Today's dish appeared on our menu after my husband went on a trip with his male friends. I found out that on such trips men do not only drink beer, eat crisps and for lunch order pizza or hamburgers. Very 'male' food has many advantages: it is simple, doesn't need any sophisticated ingredients or complicated preparation. It is practical in the positive sense of the word. I think for this reason, dishes made with courgette and pepper appeal to us.

I always have the following ingredients in my kitchen: courgette, pepper, onion, garlic and pesto. Because it only needs a short time to prepare, this dish is excellent on busy days.

It is immensely important not to overdo the vegetable. If the vegetables are not crunchy, the dish will lose its character and it won't look nice. If you like monochromatic combinations, you can add green pepper to the courgette, and if you like colourful dishes, you can combine it with various peppers.

Ingredients:

1 big courgette

1 pepper

1 onion

2 cloves of garlic

Since 1991, every year on 11 November there has been a street festival on St Martin Street. This day alludes to the medieval St Martin's Day. St. Martin was a bishop from Tours; a patron of children, hoteliers, riders, cavalry, hatters, smiths, tailors, millers, travellers, prisoners, beggars and soldiers. Traditionally on St Martin's Day in Poznań, people eat cakes called rogal świętomarciński and goose.

Goose breeding in Poland has a long tradition, reaching back to the XVII century. Nowadays, goose is treated as a posh, gourmet product and it really isn't one of the cheapest dishes around. Sometimes it is worth giving in to temptation because the taste of this meat is excellent. Not many people know that Poland is the biggest goose producer in Europe, and, along with apples and oscypek (local Polish sheep's cheese), organic goose meat has a chance to become a symbol of our cuisine.

Today's proposal for preparing goose thighs was inspired by Karol Okrasa. It takes quite a long time to roast, but thanks to this the goose fat renders, leaving the skin thin and juicy, and the meat soft.

Ingredients:

4 goose thighs

2 tablespoons of thyme

200ml of apple juice

200ml of apple cider

Salt and pepper

8 slices of American bacon

fistful of dried cranberries

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

Some time ago I often did my shopping at one of the hypermarkets which offers online sales. I was glad of this. I did the shopping at a time that was convenient for me, I decided on my own date of delivery, and the neatly packed products were delivered right next to my fridge. I could pay any way I liked: by wire transfer, by cash or by card. It saves time and is comfortable, especially if for some reason you don't want to, or you can't, go out.

You can describe your demands regarding products by leaving comments. If there are any unavailable products or if the products don't satisfy you, the staff of the hypermarket discuss the changes by telephone. Unfortunately, like in every place where people work, mistakes can happen. In the 13 years in which I did online shopping, there were literally only a couple of mistakes and they were not very serious.

Thanks to one such mistake, instead of a small tin of Indian corn I got a huge one. The amount of Indian corn was so large I could have prepared a salad for a garrison. For my family it was too much to eat in one meal. I used some of it for salads and the rest remained in my fridge and made me nervous every time I opened it. For this reason I prepared a fiery and surprisingly tasty soup with coconut milk, chili pepper, lime peel and sesame.

Ingredients:

800g of Indian corn from a tin

1 tin of coconut milk

Everybody knows about stuffed cabbage, which is for some reason called "gołąbki". Traditionally, it consists of a meat stuffing wrapped in leaves of white cabbage. The traditional ingredients of the stuffing are pork mincemeat and rice. Nowadays, as well as white cabbage we wrap the stuffing in leaves of savoy cabbage or mild leaves of young cabbage, and there are as many kinds of stuffing as there are creative chefs.

Many countries in the world have their own gołąbki, not always wrapped in cabbage leaves. We know very well small Greek meat dolmades in grape leaves. To the stuffed cabbage we can add different seasonings and sauces, and we prepare them in many different ways. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia stuffed cabbages are called hołubce, in some regions of the United States they are called glubkis, and in Germany they are known as Krautwickel/Kohlrouladen. This dish is known in  Sweden as kåldolmar, and in Finland kaalikääryleet. On the Balkan Peninsula similar dishes are called sarme.

In my family home we ate gołąbki wrapped in white cabbage leaves with a meat filling without rice. Now for my family I make something similar, but sometimes I split with tradition and I use savoy cabbage rather than white cabbage, and to the filling I add rice or I make vegetarian stuffed cabbage with buckwheat groats and vegetables.

Today I would like to share with you a recipe (in my opinion) for the most traditional stuffed cabbages with meat, rice and tomato sauce.

Ingredients:

1 white cabbage

1kg of mincemeat

2 onions