Oponki

First, I apologize for disappearing for two months: I've been awfully busy and sometimes sick,not to mention that I hate winter and if choosing would hibernate till mids of march. Now I'm back with some sweets, because in my opinion this is what we do the best: sweet, greasy, deadly good baking:)

Second, before I start explaining why the rest of the world celebrates Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday and we celebrate Tłusty Czwartek, Fat Thursday let me show you this amazing cookbook of my gradma's. I never saw her cooking from it, so I never had a chance to take a peek inside and when I finally did (recently) I was amazed by the fotos. It's a book from the sixties and contains some awfully Technicolor-ish funny arranged photos - I wanted to show you some, but my photo cannot transmit the original coloring. It also has some black and white shots that are at least weird:

There's something about the way they were taken, or the contrast, or merely their weird subjects (i.e. how to arrange plums in a cake; how to put a jelly in a glass to make it look good; shots of 60's kitchen appliances) that captured my attention and I became a bit obsessed by them; finally I decided to make some kitchen decoration with them. I'll show you when they're finished.

There's also a lot of characteristic "socialist" design that no book would be complete without:

Well, enough about my design obsessions and back to cooking.


The Carnival ends next Wednesday so today a Fat Week is starting: the last occasion to party before lent, which is, by the way, still important to most of the people, in a very weird way ( like, they pretend not to eat meat and do not listen to dance music... and, of course, go to church), but still. To celebrate it, we eat pączki (recipe follows in next post), oponki, faworki (recipe next Tuesday)- all kinds of deep fried pastry. Why is it deep fried? To go well with lots of alcohol, of course:) Today's recipe, oponki - meaning little tires - are curd cheese-based tire-shaped sweets decorated with icing sugar. I wanted to make those this year because they were the only thing I learned how to cook in school; I was twelve when I made them las time and remembered only that I liked them and the dough had no eggs in it. Since I really wanted to try frying something tofu based, I went with these. A total success except for one thing: I forgot how tall the rolled dough should be and they went out kind of flat. Flat tires, it is. But don't worry, now that I figured what size they should be I'll include it in my recipe:)

3 cups flour
200 g natural firm tofu, as fresh as possible
1 cup sugar
8 tablespoons oil
8 tablespoons soymilk (I used vanilla) + 3/4 tablespons to add if dry
2 teaspoons baking powder

oil for deep frying
icing sugar to decorate


Crumble your tofu into a big bowl, add soymilk and oil and blend until smooth and creamy. Add the rest of ingredients and begin kneading until it forms a ball (you might need some more milk but do not add more fat, ever). Roll the dough in two batches - it should be 1,5-2 cm thick. with a big cup start cutting out circles and then, with a much smaller one (in Poland we always use vodka shot glasses for it, but since you might not have them use something in similar size) cut out a small circle inside, creating a tire. Repeat until you run out of dough; you may make something with the rests, for example, my sister made very natural looking dough rats:)

Now frying: traditionally in a deep pan full of oil, which is what I consider dangerous and also it might result with very greasy pastry due to temperature. I used a deep-fryer, the kind you make french fries in and they went out perfect. Anyway, the temperature should be about 180C (350F), you rinse them for two minutes and take out. This is how they're supposed to look right after frying (remember that mine are flatter than they should be):

Let them rest in a big patch of paper towels to drain out the fat. Properly done, they should be delicious and not soaked in oil (yet still greasy, I'm sorry). When they cool down a bit decorate with icing sugar and serve slightly warm. They are not resistant and not even half as delicious the day after, so make sure you have some guest the day you fry them:) This recipe makes about 20 oponki.

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Tomorrow something for people who don't like fried stuff: baked Polish doughnuts:)

A special message for Ryan: I WILL make faworki (chruściki) next Tuesday because 1) this is the day to eat them 2) My stomach won't stand so many fried sweets and I already ate a lot of oponki yesterday and today, so I need a few days to rest:)

Tomato soup, twice

This would be my last MoFo post - didn't make it to 15 recipes this time, but at least I dared to try:) This time I've got two tomato soup recipes, one classic and one mine: quick and spicy.

Tomato soup is omnipresent in polish houses: this would be the most popular soup too. Everybody makes it and there are various kinds that people swear to be the only original ones: the basic questions is, do you use pasta or rice? Then: sweet or salty? white (=with sour cream) or not? Parsley on top? 

This is my family recipe, with rice, not sweet (I never really understood how people can add sugar to a soup with a carrot cooked in broth in it!) and without sour cream, with parsley on top. Enjoy!

Classic Tomato soup for 6 people

veggie broth, 2 l

2 medium carrots

a quarter celeriac root

 one parsley root (save the leaves)

 one medium leek

3-4 allspice berries

1-2 bay leaf

5-6 big ripe tomatoes

a big handful of rice

salt

Boil the broth and cook whole carrots, celeriac, parsley and chopped leek in it with allspice and bay leaf. In a separate pan cook peeled tomatoes until they fall apart and blend. Take out of broth all the veggies except a carrot and discard (=eat apart if you like it). Mix in the tomato puree and boil again; when boiling add rice and salt to taste. The soup is ready when the rice is cooked.

Now my fast food version. I especially enjoy making it at eleven PM when you're not supposed to eat anything, but you're hungry anyway and maybe a little cold too. Great to warm up in a snowy day (do you have snow yet? Too much in here)

1 cup tomato puree

1 cup veggie broth

2 spoons olive oil

1 teaspoon powdered garlic

1 teaspoon powdered sweet chili

1 handful of tiny, quick-cooking pasta

salt and pepper to taste (I use cayenne pepper for better kick)

Boil the broth, add tomato puree and olive oil and boil for 5 minutes. Add spices to taste and pasta; the soup is ready when pasta's ready. Simple and so good.

I'm really glad I started this blog again and that I participated in MoFo. I promise to not disappear next month and show you some delicious Christmas recipes.

Quick side dish: breaded green beans

My parents were renovating the kitchen last week (actually, they still didn't finish, but at least the oven is plugged and accessible), so I couldn't cook anything.  Bad luck; I may not make it to the 15 recipes I promised.

I heard, once, that the only practical innovation in world cuisine that polish kitchen has made was the custom of topping the veggies with breadcrumbs. I strongly disagree with that, but it occurred to me lately that maybe some people don't know about this simplest way to serve veggies ever. Polish kids tend to eat them just for the crumbs.

The recipe is very simple, actually a no-recipe. first, cook your green beans (or other veggie; it is traditionally used with cabbage, cauliflower and other stinky things) - I like to steam mine - and heat a pan. Put some oil on it, I use olive oil for the taste, then begin to stir in the breadcrumbs. Some people add salt and pepper, I like to experiment with tastes and often produce very spicy crumbs. Fry them until golden brown, stirring constantly to prevent from sticking. Now top your green beans with it and serve warm as a side dish.

BTW, if you like green beans, here's a recipe I recently found and it's amazing; I cooked my beans in dried sage infusion and they came out fantastic.

Holiday

No recipe this time, only some information (and borrowed photos). Today is our Independence Day. Every National Holiday is sad here - no parades, no picnics, no fun - so people are not gathering nor celebrating at home. The only exception is my city, Poznań, where we have a special celebration: st. Martin's Day. There's a colorful parade on st. Martin Street, concerts, some other attraction and a culinary specialty sold only by those bakeries who certificate their recipe is traditional: rogale marcińskie.

Those are croissant-shaped, made out of pastry called here "half puff": it's yeast dough rolled like puff pastry. They are filled with white poppy and nut filling, glazed with icing and chopped walnuts. Not vegan, obviously; I only show it here as something interesting.

In general, people don't make those at home, only buy them, but some housewives make their version out of yeast dough like this one, and fill with black poppy filling (white poppy is extremely hard to find, and very expensive), prepared like here. I'm not a huge fan so I'm probably never gonna make it, but if you want, you may give it a try; it will be a challenge.

These are not my photos: by clicking one you should be transferred to a site where they come from

Ogórkowa

A classic wintertime comfort food: cucumber soup made out of pickles. To clarify things, I found this article on Wiki and repeat that for this soup we use cucumbers pickled in salt water. In Poland, we have three ways to make pickles and each one is used in other recipes:

- konserwowe: pickled in vinegar for a few days, can be bought in a jar as "swedish salad", used for salads and herring dishes. Also some degenerates like me eat them out of jar while watching movie, especially when I run out of popcorn
- kiszone: pickled in closed jars or kegs , in salted water, for a few weeks. Used in salads, raw, as a side dish, to eat with vodka, for soups or stuffing
- małosolne or kwaszone: pickled in salted water for a few days, usually in an open dish. Have mellow taste, are not that sour as kiszone and much lighter in colour. Eaten raw in summer, with crackers or between vodka shots:)

In here, we use that second type. The soup is sour and rich due to potatoes that are cooked in broth, releasing starch to the liquid. Some people add sour cream to it before serving: I leave that up to you, personally find it disgusting.

Pickle soup:
2 l veggie broth
2 big carrots, peeled
1 big parsley root
4 medium potatoes
a quarter celeriac root (optional, I don't like the taste it brings)
3 large pickles
3/4 cup pickle juice (the liquid pickles are floating in)
some allspice and pepper, salt
optional: sour cream, chopped dill to garnish

Cut the carrots in cubes, shred the celeriac and parsley roots. Add to broth, salt a bit and begin to cook till carrot is al dente. Then add peeled & cubed potatoes, cook till tender again. Finally add shredded pickles and coo for 10-15 minutes more. Pour in pickle juice and turn off the heat.

If you want to serve the soup with cream, wait till it cools down a bit and first mix the cream with a cup of soup liquid, then add to the pot. Traditionally served sprinkled with fresh dill.

Vegan MoFo reactivation! drozdzowki

I'm not really good in keeping promises. I try. Sometimes it doesn't work.

I was thinking about reactivating this blog and decided that this year's MoFo is the best motivation for me. My goal was to post at least 15 recipes and blog every day  - we'll see how it's gonna work:) I failed with yesterday's post because All Saints is a big holiday in Poland, people come to cemeteries to decorate the graves, meet with family and take a traditional walk in the dark to see all that beautiful lights. Between a family dinner and  typical holiday rush I just had no time to write my recipe.

And it's really good - drożdżówki are baked good eaten as a brunch snack at school, work, etc. Nobody actually makes them at home, but vegans, obviously, make everything:) It's basically a sweet yeast pastry, like a roll, with filling inside and some crumbles on top. There are many kinds - without crumbles, with jam, budyń (something like custard), fruits, but my favorite are filled with cheese and totally covered with crumbles and that is what we're gonna bake.

I made those  using live active yeast, but since I know that the rest of the world is using dry, I changed the recipe. Also, the most important thing is that all the ingredients are in the same temperature - lightly warm. Makes 4 big rolls.

DOUGH

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

half cup + 3 tablespoons sugar

1.5 cup soymilk

2 cups flour

1/4 cup melted vegan butter

some vanilla extract

a pinch of salt

First mix in a small bowl the milk, yeast and 3 tablespoons of sugar and make sure it all dissolves. Then add vegan butter and mix. Finally add the rest of the ingredients and form the dough; let it sit in a warm place till it doubles (about 20 minutes). When it rises, sprinkle the dough and your hands with flour and form 4 rolls, flatten them on a greased sheet (so they look like overdosed fluffy pancakes) and make a hole in the middle. 

FILLING

100 g plain tofu (I used firm, since it's the only one I can buy, but I think silken would work great)

1 tablespoon soy creamer

2 tablespoons sugar

juice from half lemon

vanilla extract

Just blend it together till creamy. It should hold together well and be rolled into balls easily. Make 4 balls, flatten them a bit and place in holes you made in the rolls.

CRUMBLES

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/3 cup vegan butter, chilled

My mom (who gave me the recipe) always makes crumbles in the same bowl she used for rising yeast dough, unwashed: the rest of the yeast find their way into crumbles and make them lighter and less eager to sink in cake while baking. Anyway, form big crumbles from these ingredients and sprinkle generously over our almost made cakes. Let them sit in a warm place while you preheat oven to 200C (400 F) and bake for 30 minutes, until golden. Mine are slightly overbaked.

I hope you enjoy this too sweet and honestly not healthy breakfast treat:)

Fancy a little touch of spring?

First, I'd like to apologize for the lack of posts; I promised myself to write one entry per week, but so far it didn't work. I was very busy at work, then I went to Spain and the vision of wonderful Spanish food limited my culinary horizon :) But now I'm back with a fresh spring soup I made last week and I hope you'll enjoy it.

Usually the winter weather in Poland is oscillating between lots of snow and a complete lack of it, and the temperature is between +5 and -15 Celsius degrees. Last week it was -20 in my city. There were spots of dirty snow around, but generally the world was gray and sad with no sun and no hope. I went shopping and all the fresh veggies were so expensive it was hard to believe somebody buys it at this price; I went for canned tomatoes, frozen peas and then I saw a jar of salted sorrel.

(If you're curious, it took me so long to write the post cause I couldn't find the name of that herb :P )

As wikipedia can tell you, sorrel is a tiny herb that grows in the garden (rather grows itself than is cultivated), or in meadows, rather in places that are shadowy and have a lot of water. It looks kinda like spinach, but the taste is completely different: sorrel is sour, a bit lemony, with a slight taste of chives and something else, maybe spinach too.

Sorrel is commonly used in Poland to make a spring, green, refreshing soup and actually just for that; I don't think I've ever seen it in salads or used as a stuffing. The original recipe uses 1 egg per portion, to boil it hard, cut in half and put the peeled halves in the soup where they turn green and look suspicious. We just won't use it and that's all.

We're gonna need a big handful of fresh sorrel for 4 portions of soup; if you can't find it fresh or frozen, look for pureed sorrel in a jar - you'll need 1 overfilled cup of it. If you have fresh sorrel, sautée the leaves on sunflower oil (the basic oil for polish kitchen) - it will reduce visibly - and then mash/blend it to a puree


Sorrel soup

200 ml (1 overfilled cup) of sorrel puree
1,5 l (8 cups) of vegetable stock
1 garlic clove
some onion if you like it
3 potatoes if you like the potatoes
100 g (1/4 pound) of regular firm natural tofu (the more solid your tofu is, the better for the aesthetic of your soup)
salt & pepper % some chopped fresh dill if you like it
some egg salt for the tofu

maybe some soy cream (I don't like it that way, maybe you will)


If you're using the potatoes first you have to take care of them: peel, cut in cubes and boil them, then leave apart.

Chop and sautée the onion and the garlic on sunflower oil, then pour in the stock and make it boil. Add sorrel puree and stir well; make it boil, then reduce the heat to minimum, cover leaving some uncovered space for the steam and let it simmer for half an hour.

Break the tofu in chunks and dry it well. Boil some water and pour the tofu chunks in the boiling water; wait till tofu starts to emerge on the surface, then reduce the heat and let it boil for 2-3 minutes. Then take it off the heat, get rid of the water and sprinkle the chunks while hot and steaming with egg salt if you use it.

Now get back to the soup; add the salt and pepper and taste it; if the soup doesn't taste like water or broth and you can clearly distinguish the sorrel taste - which means sour - the soup is ready.

Portion the soup and add tofu chink and potatoes (if using) to each bowl; sprinkle with fresh dill and decorate with soy creamer if you fancy so.

Here you can see my version, with tofu chunks only:


It wasn't as good as made with fresh herb, but still gave me a little hope in this wintery, people-unfriendly weather.

Kutia - a welcome post :)

Hi everyone :)

I wanted to start this blog for a very long time and I started thinking about it seriously about a month ago, hoping I start it before Christmas. It didn't work. This way my first recipes will be post-christmas christmas dishes, but nobody says you can't try it for New Year's Eve :)

I'm a big food blog fan and my goal - as well as my friend's Kassandra - is to promote polish kitchen among vegans and others sympathizing :) Our kitchen has lots of recipes that even don't need veganizing, as well as some amazing food that require just few modifications. I hope you'll find here some inspirations; we'll be posting traditional recipes as well as some not-so-original ones that are popular in Poland (like tomato soup; I can't imagine how is it possible to cannot make a tomato soup, but it seems there are some people unaware of it's existence).


The first recipe is a classic Christmas sweet treat: kutia. It's originated in eastern part of Poland and for so I didn't know it for a very long time (I'm from the western part) till I started my studies and my flatmates taught me make it. From then on, it's my favourite and I always make lots of kutia and eat for breakfast for a week :D

What do we need: the base is cooked wheat, the whole grains, not flour or bran. Other basic ingredients are poppy seeds, soaked in hot water and crushed, then some nuts and dried fruits of your choice - my recipe calls for dried fruits traditionally used in Poland, but don't let it stop you from adding your favourites (my kutia always contain some papaya cubes). The last traditional ingredient is honey; I substitute it with artificial honey, a communist-times mercancy that had survived till our times to my vegan joy. If you can't buy it, which is very probable, you can mix half maple syrup and half agave nectar - that will give you a similar flavour - or just forget it and use any liquid sweetener you have.


The Recipe:

1 cup dry wheat grains
1/2 cup dry poppy seeds
1/2 to 1 cup of nuts of your choice - traditionally we use wallnuts and hazelnuts
1/2 to one cup of dried fruits - prunes, apples, pears, peaches, raisins, orange zest and apricots
2 to 5 T of artificial honey ar any liquid sweetener
optional: 2-3 cups of soymilk

First you soak the wheat overnight in a large bowl. Next day you cook it till it's edible - the grains shouldn't be soft in the outside nor sticky, but while chewing they shouldn't taste like flour. Drain the wheat and pour some cold water to prevent it from sticking; let it cool.

Take 2 cups of water/soymilk and make it boil; take off the oven and pour the poppy seeds into, cover and let it sit for one hour, it will make them softer. After and hour drain it well and blend. There will surely be a problem with blending, but it actually depends of you, how crushed you want the seeds. I like it almost uncrushed, so I never care about blending; just try some and tell if you like the feeling of poppy seeds scratching between your teeth or not :)

Chop the nuts and cut the fruits into tiny pieces, like in a fruit cake.

Mix everything altogether: the wheat, poppy seeds, nuts & fruits and add half of the honey; cover everything with it and try. If you want your kutia sweeter or there's not enough honey to cover everything, add the rest of your sweetener. Done!



You can eat it right away or store in a cool place (a fridge is the best option, just cover it well, if you don't want it to smell of other food); keeps a week to 10 days. Kutia is a great and quite cheap party food; also easy to turn raw, if you're sure that the wheat can be eaten uncooked (poppy seeds surely are).