Chef at home

Dear friends,

I would have never thought that I will fall in love with cooking,ever! But it happened.With this blog, my book and fascinating food discoveries I feel that I finally have found myself. This took me 27 years !!!

Last Saturday I watched the 1st episode of Chef at home. The host is a Canadian chef Michael Smith. He talks so passionately about ingredients that fire your imagination, about beautiful tomatoes, herbs, smells, creating new tastes that it changed my point of view. It's not about spending hours in the kitchen but about spending hours in the kitchen having fun!

So the title of the first episode was: Easy Asian Beef Stew. So a couple of hours later (including a trip to the shop) I was tasting an incredible combination of beef, ginger and...oranges. One of the ingredients was orange marmalade which I made from scratch!!! It was so much fun. The marmalade, orange juice, soy sauce (Dorota, it's still the same bottle you bought:))with bean sprouts and spinach in the end it literally blew my mind away. I made that? The effort was so worth it. Nik and I devoured it in 3 minutes but somehow we managed to take a picture (it was was torture though as it postponed the eating:)).
God bless Canada!

Northern Exposure

Thank God it's not cold anymore and hopefully soon enough we won't be looking like dr Fleischman in Alaska...but with the long evenings at home there is plenty to be glad about... a warm cup of tea or cocoa (ok. it's beer or wine actually) and episodes of our favourite TV series "Northern exposure". I manage to get the season 5. Well dr Fleischman and Maggie O'Connell, Maurice, Holling, Shelly,Marilin,Ed, Ruth-Anne and Chris bring on the real winter, abundance of good cheer and your inspiring conversations!

Book One: Anita Diamant "Day after night"

Pages:294

The first book in New Year, the one I've read for the book club, is one of these stories that I would never pick up from the shelf. I've read a couple books on the subject during high school and I wanted to stop there. I didn't want to imagine in my head the heartbreaking stories of people, stories that were real. It was as if every part of me cried with every word I've read. "The day after night" is also a difficult one, tackling the subject of Jews during WWII and their rescue, but I'm glad I've read this. Very delicate subject. I guess it helped that the author is Jewish. Anita Diamant tells a story of 4 women with different war experiences which are held in a British Immigration camp in Alit. They didn't have any documents to get to the Palestine as other Jews so they just were left there.Four women Zorah-camp survivor, Tedi-Dutch Jew, Shayndel-Polish Zionist and Leonie from Paris...had amazing stories. It's so well written. It wasn't exactly a concentration camp story but about survivors, so it was hopeful. Thank God that there are people to tell about this time.

In search of good weather

Last night Dublin City Council decided to cut off the water supply in Dublin as there is a dangerous shortage. The water is said to return to normal during the course of the morning (it's 12.23 and still no drop from the tap).I will wait. I'm patient. I feel actually quite luxurious as I use the French water Evian for washing and cooking now (the only brand left in supermarket). My tea and morning coffee never tasted so fabulous!!!

There is no snow anymore but there is very strong wind and heavy rain forecast ahead. How lovely! I can manage the cold during walks with Nataniel but wind...wind traps us home...and I don't like that at all.

No more moaning!

I just discovered a new chicken recipe on rte.ie site. You marinade the fillets in dark soy sauce, honey and black pepper than bake it in the oven. I'm giving it a try right now. I will let you know how it goes. I will serve that with lettuce and my miracle dressing (not mine actually, from Canadian chef Michael Smith). It really transforms boring lettuce into a little drop of heaven. I've never eaten so much of this veg in my life. It goes like that: in a small bowl mix a tablespoon of natural yogurt, a teaspoon of honey, juice of half a lemon and a tiny bit of salt and pepper. You should definitely give it a try.

It's my Birthday!

Hi! On the cold day of 11th of January 28 years ago I came to the world.

To celebrate this lovely occasion I went to the movies on Saturday. The city center was deserted as it was coooold and the roads were hazardous to drive. So I took the best tram in the world and went to see "It's complicated". The movie was good. A romantic comedy with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. The plot was pretty standard, nothing surprising, but the cast on the other hand was amazing. I adore Meryl Streep as she always guarantees a good movie. I love those lazy Saturdays when I can go to the city center, take a stroll, see a movie and grab a cup of fab coffee. I can't wait when Nataniel will be old enough to go to the movies to. It will be so cool to go -the three of us.

The snow began to thaw. I'm glad. Well, at first it was nice with the snow. It looked beautiful, but after Saturday night and another frost the pipe in our apartment building burst out and it wasn't so beautiful anymore.We didn't have water for a day.It was fixed temporarily but it should be ok today as hopefully Dublin City Council will take care of that.

For my Birthday I baked the most amazing cake I ever tasted. The recipe came from a Rachel Allen's cooking series. She invited to her Christmas special an Italian chef and he told about this amazing Italian traditional Christmas cake. It was called:Zuccotto di Panettone a traditional Tuscan Christmas pudding. Pannetone as I saw on a video was a kind of a fruit cake. I tried to find the recipe but it takes days to prepare so I went for beetroot cake and used that as a base for a pud. The making of that is a real art. The layers are as follows: beetroot cake drizzled withe sweet white wine, ricotta cheese mixed with sugar, almonds, dried fruits, beetroot cake again with wine, ricotta mixed with cocoa and beetroot cake wine mixture on top. You cover that with cling film and leave overnight. It looked(covered in cocoa) and tasted divine !I will add a picture in the evening.

Summary

Where have the next ten books disappeared? To be honest I don't know. Maybe someone kidnapped them or they needed some time off and went to a vacation? Ok, I've read only ten books since last September. Maybe the task wasn't fully completed but I made so much effort and it was so much fun to discover many great books. The blog changed me. It helped me find a way to be creative. It helped me to find more time for myself by being more organized.I have a New Years resolution to be more out there, to meet people, to get out of the comfort zone. As a start I found a book club in my local library which has meetings once a month. I borrowed next book ( Anita Diamant:"Day after night")they are going to discuss and I'm going to go and share my views. I will get rid of that scared little girl hidden inside me and spoiling my experience. This is my life after all.

Book Ten: Paulo Coelho "Veronika decides to die"

Around 200 pages

I borrowed this book from my brother-in-law and he got it from Santie. It's a story of a girl who decides to die and after attempting a suicide embarks on a journey of self discovery. It reads extremely well. Story touches the subjects of so called normality in our lives.That we sometimes hang on to rules, habits and we forget that inside everyone there is an artist, a total freak, a crazy free spirit. This book really surprised me as I few years back read the Alchemist and didn't really like it. I kind of thought that this Coelho craze is a misunderstanding , that he writes a few wise sentences and then everyone worships him as a saint(I heard about pilgrimages of fans to the places that meant something to him). I thought that his religious inclination was too much in your face. But now...I think that he is like everyone else who wants to find his path, his place. The book about Veronika was very inspirational. I will give Coelho another try.

Happy New Year!!!

So Christmas is over...and another year of preparation ahead of me:). To be honest thanks to Nigella my food turned out to be a success.I made sticky gingerbread, rocky road, beetroot cake, Christmas cake...the only thing I didn't make was the turkey. There was just so much food that on Christmas day I served sirloin,which my mother-in-law brought from Poland, with Brussels sprouts with pecans and caramelised onions and oven baked parsnips in maple syrup. Not bad for my first official Christmas. If only the weather was better...it was...still is... very cold. During the night even -8 degrees.There wasn't much of a chance to take the in-laws for long walks with Nataniel. I read yesterday that this is the coldest winter in 40 years. As we are here almost five years now (I can't believe how time flies) we never experienced such cold. It was always around 10 degrees.Last year we didn't even turn the heating on as it was warm enough. Ok, the gas heating broke down during Christmas '08 but still- it was warm!

As for the lovely New Years Eve we had a crazy party with martini drinks, a movie and Nataniel sleeping in next room:).The movie "City island" with Andy Garcia was great. The counting down was magical as it started to snow. We went out on a balcony and watched the fireworks and as adults...and children were running around in the snow building a snowman.

The most important thing is that Nataniel is getting more confident with his walking. He still crawls most of the time but you should see the the proud look on his face when he makes his cute independent steps.