I had my guard up. I didn't want it, but it was sitting on a market stall, tempting me. Beautiful, big, with intensively orange pulp – a pumpkin. It enticed me once again, even though I have used a lot of them this year. Fortunately, the best season for pumpkins is in October and November, so we will have a chance to miss them until they come back again next year.

I have made soups and pancakes with pumpkins, and this time I decided to make a pumpkin salad. Preparing this dish is extremely simple and lasts as long as it takes to bake the pumpkin. If you plan on preparing this salad, you should bake the pumpkin earlier. The pumpkin should cool down before you mix it with the rest of the ingredients. It is up to you how you serve this dish. It is essentially a salad but I served it on toast.

The inspiration for this pumpkin salad was taken from a cookery book by Mlekowita.

Ingredients:

Salad

0.5kg of pumpkin

1 red pepper

1 tablespoon of dried thyme

200g of feta cheese

100g of butter

1 tablespoon of light wine vinegar

2 tablespoons of olive oil

salt and pepper

some leaves of fresh basil

Well I would like to write that I added this and that to the tart and that it is really a chocolate tart with chocolate and... chocolate with a tinge of blackcurrant. Like everything with chocolate, in my opinion this cake tastes great, and the addition of sweet-and-sour jam surprises us and emphasizes the velvety taste of the filling. A cup of strong, hot tea or a cup of flavorsome coffee is an obligatory accompaniment to chocolate tart.

I prepared the cake using a recipe from a cookery book from Lidl. By the way, I found out what ganache means. This hitherto unknown word refers to a glaze, icing, sauce or filling for pastries made from chocolate and cream. You may use it as a cake filling or for chocolate pralines.

Adult gourmands may like to flavor the glaze with a bit of strong alcohol such as rum, brandy or amaretto.

Ingredients:

tart:

100g of butter

2 egg yolks

30g of cocoa

30g of caster sugar

150g of flour

pinch of salt

6 tablespoons of blackcurrant jam

Recently I discovered that stuffed cabbages with potatoes or groats are a traditional dish on the Ukrainian Christmas Eve table. Much like in Poland, in Ukraine the Christmas Eve supper is a meat-free meal, which means my proposal today couldn't be on the Christmas Eve table. I enriched the filling with American bacon and instead of white cabbage I used savoy cabbage. Though the combination of cabbage and potatoes seems to be strange, the net effect was very interesting. The perfect complement for this dish is a thick flavorsome mushroom sauce.

Ingredients:

Stuffed cabbage

1 savoy cabbage

1 kg of potatoes

2 onions

150g of American bacon

2 eggs

2 tablespoons of marjoram

salt and pepper

1 Knorr mushroom cube

sauce

a fistful of dried mushrooms

half an onion

2 teaspoons of butter

2 tablespoons of heavy cream

salt and pepper

Recently on a blog, somebody asked a question about ways of dealing with autumn depression. For me, sometimes, the best way is to challenge yourself in the kitchen. Firstly I look for inspiration online or on paper. In the end I usually have to spend longer cleaning up after these inspirations than I spent cooking them, but what wouldn't you do to lift the mood? First I take stock of the fridge and larder, do some quick shopping and... mess in the kitchen. From this mess emerges something yummy and it is this moment I like the most.

On my last shopping trip, I spotted some extremely big and nice mushrooms. They were almost asking to be grilled or baked with delicious fillings. After a moment of contemplation, onion, gorgonzola cheese, walnuts and dried tomatoes appeared on the table. Just a mess in the kitchen and the dinner is ready.

Ingredients:

5 big mushrooms

150g of gorgonzola cheese

½ an onion

2 cloves of garlic

4 dried tomatoes in olive oil

6 walnuts

small chili pepper

2 tablespoons of butter

1 big fistful of minced parsley

salt and pepper

Autumn ripe pears tempt us with their shape, colour and smell. I like most of all yellow ones with ruddy cheeks. Pears, which came to Europe from ancient Persia, were an exclusive product to begin with. Native strains were grown only at the turn of the XVII and XVIII centuries.

The pear is called the fruit of love and is numbered among fruit aphrodisiacs. They go well with chocolate, nuts and vanilla.

For a romantic evening I made a very simple but grand pear-chocolate desert. You need an appropriate amount of pears for your casserole dish. You can bake every pear separately or put all of them into a bigger dish and bake them all together. The cake which I recommend today is light, fluffy and doesn't contain flour.

Ingredients:

2 pears

2 eggs

80g of caster sugar

3 tablespoons of cocoa

1 teaspoon of baking powder