Today “twist” – individual plates, rather than a big shallow dish.
It really looks better when plated individually, judge for yourself!

Your shopping list:

6 servings

for filling/creme:

5 eggs
3/4 cup (150g) fine sugar
1  1/2 cup (250g) mascarpone cheese

another:

ladyfingers (6 per serving, total of 36)
coffee (strong, cold, about a cup)
cocoa powder, eventually finely grated chocolate for top
shot of your favorite liquor (optional) – Kahlua, Grand Marnier . .

how to: 

Beat egg yolks and sugar into fluffy mixture, and slowly whisk in
mascarpone.
Whisk egg whites until firm and fold them into mascarpone mix.

Set three ladyfingers on a small plate, and moist them with coffee
(eventually coffee with liquor), just use spoon and pour it lightly
over them. Any spills get immediately soaked, so no worries.
We want them to be moist, but not “slurry”.

Spoon and spread mascarpone mixture over them,
in about 1/2 cm (1/4 inch) thick layer.

Repeat, setting ladyfingers cross to bottom layer. Now you
know the drill – moist, not to much, spread mascarpone, done.

Dust with cocoa powder on the top and refrigerate . . .
that is actually hardest part – just try to put them in the fridge
and  

w  a   i  t

for few hours

  - impossible.

Overnight? Crazy!

Tomas

Let’s take it into modern kitchen, and use salmon for this recipe,
ideal candidate in my eyes. Original recipe calls for cooking
(poaching) the fish in small amount of slightly acidic water
(with vinegar) with carrots, parsley root and celery, various spices.

I’ll list ingredients below, let’s go over process. It’s quite simple.

First, peel carrots and parsley roots, and with kitchen peeler,
make thin, wide strips out of it.
Then cut about 1 inch (2.5cm) wide strips from salmon, in direction
like you’d cut fillets of it.
Flip it on side, add vegetable strips alongside and roll,
as shown in picture above.
Secure with toothpick on the end, sprinkle with salt.

Put finished fish rolls into a baking dish, and pour in white wine,
but only about 1/2 inch – 1 cm, halfway the height of fish.
No seasoning, please, we’ll use aromatic side dishes plus the way
salmon with wine tastes is best like this.

15 – 20 minutes in the oven, uncovered . . . .done
Take out of the oven, and drizzle with heated up vinegar
- careful, not to much, just a light drizzle is fine.
Cover it and let sit for 5 minutes, while you arrange peas and
potatoes on a plate. Now it’s ready to eat.

Couple ideas – remaining vegetables and liquid left after cooking fish
can be used as great base for fish soup.
All alcohol is already evaporated from the wine, but taste remains.

What you’ll need:

• salmon, fresh, enough to make 1inch/2.5 cm wide cuts, one per
person, or if it’s main dish of the event, two per person
• carrots and parsley roots (you can make about 6 to 10 strips from piece)
• white wine for cooking . . . no boxed wine, please
you get to finish the bottle anyway, so pick your favorite
• vinegar, white, 4 or 5 % acidity or dilute strong one with water
• salt

For rosemary butter peas -
melt piece of butter in heavy pan, add roughly cut rosemary leaves and
peas.  
Yep, just go ahead and use frozen from the bag, just don’t let it
sit longer than 20 minutes when finished. Ideal time is to prepare
this while the fish is in the oven.  Let it heat up nicely, stir occasionaly.
Done.

For stuffed baked potato -
(my version)
boil baking potato, cool down, cut in half.
Remove inner mass, leaving about 0.5 cm (1/4 inch) on sides and bottom.
Roughly cut and mix removed potato mass with finely chopped leeks,
one whole egg, season with salt and pepper.
Return into potatoes, bake for 15 minutes
(you can put it into oven with salmon).
Finish just before serving with spoon of sour cream,
mixed with chopped herbs of your choice and salt.
Done.

Nice, effective, very easy,
bon apetite!

Tomas

Not only a “side” to a cheese anymore, nor stomach filler for
those on diet.
Finally.
Lot of variety in the stores, it’s a joy choosing of them.
Quick for party time, I’ve recently made 8 versions, with help
of one prep person it took about 90 minutes to finish 300.
Count with 5 per person in your party.

Here is link picture with description of each one (new window)

Be creative!
I’ve picked whole grain wheat cracker and mozarella spread
on top, finished with red cherry tomato and basil leaf – simple.

And for this one, white cracker with sea salt, herb spread on top.
The spread is quite easy made from scratch, you can base it
on fromage blanc, or, in this case I’ve used Philadelphia, mixed
it with salt and peper and added finely cut fresh herbs – let the
fantasy be your quide . . .
Garnished with pretty purple leaf (which I’m sooo unsure of it’s
name right now) and yellow cherry tomato on top.

The fish trio you can see above or in that link, nice whole wheat
crackers with sesame seed, tuna spread – (Philadelphia, tuna, butter,
salt, peper, mustard and chives) and rucola salad leaf, then
I’ve used three kinds of smoke fish for them – halibut, salmon and
gravad laks, that is Scandinavian speciality – salmon marinated in
salt and dill. Voila, simple and fabulous.

Add small cubes of aged cheddar with grape wine on top
(secured with party picker) to your table, or poppy seed
crackers with spicy bell pepper spread and triangle of brie,
garnished with parsley and seasoned with paprika . . . .

enjoy your party!

Tomas

Low key is in general for dark, dramatic picture, often used
for portraits, acts and similar.
For normal photography, three light setup is used,
main (key) light, fill and back light, where low key picture
is created with single, directed light, sometimes reflector
comes to play if needed.

At “home studio”, you can do picture as the garlic above quite easily-
for black background I’ve used my coat, but any non reflective fabric
or black photographic paper will do, table lamp – temporarily with 100W
bulb, normally I use energy saver
and piece of white paper held on the opposite side to the lamp for
minor reflection back. Camera on tripod, expose for the garlic.
Adjusted contrast and corrected color in editing program.
Done, nothing hard to this.
Camera settings were 1/13 sec. at f/9, ISO 100, but I believe if you
are really a beginner, today’s camera technology will choose
very similar settings to this, even if you use auto mode.
Tripod is important, with so little light, shutter speeds are slow.

Some food pictures are looking really nice on black, it’s not usual
to see food set as low key. Try it, nice alternative (or time killer
for rainy weekends and long winter evenings).

Above: 
Cassis (blackcurrant) sorbet made into small scoops, covered
in dark chocolate and served in ice bowl as sweet finger food.

Bigger pictures?
www.flickr.com/photos/tomassedlacek

But they are as delicious as they sound, start for winter
feast was “Kulajda” soup, comes from very old recipe from the
mountains in SW part of Bohemia. Vegetarian friendly.

Kulajda soup
recipe for standardized
10 portions at 0.33 l (approx. 1,5 cup) each

Ingredients:

2 litres (8 cups)    vegetable stock
0.5 kg (1 pound)   potatoes (peeled, cut to 1cm/half inch cubes)
0.5 kg (1 pound)   mushrooms (cleaned and sliced)
0.25 liter (1 cup)   heavy cream
0.25 liter (1 cup)   milk
150 gr. (5 oz.)      fine flour
3                         eggs, hard boiled, sliced
handful (cca 1 cup) fresh dill, finely chopped
30ml (2 tbsp.)       white vinegar

caraway seed
salt

Bring vegetable stock to boil, add peeled and cut into small cubes
potatoes, after 10 minutes add sliced mushrooms and teaspoon of
caraway seeds, salt.
After 5 more minutes, whisk flour into milk and cream,
and thru strainer slowly, while stirring it, pour into the boiling soup.
You’ll see it thicken, stop at nice, sauce alike consistency.
On low heat boil for 5 more minutes, potatoes should be now tender.
Add more salt, chopped dill and take off the heat.
Finish the taste with vinegar for sweet, creamy, slightly acidic taste,
which is in aftertaste overpowered with dill.
Before serving, put small cube of butter on top
and slices of hard boiled egg, serve with dark bread or sesame crisps.

Couple notes – usually recipe calls for making “roux” from oil and milk
to start, then adding other ingredients, I’ve altered and tested above
process to cut down on calories and simplify recipe.

Next was Steak Tartar, made from smoked salmon.
Served with nicely aged Parmigiano, few capers and homemade pasty.
Great equivalent to traditional raw beef tenderloin tartar steak.
Little spicy, contrasty edge to the traditional menu. My fave.And because picture of dessert turned out just awful . . .

second course is last one today -
I’ve coated chicken breasts in herbs, actually in “dough”
made of milk, eggs, flour and herbs, and served with steamed
winter vegetables, touched with butter. What a hit it was!
No leftovers, it suprised even me how good it is.
Here is a pic. for your inspiration.

How was that for traditional Czech cuisine?
Light, with a modern twist . . .it doesn’t have always be
about dumplings and heavy sauces . . .I hope.
And will do my best in future for those changes, wish me luck.

There will be week of Czech cuisine in Copenhagen in March
in Radisson SAS Royal hotel . . .plannig on being there -
just to look, not work, he he (suprisingly), but I’ll have camera
with me and above soup is on the menu!

Thanks for looking,

Tomas

Prague castle and St. Vitus cathedral,
viewed from other side of Vltava (Moldau).

Had overcast, so took out my infrared camera
and they turned out just beautiful.
Hard to mess up pictures of such beauty anyway.

Above are “City hall stairs” (Radnicni schody)

IR camera has greater tonal range, very useful in photo
such as this, I’ll put up article about IR soon.
This shot was converted to BW, it looked right.

The Prague Astronomical clock on Old Town square,

this is how infrared looks it it’s true (or false?)
blue/purpe colors after photographing.
The clock itself is amazing piece of history, constructed in
early 15th century, still works and yes, there is always crowd.

I may move back to Prague this or next year for a while,
who knows, but I’m looking forward to it if it should be.
I have more photographs from there on my Flickr site,
actually,

here is one gallery set up just for Prague

Enjoy and stop there for couple days  if you go around,
one and only jewel of Europe.

Tomas

Classic recipe calls for apples in puff pastry, but I always feel
like it’s some kind of superior variant to Apple Strudel.
And I sure wanted to make something above it, so pears
were only the next logical step. Pick small ones, sweet.

First I prepare the filling, this time I’ve used roughly cut hazelnuts,
toasted them a bit for stronger flavor, added sugar, cardamon and
cream and boiled until the water was gone and it become fairly firm
in consistency. That smell is very dangerous . . .
Core the pears, peel them and put into cold water with couple
drops of lemon juice to prevent browning.
Fill with hazelnut mixture and roll in sugar, mixed with touch of
cinnamon.
Puff pastry – store bought or your own – your call -
just roll it out thin, and wrap each pear into square piece.
Brush with egg and bake 25 minutes, until golden.

Serve with nice scoop of ice cream or whipped cream, or, in this case-
spicy apple puree.
I’ve cooked apples in simple syrup for couple minutes, cooled and
mixed, added two drops of above pictured liquid fire and wow -
what a contrasty taste to the pear!
Beware, it’s a very dense dessert, but for a long night, with glass of sherry . . .

This Saturday we met before sunrise (ouch) at abandoned Suhr’s auto repair shop, that now serves as urban area for paintball wars. But at this hour, totaly empty, so we had the place for ourselves.

Great area to practice flash photography, and absolutely outside the box for me.
I’m not shooting this at all, but hey, it’s winter time and any sight of color gives you energy.
Unless it’s raining. We got lucky, seen great sunrise, had overcast and finally some sun.

Also had time to think about the subjects in monochrome, that place is full of “art” pieces.
Even empty cartwheel looked cool to me

More images from this photowalk are on my flickr,
www.flickr.com/photos/tomassedlacek

Tomas

I’ve found this recipe online, however, modified it to fit my
concept a little bit. Pureeing the cucumbers is definitely the fun part,
make it in small batches and fit the cover tightly.
Because green kitchen looks ugly.

I’m for last couple months on a wave of serving food in various
glasses and such, although this one is far from description of verrine,
it looks just fabulous in glass, the color is amazingly green,
reminds me of summer. Yea, that was the first idea!

recipe?
4 “English” cucumbers
1 pound (15 oz.) creme fraiche (sourcream)
zest and juice from one lemon
handful of mint leaves
salt, peper, 4 tbs. sugar
•
Roughly cut cucumbers, ad mint leaves and puree in blender.
Mix in creme fraiche.
Ad lemon zest, lemon juice and sugar.
Stir together, taste and season with salt and pepper.
Refrigerate for at least two hours.
Enjoy!

Beetroot can be peeled, steamed, and then eaten warm with butter as a delicacy; cooked, pickled, and then eaten cold as a condiment; or peeled, shredded raw, and then eaten as a salad.
It is also common in Australia and New Zealand for pickled beetroot to be consumed on a burger.  
South African Health Minister Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has been nicknamed ‘Dr. Beetroot’ for promoting beets and other vegetables over antiretroviral AIDS medicines, which she considers toxic.
above is quoted from wikkipedia

My favorite recipes for red beets:

• Cold side salad
Cut peeled beets in half, boil them in salted water or 30 minutes, until half tender.
Let cool down, and shred or julienne cut.
Mix with sour cream, add salt and freshly ground pepper, eventually white vinegar.

• Hot side to meal
Peel and cut into 1 cm (1/2 inch) slices, boil them for 20 minutes, drain.
Separately steam baby carrots.
Lightly toss both veggies together, add honey and poppy seeds, salt.

• Classic / serve hot or cold
Peel and cut lenghtwise into 1cm (1/2inch) stripes.
Cover with water, add evoo, thyme, anise, salt and white balsamico,
boil approx. 20 minutes untill tender.
Done, nothing else to it, this is probably most delicious recipe, even it’s so simple.