The question for today: What can be prepared with cold smoked salmon? In my fridge a tasty-looking fish quietly waits for its turn. I could put it on some bread with fresh cucumber or add it with eggs to a spinach salad but ... "it has already happened before". And it isn't true that it doesn't come back ;-). However, today it is time for something new. It is time to search for a new recipe. There's no doubt that whatever the results of this search, the salmon won't go uneaten.

This time the on-line Lidl cookery book came to my aid. I found a recipe for steak tartare with smoked salmon. It is not complicated and it is a very tasty dish. I think that it could be a proposal for fish for the Christmas Eve table, and for Christmassy traditionalists it could be a dish for supper on New Year's day.

Ingredients:

200g of cold smoked salmon

1 spring onion

3 dill pickles

6 pickled mushrooms

1 small teaspoon of horseradish

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 tablespoon of soy sauce

1 tablespoon of minced dill

salt and pepper

Events from the last couple of months and days have caused many people concerned with their own security to look at their neighbours with distance and suspicion. Making new acquaintances and friends in a carefree manner has probably gone forever. One by one holiday destinations are disappearing from the tourist map because they are not safe anymore. Soon we will start to pull every thought about travelling apart and we will suspect every passer-by of terrorism. However, the racial melting pot is a sign of our modern times. There are cities where it is difficult to tell who is an autochthonic resident and who is from a so-called minority group. In every religion, race and culture there are black sheep who sow unrest but there are also good people.

I would like to write today about just such a good man. A few years ago in 2012, the square between the two parts of Opaczewska street in Warsaw gained a patron: the maharaja Jam Saheb Digvijay Sinhji, heir to the Navangar principality in west India. In 2014, a monument to this man, designed by Mark Moderau, was unveiled there.

The year 1939 was the end of carefree childhood days for many children. Fear for personal safety and that of one's family and about acquiring the simple means of our existence became an integral part of life, even for the very young. Suddenly, our safe home had disappeared and in return children and their parents were sentenced to exile. Many who were repatriated in cattle trucks to the Soviet Union, Kazachstan and remote, inhospitable Siberia did not survive. Later on it was even worse. Children were separated from their beloved parents, who were sent to labor camps and kolkhozes. They faced terrible conditions in Soviet children's homes and were treated horribly. This is not the way childhood should be. In 1941 the Polish people were allowed to return to their country. The adults joined Anders' army and the children were helped by good people. One of the beautiful characters in those dramatic times was the Polish actress Hanka Ordonówna. Together with her husband Count Michał Tyszkiewicz, she helped to set up a Polish orphanage in Ashabad, close to the Iranian border, where all Polish war orphans were transported from all over the Soviet Union.

When my kids asked me what I was going to serve for dinner, I answered with a wink that it would be a cake. I was almost telling the truth. It really was a cake but this time not a sweet one. It was a French pastry tart with smoked salmon. I used hot smoked salmon, but you can use cold smoked salmon or lightly fried fresh fish.

When making this dish I couldn't decide between cold smoked fish and hot smoked fish. Hot smoked fish is boiled and smoked at 50-85C. The salt content is lower so the use-by date is shorter than with cold smoked fish. The process of cold smoking happens at 15-25C and there is no boiling involved. The outside of the fish is first strongly dried and then the fish is smoked. The salt content is higher so the use-by date is longer than that of hot smoked fish.

Ingredients:

1 pack of chilled French pastry

300g of fresh spinach leaves

1 tablespoon of butter

2 cloves of garlic

1 broccoli

200g of hot smoked salmon

3 eggs

150ml of 30% sweet cream

150g of grated mozzarella cheese

salt and pepper

The existence of Santa Claus is an inseparable part of our childhood. A mysterious fat man with a snowy white beard in a red coat with a big sack of presents used to come to us every Santa Claus day and Christmas Eve. Later on I realized that it was not always Santa Claus who visited kids at Christmas. Some of them were given presents by Angel or Star Man.

I still remember when on every 5th of December we polished our shoes until they gleamed, put them in front of our room and in the morning, anxious and barefoot, ran to make sure he had not forgotten about us. He never failed us. We always found some small packages and a rod lying nearby. We had not always been well-behaved of course. This stick served as a warning and encouraged us to be well-behaved for the next two weeks.

Obviously, he came for a second time on Christmas Eve. The way he made it to us depended on the weather: by sledge, by cart or on foot. We always looked out for his sledge in the sky, looking at the same time for the first star. Meanwhile, he appeared imperceptibly, leaving colourful packages by the Christmas tree. Sometimes he rang the door bell, but we were never fast enough to open it for him; sometimes he left the balcony door open and white footmarks on the floor.

These childhood memories, warm as the smell of coffee cake, I have cherished until today. At the same time, I cannot remember that painful moment when I realized that the man in red clothing was in fact my beloved parents, who were trying to fulfil my childhood dreams. Maybe it happened on the day my brother and I decided in secret to make our own presents for our parents and quietly put them under the Christmas tree? It was probably that moment when I realized that everyone could be like Santa Claus.

Christmas and Easter are festivals when traditional dishes appear on the table. It sometimes turns out that the thought of preparing the same dishes once again doesn't bring any enjoyment. The creative housewife tries to think of something new. The question is which dishes to serve to keep the spirit of the festival, while at the same time making something new. It was the same last Easter. My sister prepared eggs in Parma ham baskets for the first time. The dish was excellent and now it is on our menu. I made it recently, but I freshened it up a bit.

I leave the decorations and way of serving to your imagination. I would only like to add that you could, just like my daughter, cover everything with a huge amount of tomato sauce. Apparently, it tastes great... Well, it is probably a matter of taste. I only feel that under the tomato sauce there could be a tart with plums and my daughter wouldn't notice the difference.

Ingredients (for two people):

6 slices of Parma ham

2 tablespoons of olive oil from dried tomatoes

4 dried tomatoes in olive oil

a fistful of baby spinach leaves

2 eggs

1 clove of garlic

2 tablespoons of Parmesan

salt and pepper