Vegetable Salad [vegetarian]

Although I realize that outside my country, this salad is often called 'Russian Salad', here we all know it as 'Vegetable Salad'. It was the most popular salad in Poland for many, many years. No party, celebration or social gathering happened without this dish. Even preparing this salad was a bit of a social occasion, as it was always made in big quantities and very often, at least 2 people were cutting the vegetables and chatting while they were doing it. I remember from my childhood that the women from my family were always cutting the vegetables very thinly because we believed that if the cubes were too big, the salad would not taste as good as it should ;) Nowadays, I actually prefer the salad not to be made of such tiny pieces. It still tastes great, but the preparation doesn’t take as long as it used to in the past.

What I also like about this salad is that you end up with a great by-product – good quality vegetable stock that can be used as a base for many different soups. Obviously, it also works the other way around: you cook the stock that you need and then you use the vegetables to make the salad. Whichever way you are going to do it; you will enjoy the two results!

INGREDIENTS (for 4-6 portion):

4 carrots, peeled,

2 parsnips, peeled,

0.25 celery (approx. 200g), peeled and cut into 2 pieces,

1 small leek*,

1 celery stalk*,

2 apples,

3-4 sour gherkins,

1 tin green peas,

3 tbsp mayonnaise,

salt and pepper.

METHOD:

1. Put the carrots, parsnips, celery, leek* and celery stalk* to a big pan, pour 1-1.5l of water, add salt and pepper and bring to boil.
2. Lower the heat and cook the vegetables until they are tender (approx. 20 minutes).
3. Take the vegetables out from the stock, cool them down.
4. In the meantime, cut the apples and sour gherkins into 0.5-1 cm cubes. After you chop the gherkins, make sure to squeeze out the liquid.
5. When the cooked vegetables are cool, cut the carrots, parsnips and the celery into the 0.5 -1cm cubes (the celery stalk and leek can be discarded).
6. Put all the chopped vegetables, apples and gherkins to a bowl, add the mayonnaise, seasoning and stir well.

* optional, required only if you are making the stock as well.

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Concentrated Vegetable Stock Paste [vegetarian]

I like soups very much. They are - in general - healthy, low calorie and comforting. And everybody will find at least a few favorite ones as there are so many types of soups. However, despite this huge variety, all of them have at least one common denominator – stock.

When you have time, you can prepare good quality stock earlier and then use it for your soups. But what if you don’t have time? You can use stock cubes although this is certainly not the healthiest option. There are plenty of hydrogenated fats in them, which are very bad for us. But luckily, if you get the ingredients (see below) and you have about an hour free, you can make your own ‘stock cubes’ or rather concentrated stock paste that kept in a tight jar in a fridge, will last you a few months.

I have to confess that in the past when I was in a rush, I would use stock cubes myself. I liked them for their immediacy and their taste. So when I started making and using this concentrated stock paste, the taste was my major issue: it was not bad, it was… unfamiliar! There are various flavor enhancers included in industrial made stock cubes and obviously I neither could nor would like to use them. Therefore I decided to substitute them with a more natural one – soya sauce – that ads this desirable ‘pleasant savory taste’ – umami. So I think the below combination and proportions of ingredients work really well and you will end up having a high quality, healthy and instant homemade concentrated stock paste.

INGREDIENTS (for approx. two 330ml jars):

250g carrots, peeled,

40g parsnip, peeled,

40g celeriac, peeled,

80g leak,

40g cabbage,

80g onion, peeled,

1 garlic clove, peeled

140g tomato,

1 bay leaf,

4 parsnip sprigs,

2 handfuls of fresh herbs (leaves only from basil, sage, etc.),

200g coarse sea salt,

35g white wine,

3 tbsp olive oil,

2 tbsp light soya sauce,

50g grated Parmesan cheese.

METHOD:

1. Cut all the vegetables into pieces and put them to a kitchen processor; add the herbs and process till everything is almost liquidized.
2. Transfer to a heavy bottomed pot, add the salt, wine, olive oil and soya sauce, stir and bring to boil on a medium heat.
3. Decrease the temperature to low, cover the pot with a lid and cook for 20 minutes stirring occasionally.
4. Take off the lid and cook for 10 minutes more, remembering to stir every now and then.
5. Increase the temperature to high and cook stirring often for 10 minutes (towards the end of the cooking time you may have to stir the mixture all the time to prevent it from burning). You want all the liquid to evaporate and end up with a dry pulp.
6. Add the grated Parmesan cheese, stir and transfer everything to the processor; liquidize till everything is very well combined.
7. Put the prepared pulp to a sterilized jars and keep in a fridge for up to 3-4 months.
8. To make stock use 2 tsp for 0.5l of water.

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