a further 15 minutes.

Ingredients:
300 grams of lean beef steak cut into cubes about 2cm
100 grams feta cheese cut into cubes
4 cloves garlic, pressed
1 tablespoon dried smoked red peppers
1 / 2 teaspoon oregano
1 / 2 teaspoon basil
1 / 2 cup olive oil
80 ml ​​balsamic red vinegar
pinch of salt, pepper and chilli peppers

Glasses worked perfectly and became probably our favorite wine glasses. Rays of the evening sun entered through the window and warmed up a room with reddish colour and again we felt like in Spain on the road to Santiago....

Enjoy!

Birthday Dilemmas

What to bake for a birthday of your beloved one when his not a fan of sweet pastries and cakes, and at the sight of thick, luscious creams... just want to say ‘oh no thank you very much’.... Well, and how to please the palate of your beloved one... I can’t say which birthdays is that as I get myself into serious trouble here :) but I assume that he is still young – at least he says so :) I must admit that the plan is partly selfish because I am not a fan of sweets too and my refusing reaction to a chocolate or biscuits offer always causes people to look at me like I was from another planet :) heheh Well! I'm not from another planet but I can easily swap sweets for a delicious sandwich with fresh bread, with an excess of lettuce and some good cheese....

But coming back to the subject, I got another problem with this birthday business – lack of time.... I wish the day was longer – maybe 48 hours long day would be perfect?!

So after returning home I began hurriedly flip through magazines and cookbooks in search of something that would even resemble the appearance of a birthday treat. Well, I found these mini tarts that can be made in just an express pace and contain everything that I could find at the moment in our fridge - brilliant! I thought – I don’t need to go shopping (uffff great relief), I do not have to spend half a day in the kitchen, and I can already imagine the smile on his face.... Mine too :)

So let’s start:

Mini Onion Tarts with Anchovies

First, shortcrust pastry - the easiest recipe that I got once from a friend and is great in about every recipe for tarts - sweet, spicy, the quick ones and the most demanding. And I have to admit that there is no way to not get it right and a number of components is a super minimal:

125g plain flour

75g butter; chilled and diced

1 egg

Knead all the ingredients together into a thick, smooth dough. Then form a ball, wrap in foil and put it into the freezer for about 10-15 minutes.

Ingredients for filling:

2 tbsp Olive Oil

30g Butter

450g Onions, thinly sliced

750g Curd Cheese

115ml Milk

2 large Eggs

1 tsp Cumin Seeds, crushed (optional)

1 pinch Salt

1 pinch Black Pepper, freshly ground

60g Anchovy Fillets, halved lengthways

Roll out the pastry thinly on a lightly floured board, then use a glass with large diameter to cut it and line the muffin tin. Chill for 30 minutes.

Heat the oil and butter in a pan, and add the onions. Cover and cook over a gentle heat, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes, or until the onions are soft but not browned. Uncover and cook for a further 4–5 minutes, or until golden. Set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F/Gas 6). Line the pastry case with greaseproof paper and baking beans, and bake blind for 15 minutes. Remove the beans and paper, and bake for a further 10 minutes.

Reduce the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4). Spoon the onions into the pastry case, spreading them in an even layer. Beat together the curd cheese, milk, eggs, and cumin, if using. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then pour into the flan case. Lay the anchovy fillets in a S letter shape on top, and bake for 25 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and the filling is set. Serve warm.

Enjoy!