Cauliflower from my Hometown

Whenever I visit the farmers market in my hometown, I am overwhelmed by the great number of stands selling fruits and vegetables. I have to admit that I have never seen anything as impressive in the US and only the open-air market hosted by Geneva's Plaine de Plainpalais was comparable to this one, which is located in a relatively small provincial city in Poland.

All the products sold are very fresh and most of them, including eggs, are genuinely organic. Although you can find there only about four kinds of lettuce, I am sure that there are not many places in the world, maybe with the exception of Italy or Spain, where you can find so many--probably around twenty--different kinds of tomatoes. And they all are wonderfully ripe and tasty. There is also an enormous variety of potatoes, and many different types of cucumbers and peppers. Green beans are green only in their name as they come in various colors, from purple to white, and in many shapes and sizes.

Behind each stand there are mountains of cabbage and of course cauliflowers--large snow white curds, which are very fresh and aromatic in an earthy sort of way. Without any hesitation I have chosen the biggest cauliflower curd (in Poland we always say "cauliflower head" though) I could find for today's dinner and I will prepare it in a traditional Polish way with buttery, crispy bread crumbs, and I will serve it accompanied by a tomato salad. But can anyone else anywhere in the world get excited like me about a cauliflower cooked in such a simple way? True, a simple cauliflower tastes really great only when it had been grown locally in a good soil, with the right amount of water and sun, and was harvested in the morning of the very same day it was sold at the market.

Probably this is the reason why I do not cook it as often anymore in my American home, and if I do, I typically serve it in béchamel sauce or baked with garlic, since both methods can make even a supermarket cauliflower taste rich and interesting.

Cauliflower Pie

Ingredients:
1 cauliflower,
1 egg,
3 cloves of garlic,
1 tbsp of sour cream,
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese,
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg,
1 tbsp chopped parsley,
salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Divide cauliflower into smaller pieces and cook in salted water until almost soft.
3. Mix the whole egg, cream, and Parmesan cheese together.
4. Cool slightly the pieces of cooked cauliflower and, using food processor, break them into smaller rice-like pieces.
5. Add to the cauliflower the egg mixture, add chopped parsley and crushed garlic, and mix well.
6. Season with nutmeg, salt, and pepper.
7. Put cauliflower in a buttered oven-proof dish and bake for 35–45 minutes, or until the it turns slightly gold at the top.

Cauliflower prepared this way can be served as a self-standing, vegetarian dish and will taste even better with a tomato salad. It can also accompany any meat or fish. If enriched by adding chopped, smoked ham, it turns into a very rich meal in itself. It is not very photogenic but it tastes better than it looks!

Life Savers--Apple Juice with Mint and Honey Lemonade

Around the world, August is probably the most popular vacation month of the year. Not only, traditionally, in France and Italy, but even in the culinary blogosphere. Blog hosts leave on vacation, close their blogs for the entire month, and later share more pictures of the places they visit than recipes. Check Mowielicious, What's for lunch, Honey?, Jul's Kitchen, and some others.

Well, I am on vacation too, far away from DC, at the Masurian Lakes, my native region in the north east of Poland. But even here I cannot forget about my blog and not only do I collect new recipes and copy the old ones, some of which I forgot about a long time ago, but also continue to write and--despite many technical difficulties and the lack of a decent camera--try to post new blogs from time to time.

I found a recipe book that I created more than thirty years ago. It was my culinary bible for many years. I wrote down in it and clipped out into it the recipes from all over the world, which were then so rarely appearing in Polish magazines. There are even traces of whipped eggs, also more than thirty years old, that I splashed on my notebook when I was using it to make some of the cakes that became very popular with my friends and family. You would not believe how many of these recipes I recreate at least once a month at my American home. And you would not believe from how many different cuisines of the world they come from. There you find the Croatian pumpkin, Flemish beef, Czech dumplings, German Quarktorte, Cypriot noodles, and hundreds of others. I will try to share the most interesting ones in my posts, starting this fall. But, until then, I also will mostly write rather than cook, but hopefully not only for those who just like to read about food.

Anyway, it is very hot here which means that not only fruits and vegetables are at their peak and taste great but, most of all, we drink a lot.

My younger son is addicted to a very Polish summer drink, which is apple juice with mint. It is very simple to make but I have not found it anywhere else, even though apple juice is probably even more popular for instance in the United States than here. I will try to imitate something similar by adding to it fresh mint leaves from my garden, or by mixing apple juice with cold mint tea--this should work one way or another.

Honey lemonade is another very refreshing drink for these boiling hot days. Honey is very popular in Poland and considered very healthy, as opposed to sugar. Our bees make it from many different flowers and in different colors. At this time of the year, honey is very fresh, wonderfully running, and aromatic. I will not specify any proportions for this lemonade as there is nothing simpler than this. Just squeeze into a pitcher of spring water a few lemons and/or limes and add some running honey, according to your taste. Chill it down with a few ice cubes and enjoy the respite this wonderful homemade drink provides on an unbearably hot August day.

Coffee Mousse

I am not a big fan of chocolate or any heavy desserts during summer. Of course, like most of us, I do crave the richness of chocolate but mostly when the weather is cold. On hot summer days, I find the fruit-based desserts most satisfying and refreshing, and the hot weather brings out their taste like nothing else. However, I recently re-discovered this recipe for a coffee mousse.

This coffee mousse is similar in taste to a chilled or frozen coffee drink and it is very refreshing. While not as rich as most chocolate desserts, it is also very sweet and fulfilling. One hot day in July I served it to my friends. Being amateurs of good quality coffee, my guests loved it. It was a great finish to our dinner--a small amount of coffee mousse made everyone very happy and full.

If you follow my recipes you may notice that, although sometimes they look complicated, in fact they are not. I am not a professional cook and most of all I love recipes that are not only tasty and elegant but that are also simple and can work for everyone. Luckily, I have many such recipes, especially for desserts, and this coffee mousse, although it takes many steps to make it, is one of them. And I will post more really easy ones after the vacation.

You may notice as well that I never use raw eggs and for that reason all my desserts are safe. Sometimes, to achieve the desired lightness I have to use whipped cream to compensate for the lack of egg whites but I guarantee that, if you follow my recipes, you will not get infected with salmonella.

Here is a coffee mousse that will wake you up after any lazy summer dinner.

Coffee Mousse

Ingredients:
2 cups heavy whipping cream,
1 tsp instant coffee extract,
1/3 cup powdered sugar,
3 egg yolks,
1 cup of white chocolate or white chocolate chips.

Preparation:
1. Put 1 cup of heavy cream in the pot together with the coffee extract, egg yolks, and sugar.
2. Mix all the ingredients until they combine well.
3. Heat the coffee mixture and, using a whisker or an electric mixer, whip constantly until it turns into a mousse.
4. Take off from the burner and continue to whip until the mousse cools almost entirely down.
5. Melt white chocolate over a pot with boiling water until it becomes smooth and cool it a bit.
6. Add chocolate to the coffee mixture.
7. Whip the remaining heavy cream until stiff.
8. Fold it slowly into the coffee mousse in two steps.
9. Put the mousse into small glass goblets.
10. Decorate with whipped cream and cocoa powder.
11. Chill for at least 4 hours and serve cold.