Chinese - style scallops

It’s snowing in Dublin. Such weather is very rare in Ireland. Sunday was a lovely day with sun and fresh snow. So I went to walk around Phoenix park and took white coloured pictures. When I went back home I was very hungry. At the same time my friend came to my place. She came to surprise me. She brought me fresh scallops. I had only one good idea how to quickly make a lunch. I made Chinese - style scallops. This is a delicate dish for lunch accompanied by aromatic rice. I served it with white Italy wine. It was a nice and hot lunch for the very cold day.

For 2

1 tbsp sunflower oil
200 g. scallops
2,5 cm piece fresh root ginger, peeled and grated
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 bell of red pepper, cut in thinly sliced
100g. shiitake mushrooms, cut in thinly sliced
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp cornflour
Salt, black pepper

Heat the oil in a wok until very hot. Add the scallops, ginger, garlic and stir- fry for 3 minutes. Season with a little salt and black pepper and then remove from the wok.

Add red pepper and mushrooms to the wok and stir- fry for 3 minutes.
Make a cornflour paste by combining the cornflour and 3 tbsp cold water.
Pour the lemon juice, cornflour paste and soy sauce into wok bring to the boil. Add scallops and cook for 2 minutes.

Serve with rice and white wine.

Enjoy!!!

Pumpkin cookies

Coffee cookies are on top position in my party menu. I love these small sweets. I wanted to try them with pumpkin buttercream. It was a very good choice. Below is my new recipe.


Step 1

Cookies
400 gram of flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
200 gram of butter, softened
200 gram of white sugar
2 egg
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1)In a large bowl, stir together flour, baking powder. Add butter, eggs, sugar and vanilla extract and make the dough. Put the dough to refrigerate for about one hour.
2)After one hour preheat oven to 190 degrees C. Take the dough from the refrigerator and roll out the dough to a thickness of 1 cm on a lightly floured surface. Cut out circles shapes using a lightly floured cookie cutter and transfer cookies to the prepared baking sheet.
3)Bake 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden. Let stand on cookie sheet two minutes before removing to cool on racks.

Step 2

Pumpkin buttercream
250 gram of cooked pumpkin
200 gram of butter, softened
3 egg yolk
100 gram of castor sugar
1 teaspoon rum extract

Boil water in pot. Blend pumpkin on creamy consistency. Put metal bowl on pot with boiled water and mix together yolk and sugar on creamy consistency. Remove bowl on table and add soft butter and still mix until mixture will be smooth. Add pumpkin and rum extract and mix well. Mixture must be smooth and shine. If mixture is too soft put it in the fridge for 10 minutes

Step 3

On one cookie put tablespoon of pumpkin buttercream and cover it second cookie. Gently press the cookies until cream to spread abroad, and well glue their. Make the same with rest of cookies. When you finish put cookies on one hour to refrigerate.
If you like, you can serve cookies with chocolate sauce.

Enjoy

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Australian meat pie

 The Australian meat pie can be a surprisingly quick dish. Undoubtedly it can be delicious when using the right ingredients. And of course it is very very nourishing. It can be even considered to be healthy since it taste the best with tomato sauce rich in potassium…

Australian meat pie

 Makes 8-10

300 g packet of puff pastry

600 pork neck or minced meat

2 onions, chopped

few sprigs of fresh thyme, chopped, or 3 tspns dried thyme

4 Tbsps oil

salt, pepper

2 Tbsps breadcrumbs

2 eggs, slightly beaten

(ok, this is this better version of pies…)

1.      Mince the meat if you bought the solid piece of meat. Heat the oil and fry the onions until golden. Add minced meat, thyme, salt and pepper, according to taste. Cool down.

2    Mix in 1 slightly beaten egg and breadcrumbs.

3.      Cut out 12 cm-diameter pastry circles. You will probably get about 8-10. At four edges of the each circle cut out small triangles reaching their peaks only half way down to the center.  Remember not to smash nor the circles neither the leftovers. Now arrange every fan-looking circle in a muffin tin whole, stick together the edges on the walls of the mould. Fill up with the stuffing. Brush with egg and plaster with the leftover cuts of the pastry sticking together slightly.

4.      With a toothpick make a few wholes in the top of every meat pie, brush with an egg and bake in 200 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

5.      Cool down the pies for a minute, and take out of the mould. You may need to separate the pies from the mould by levering it with a thin knife around the mould. Serve hot or warm and absolutely with a nice tomato sauce!

 Information on the Australia in the Modern World conference is available here.

Australian Granny Smith apples in puff pastry

This week we discover Australian recipes which provide quick, fragrant, tasty and colourful food! Just think about the most Australian of all Australian apples - the Granny Smith kind, dated back to the 19th century. Go quickly to your local shop for a puff pastry packet and treat your family with this little and sweet beauties!

Granny Smith apples in puff pastry 

 makes 24 

300 g packet  of puff pastry

2 Granny Smith Apples 

2 egg whites

4 Tbsp sugar

1. Cut the puff pastry into 4x4 cm squares. Cut apples in two halves and every one of them into another 6 pieces of the quaters' shape.

2. Place the apple pieces on the squares diagonally and stick together the left corners.

3. Beat slightly the egg whites, mixing in 2 tablespoons of sugar. Brush the puff pastry and sprinkle with the remaining sugar.

4. Bake in 200 degrees for 18 minutes. 

 Enjoy!!!
Enter the Australian conference here!

Australia in the Modern World - foretaste of the tasting.

Australia in modern world. Between Asia, America and Europe - the conference organised by Australia, New Zealand and Oceania Research Association is walking fast. It is this Friday, November 26th, in Cracow. Around midday you would try some marvellous Australian wines, as well as the food. I am planning some must-to-do Australian dishes, as Anzac biscuits and little Pavlovas with fruits, but also some really old-fashioned jellies and seafood mousses. Should I encourage you to come and try a crocodile or a roo*? I don't think so. 

Before this, I opened my Australian and New Zealand Complete Book of Cookery and inspired by that prepared this tropical mousse. While making it, the smell was really promising and the taste is equally rewarding. The method is truly Australian - according to the rule keep it simple.

Australian tropical mousse

(makes 2 portions)

125 ml water

110 sugar

a pinch of cream od tartar

10 g gelatine

40 ml fresh orange juice

1 tsp lemon juice and some extra for a banana

1/2 tsp of the lemon and orange rinds grated

60 ml condensed milk

1 banana

1 passionfruit

1. Place water, gelatine, sugar and cream of tartar in a pot and boil over a medium heat for 10 minutes. Allow to cool and thicken.

2. When the mixture gets the consistency of the egg white, add the lemon and orange juices and the rinds. Beat until foamy. 

3. Add milk and continue beating for few minutes.

4. Slice banana, coat with extra lemon juice and drain well. Mix in the mousse and divide into separate cups. 

5. Chill in the fridge until set. Decorate with passionfruit pulp and some extra bananas.

See you on Friday at the Jagiellonian Library, Krakow, before 12 am. You can enter here.

*kangaroo

Thai pumpkin soup

The natural sweetness of the pumpkin is heightened by the addition of a little sugar in this lovely looking soup, but this is balanced by the chillies and shrimp. This is my version of Thai shrimp and coconuts soup. Please you can try, it is so tasty.




For six portion

450 gram peeled pumpkin
2 garlic cloves, crushed
4 shallots, finely chopped
½ tbsp. of shrimp paste
2 fresh green chillies, sliced
600 ml of chicken stock
½ tbsp. of sugar
500 ml coconuts milk
30 ml of Thai fish sauce
150 gram small cooked shrimps
1 tbsp. coconuts oil
Black pepper, salt.




Cut pumpkin into quarters. In pot heat coconuts oil and put garlic, shallots, shrimp paste, green chillies, sugar and salt and fired they 1 minute. Add chicken stock and stir soup. Add pumpkin and simmer about 15 minutes until pumpkin is tender. Add fish sauce and coconuts milk and boil 5 minutes. Add prawns and cooked next 3 minutes. Serve warm soup and garnish black pepper.
Enjoy!

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Pumpkin soup

Halloween means for me only one thing - pumpkins. Every year I cook a few dishes with this nice vegetable. This year Thai cuisine and new polish dishes are my inspirations.
The first dish is a soup. The recipe combines elements of Polish cuisine and Asian spices. The soup has a rich flavour and beautiful bouquet of smell. When I prepared the dish this nice smell was in whole my apartment. I felt like in oriental country though behind the window it was Irish grey day.

Try this soup. It is good for a cold day.

0,5kg sliced pumpkin in big pieces
5 tbsp of oil
3 tbsp of yellow curry powder
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp ground black pepper
2 cloves chopped garlic
2 tsp fish sauce
4 tsp Soya sauce
500 ml of hot water
250 ml of coconut milk

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Oil, curry powder, salt, pepper and garlic mix together.
The mixture spread on every piece of pumpkin and put on baking tray. Bake for 25 minutes at 200 degrees.

After baking, pieces of pumpkin and water put into blender and mix well.
Transfer pumpkin cream to pot and add coconut milk, Soya sauce and fish sauce and cook soup.



Serve with pumpkin seeds and fresh cream.

Enjoy!!!

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