✮Christmas recipes✮

♫♪♫ It's the most wonderful time of the year! ♫♪♫  Christmas time!  Yet this year I don't really feel the holiday spirit yet...  I just came back from New Zealand where summer is just starting and people celebrate Christmas by having a BBQ in their garden or hitting the beach.  Sounds pretty cool... but also pretty strange to a European.  Despite the abundance of Christmas decorations on the streets and Christmas songs on the radio, I was not really in the mood to sing along "let it snow" or "baby it's cold outside" while wearing sandals and shorts.  

Coming back to Europe has not helped much with getting into the holiday spirit, as with the mild winter it feels more like October than December.  BUT - as I'm one of these "Christmas spirit junkies", I decided to push myself into the right mood.  I spend the last days baking cookies while listening to Christmas songs.  I know - so cliché, but it worked!  All I need now is to be "♪ driving home for Christmas ♪" (there a song again :D) to see my lovely family - holidays are nothing without the family spirit!

Here are some reminders of great holiday recipes - I hope they help you get into Christmas spirit too!

Christmas cookies 

(click for recipe)

The epitome of holiday spirit!  They taste delicious and the cute traditional shapes look great on a Christmas tree.  You can't have Christmas without them :)

Cranberry cheesecake

(click for recipe)

Simple and very elegant.  This cheesecake is a great option for Christmas, because of the added cranberries - and cranberries are the holiday fruit.  It is also very festive and will do well for such a special occasion.  Added bonus: it's easy to make, which is great when you are so busy in the kitchen with other things.

  

Poppy seed and almond cake

(click for recipe)

A family tradition and one of the best cakes I've ever had.  It may sound exotic to some, but in Poland poppy seed cakes are a must for Christmas.  I highly recommend to try it out, if you feel adventurous.  A word of warning though: it requires quite some work and preparation time (but it's totally worth it).

  

Chewy cranberry chocolate cookies
(click for recipe)

Chewy, tangy and chocolaty cookies.  Highly recommended if you are looking for a quick fix.  Also: baking them is a lot of fun - just put on some Christmas songs and go ahead!

Chocolate gingerbread cake

(click for recipe)

This chocolate gingerbread cake is rich and full of spices.  It's so much better than any other gingerbread cake I've ever had, because it's soooo moist and chocolaty!  Really divine -- and simple to make.

Beetroot salad

Inspiration...  A funny little feeling that sometimes creeps up on you out of nowhere, and sometimes just can't make its way to you.  It lives by Murphy's law and is rarely around when you really need it.  Writers, painters and musicians have a love & hate relationship with it, and their livelihood depends on its caprice.  And just like those great artists, hobby chefs like me need inspiration to do the thing they do ;-)

There are tons of ways to find inspiration for new recipes.  This one came to me when I was having lunch with a colleague.  I went for the salad bar and one of the options there was a delicious beetroot salad.  I worked off of the flavors and textures I got back then, adding my personal tweaks in accordance with what I thought would go very well with beetroot.  And voila - this fresh, delicious salad was born. 

This simple and super healthy beetroot salad will give a great vitamin boost to your winter meals.  Beetroot is very good for you, as it is believed to reduce blood pressure, cholesterol and the risk of heart attacks and strokes.  It also helps treat anemia and fatigue It is packed with iron, potassium, magnesium and various vitamins.  Throw in the celery stalks, apple and lemon and you have a "super meal".

The salad is also very delicious.  I love contrasts in textures and flavors, and this is exactly what you will get from this dish.  You have the soft, sweet beetroot, against the fresh and tangy apple, crispy celery stalks, crunchy nuts and rich Greek yoghurt.  Just the combination I was going for.  I hope this will make you start your own experiments with ingredients -- let this be your own inspiration ;-)

METHOD

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 beetroots, boiled and peeled
• 4 long or 5 short celery stalks
• 1 granny smith apple
• handful of pecans, roasted (walnuts of pine nuts would be great as well)
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 2-3 tbsp thick Greek yoghurt
• salt & pepper, freshly ground

DIRECTIONS:

• Dice the beetroots, apples and celery stalks.  Sprinkle the apples with lemon juice.  Put everything in a large bowl.
• Roughly chop the roasted pecans, add to the bowl.
• Add the Greek yoghurt, stir thoroughly and season with freshly ground salt & pepper, and lemon juice if necessary.  

Bon appetit!

Pierogi & cooking with Grandma

Whenever I'm in my hometown, Warsaw, I visit my Grandma.  We laugh and chat (usually about latest fashion trends, travels and family gossip) and sip Grandma's homemade chokeberries liqueur ("aroniówka") - deep and smooth in flavor.  We also cook together, just as we did in the old days when I was a little girl and my head barely reached above the kitchen counter.  Grandma is one of the best cooks I know.  Dinners at her place always follow the traditional Polish way of dining: first you get soup, then the main course (accompanied by kompot - a light fruit juice), and then cake for dessert (all homemade of course).   

Grandma is a real fairy when it comes to cooking.  She makes complex traditional dishes in the blink of an eye (as if she'd just waved her magic wand), and everything she prepares is truly delicious.  I think her secret is that she puts a lot of heart into her dishes - she loves cooking and it's the love you taste.  

Stages of pierogi-making

Pierogi are a kind of dumpling - bigger than ravioli, and bursting with delicious stuffing.  You can have sweet versions (e.g. with blueberries or fresh cheese, all served with sweet cream and sugar) or savory ones (e.g. with minced meat, mushrooms & sauerkraut or with potatoes & curd cheese (so called "pierogi ruskie") - featured here).  The secret of good pierogi lies in the dough - it shouldn't be rubbery or tough, but at the same time it should be firm enough to hold the stuffing when the pierogi are boiling.  Grandma's dough strikes a perfect balance - and now that you have the recipe, you can master this art too :)

My absolute favorites among the pierogi family, are the ones with potato and curd cheese, with onion and lean bacon added to the stuffing for that smoky, defined flavor.  Think "goat's cheese and parma ham" and you'll know what flavor combination I mean.  These pierogi are an absolute hit among both Polish and non-Polish people.  I hope you like them as much as I do :)

METHOD

15-20 pierogi - Serves 2 

INGREDIENTS:

Stuffing:

• 1 medium potato, cooked
• a piece (150 - 200 g) of curd cheese (you can use soft goat cheese too)
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 80 g lean smoked bacon, finely diced
• dried marjoram
• salt (freshly ground)
• pepper (freshly ground)

Dough:

• 300 g flour
• 2 heaped tbsp sour cream
• 1 egg yolk
• some warm, boiled water

DIRECTIONS:

• Stuffing: fry the bacon with the onion until golden brown.  Mince the cheese, cooked potato, and fried onion and bacon.  Mix well with a spoon.  Season with freshly ground salt & pepper, and dried marjoram (about 1,5 tsp).  After boiling the pierogi, the stuffing will be less salty/more bland than at this stage, so make sure it's seasoned well (don't over-season though).
• Make the dough by kneading the flour, sour cream and yolk, adding a bit of warm water to get a firm, but smooth dough.  Knead thoroughly, to allow as much air as possible into the dough.
• Sprinkle some flour on your working surface and rolling pin.  Roll out the dough to approx. 1-2 mm thin.  Cut out circles using a glass.  (Repeat the process with the dough left over after cutting out the circles).   
• Stuff each circle with a heaped teaspoon of stuffing, fold the dough over forming a half-moon.  Press together with your fingers, making small curled folds along the edge (you can also use a fork, pressing it to seal the pierogi).
• Cook in boiling, lightly salted water until the pierogi resurface.  Serve with fried onion or lardons.  

Smacznego!

Grandma's pierogi ruskie with fresh apple kompot