One of the coolest wedding gifts we received was a cooking class for two with a German celebrity chef Mathias Ruta. I’m not sure how much of a celebrity this guy actually is, but for someone who is not mentioned by the German Wikipedia, the dude was a gargantuan ass. He made numerous Polish jokes throughout the class, which while not a crime in themselves (husband totally guilty of this, on occasion), turned out to be an ugly thing to do. You see, at that time, I didn’t speak or understand German, and, thus, I could not smack him back with some witty repartee. Fortunately, the cooking class had an all-you-can-drink wine station, which I duly abused, while murmuring what I thought meant “you’re mean” in German, but which later turned out to loosely translate into “you are evil”. So what made this class absolutely fantastic? Well, for one, Tim learned how to properly cut and clean a bell pepper – a skill which he proudly demonstrates to anyone willing to look (it is ironic, really, taking into consideration that he hates bell peppers even more than he hates pancakes). But most importantly, we learned two outstanding dishes, one of which was the honey-glazed roasted duck breast with lentils. Not only is this dish quite simple to make and impressive-looking, tastewise, it is absolutely exquisite, stunning really… and this actually comes from someone who doesn’t even like duck.
Category Archives: entrees
Steak with Sauce Béarnaise
When I was seventeen, I had the good luck of moving to Paris to start my college education. Back then, I was a disgustingly self-entitled brat who thought it was perfectly normal to live it up in Paris at the tender age of seventeen and I would get seriously annoyed at my parents for calling me every day to check up on me (mom had daily visions of my dead, hacked-up body lying in a Parisian sewer, which only intensified when I didn’t answer the phone). Despite her visions, my favorite pastimes, during my first year in Paris, did not include getting mutilated, killed or floating in sewers. Instead, my favorite pastimes were: chain-smoking, playing backgammon and eating steaks at a place called Hippo with two friends, both conveniently named Alex (distinguished by the clever and literal nicknames of ‘Big Alex’ and ‘Russian Alex’). Now, Hippo was, at best, a run-of-the-mill steakhouse chain and, at worst, a bit of a dump, but back then, it was the best thing ever. In 1998, sitting at Hippo’s and eating a juicy steak with sauce béarnaise was what made life good. I’ve had many good steaks since but the ones from Hippo’s were somehow most memorable and delicious. So, here goes my homage to those days – Mesdames et messieurs: Filet de bœuf avec sauce béarnaise…
Roasted Cod with Tomato, Pepper and Onion Salsa
I am going to make a bold statement: Cod is my most favorite fish in the whole world. Halibut is a close second, followed by albacore tuna (but only sashimi style) and salmon (but only sashimi style or smoked, and if smoked, then only in a particular way, from one particular place in Poland)… and on a related topic: I hate herring, always have and probably always will. All this to say, that for the moment being, you will not see any herring recipes on this blog but you will see plenty of cool fish, like cod, tuna and salmon. Also, I do realize that I’m weird and I will make a serious attempt at branching out fishwise or, at the very least, I will provide you with as many delicious and varied cod/halibut/tuna/salmon recipes as humanly possible. Although after eating this particular roasted cod with tomatoes, onions, red peppers and orange zest, I must say that my branching out incentives are pretty slim.
Perfect Roasted Chicken
I vividly remember my first attempt at roasting a chicken. I was thirteen and my mom left me with detailed chicken operating instructions. I followed them to the best of my capacity, which was scarce, since back then I didn’t know anything about anything (something which, sadly, continued well into my twenties). Anyway, it seemed to me that the chicken was sticking out of the roasting form unnecessarily much… so I took care of it. The look my mother gave me, when she saw the final product of my culinary zeal – the product being a chicken splashed out like a frog in water after I gave it my best push to make sure it would be nice and flat – the look she gave me, indicated that she firmly believed, at that moment, that I was nineteen shades of crazy and counting. It took me about fifteen years before I attempted to roast a chicken again, but this time with dramatically different results… The below recipe is possibly the juiciest, tastiest, most mouth-watering and world changing roasted chicken recipe in existance. It is, in fact, the über-chicken…
