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.

Red Cabbage Salad--Coleslaw's Polish Cousin

Poland can certainly be called a land of cabbage and potatoes. These two ingredients, together with beets, practically define Polish cuisine. If you visit Polish farmers markets you will be astounded by the mountains of cabbage heads and the great variety and quantity of potatoes being sold. Therefore, while spending the whole month in Poland, I cannot resist introducing my international readers to cabbage.

Whenever any foreigner asks about Polish cuisine or wants to show any knowledge of it, cabbage-based dishes inevitably come up. The most famous is bigos--a long cooked dish (it can take days to cook bigos properly), which is made from sour and fresh cabbage with a generous amount of different meats and sausages, and it is spiced up with dried porcini or prunes. It is very heavy but very tasty and everyone who has been raised in its flavor is nostalgic about it. Foreigners who tried it either fell in love with bigos, or hate forever even the very smell of it.

For those who are even scared to try bigos, we also have much lighter and less odoriferous dishes that are made of cabbage. They are also much easier to prepare. We have many variations of them in our national cuisine and anyone who is willing to try them, will find for sure a dish made of cabbage that is very tasty but also very light.

Unfortunately, as foreign cuisines have become widespread in Poland in recent years and even all the "holes in the walls" now serve exotic food like sushi or Turkish kebab, it is now much harder to find a good traditional dish like a cabbage salad, which used to be so prominent on the Polish daily menu.

Red cabbage was always one of my favorites. It is very healthy as it is particularly rich in vitamins K and C. It can be served in a cooked version, as a side dish to heavier meats like duck or venison, but the one I make at home is a simple salad made of raw red cabbage to preserve all its nutritional values. It can be served to accompany any meat, especially grilled.

Red Cabbage Salad

Ingredients:
1/2 head red cabbage,
1/2 medium sweet onion,
2 tbsp roasted, slivered almonds,
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar,
1 tsp of sugar,
1/4 cup olive oil,
1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese (optional),
salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation:
1. Shred cabbage thinly, salt generously, and set aside for about half an hour.
2. Using hands squeeze cabbage to help soften and macerate in its own juice.
3. Season with sugar, vinegar, and pepper.
4. Add onion and oil and mix well.
5. Sprinkle with almonds and serve.

Useful tips:
This salad can also be served at lunch with bread and cold meat cuts. If you sprinkle it with feta cheese, it would become a rich meal in itself.

Dragon Fruit Salad for the Cucumber Season

A summer vacation in Poland is called the cucumber season, meaning that it is time to relax in a silly sort of way as press news are not worth reading (being mainly about cucumbers growing strong and other gardening events like that) and most big city cultural establishments are closed. And that is the reason for this post.

I have never dreamed to be a fruit salad queen, but it's a perfect seasonal topic given the heat we experience and the somewhat lazy August atmosphere.

I went to the Asian market last week and I could not resist buying these picturesque dragon fruits. I do not remember eating them ever before, so I thought it would be a good excuse to try them and share my impressions on the blog.

A dragon fruit is unbelievably pink on the outside and very interesting in shape, but its inside is even more surprising. It is white but looks a little bit like a kiwi fruit, or one Polish cake with poppy seeds, and it is very subtle in taste.

To be honest with you, I had bought it mainly to make a picture of it. But when I tried it, I immediately thought to combine it into a fruit salad with a pineapple that has already been sitting in a fruit bowl on my kitchen counter. Just another exotic combination: a dragon fruit and a pineapple, that's all it is. If you are disappointed, I hope that you will at least enjoy these pictures.