Oxford

 Port Meadow, Oxford (taken last weekend)

Night-time brownies

Lack of general inspiration last night combined with Charlie's creativity and my craving for pudding resulted in My Very First Chocolate Brownies. They turned out very very gooey in the middle, which I thought wasn't ideal but so far everyone who's tried them said they were just like brownies should be. The original recipe belongs to Anthony Worrall Thompson and uses pecans as well as chocolate. I don't like pecans and besides Coop don't sell them at half past ten in the evening, so I couldn't have used them anyway. Luckily the brownies taste very yummy without them too.

So, onto The Brownies:

You will need:

250 g dark chocolate

250 g unsalted butter

85 g white chocolate (broken into relatively large pieces)

85 g milk chocolate (broken into relatively large pieces)

175 g plain flour

325 g caster sugar

1 tsp baking powder

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla essence

How to make them:

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and grease a dish. The original recipe calls for a 30cmx20cmx3.5cm one. I have a 16.5cm round one and it worked too. Melt the dark chocolate with butter, stirring with a whisk until it's all smooth and velvety. Once the chocolate is melted stir in the sugar. Add the eggs and the vanilla essence.

Sift the flour with the baking powder into a separate bowl. Fold the chocolate mixture into the flour and add the chunks of chocolate.

Pour the brownie mix into the baking tin and bake for 20-25 minutes. I ended up having to bake for about 35 minutes in total because my brownies were thicker. 

Once out of the oven let it cool a bit before you take the brownie out of the tin. Cut it into squares or don't cut it - whatever takes your fancy. Make sure you share it with some lovely people. It is totally worth it.

When it's cold outside

Today's been a horrible day - wet, windy and miserable. One of those days when all you want to do is curl up with your duvet and sleep until April. I find that one of the easiest ways of making yourself feel better on a day like today is to with a big bowl of hot soup. As I was feeling lazy I resorted to the simplest of soups you can imagine ... my Mum's magical cheese soup. It's brilliantly easy, it's warming and it reminds me of early winter in Poland. I serve it with garlic bread, so that while the soup is making itself you can entertain yourself with the most advanced part of that dish - the garlic butter. 

Here, we go then...

My Mum's Really Easy Cheese Soup

You will need:

for the soup:

1 packet of Knorr 4 Cheese Sauce Mix (yep, you heard it right)

250 ml cold water

150 ml vegetable stock

1 Tbs Philadelphia (or any other cream cheese)

1 Tbs double cream

and some pepper to taste

and for garlic bread:

1 baguette

~100 g of butter (3 big spoonfuls), preferably at room temperature

2-3 cloves of garlic

a touch of olive oil

salt, pepper and some fresh parsley if you like it

Soup:

Mix the sauce mix with the water and stir until there's no lumps on the mix any more. Put on the cooker and cook until the mix boils. Then add stock, cream cheese and double cream. Cook until the soup starts to simmer, stirring ocassionally. Add some pepper to taste. And ... that's it.

Garlic bread:

Preheat the oven to 220°C.

Crush the garlic and add it to the butter with salt, pepper and a touch of olive oil (the latter makes the butter more creamy). Mix all of that with a fork and at the end stir in some parsley. Cut the baguette into about 2,5 cm slices but do not go all the way through the bread. Put a teaspoon or two between each of the slice. 

Bake for about 8 minutes or until it looks ready.

just a small edit: I am not entirely sure you can buy the Knorr Cheese Mix in the UK. I tend to stock up on it when I go home. I'm sure however that there will be similar products in the land of stabilised democracy as anything and everything seems to come in a ready-made option here.

Lovely Gnocchi

I haven't been particularly good with this whole blogging thing. I would love to be able to say that I will get better and more consistent at it but years of experience tell me, that it's just wishful thinking.

Anyway... to food. Charlie made us some gnocchi for dinner last night. Whether armed with cameras and lenses or spatulas and sauce pans, Charlie definitely enjoys a challenge. And his gnocchi creations remain one of my favourite comfort meals. There's something really satisfying about their texture and squidgy-ness. Plus if you buy them ready made - they make an incredibly simple yet very impressive meal.

You will need:

a packet of gnocchi

1 tin of tomatoes

1 Tsb tomato purée

1 onion, cubed

1 red pepper, cubed

a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed

1 courgette, sliced

some olive oil and some sunflower oil

salt, pepper, Italian herbs (oregano, sage, basil, will do)

a touch of sugar

fresh fresh rocket

some parmesan to sprinkle on top

Fry the onion and season it with salt, pepper and herbs. Once the onion is slightly brown (but not too much!) add the pepper and fry for until the latter softens a bit. Add the tin tomatoes, tomato puree and more herbs. Stir it all ocassionally and add a bit of sugar to break the acidity of the tomatoes. Let the sauce simmer until it thickens. 

In the meantime slice the courgettes into long thin slices. My mum does it with a peeler and if only your peeler is good enough I'd recommend that. If not you can try the long, thin part of your grater (but be careful not to grate yourself) or just slice it with a knife. Put the courgettes in a frying pan with some olive oil and sunflower oil and garlic and fry until they go slightly brown and crispy on the outside.

Once the courgettes are done you can boil some water and cook the gnocchi. They should take about 5 minutes but do follow the instructions on the packet. After draining them you can do what Charlie sometimes does to add excitement to the dish - fry them for about 3 minutes in the pan that had the courgettes in. It is not necessary but does make them crispy on the outside without affecting the general softness.

Now that all the individual bits are done you can assemble the dish - put the gnocchi at the bottom, pour the tomato sauce on top of them. Then add a generous layer of rocket on top and then layer it with the fried courgette slices. To finish it off sprinkle with some parmesan. Viola!

I tend to add olive oil to it at the end and Charlie likes a touch of balsamic vinegar with this gnocchi recipe. They both work very well.

Gnocchi (sing. gnoccho) comes from Italian for lumps, probably deriving from the word nocca, meaning knuckle.

Cheese-cake photo

We had a pudding party on Saturday and Anita made a cheese-cake.