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This post was meant to be. Ever since I moved back with my parents into our little nothingeverhappens town, coffee workshops at one of my favorite places became one of my top enterntainments; not that the new hobby went anywhere further than trying to learn how to slurp. Then, one of the cooks at Mihiderka told me about a soup made with celeriac and white coffee foam. I've been obsessed with celeriac this autumn, so I couldn't wait to try the combination, except that lately time has been the scarcest of resources.

And then Kimberly of The Little Plantation invited me to join a virtual blog party about coffee from Malawi, tying things together. The point of the party is to acquaint readers with a rather unknown origin of coffee, one that they may not have heard of, namely Malawi. Ethopia, Guatemala, Colombia are all strong brands already, but it's worth looking beyond the known places, as buying products from very poor regions really helps to improve lives. Myself I never even heard of Malawi before, so one point for Kimberly and her idea already.

Before deciding on the recipe, I wanted to read the profile of the coffee. As the region tends to go for wet processing, the final product is on the tarter end of the scale, which might not be to everybody's liking, but as long as you don't expect for every cup of joe to taste the same, you should enjoy this coffee. My batch was very lightly roasted, fruity, reminiscent of apples and berries, and pairing it with a herby, salty dish seemed a perfect choice.

The soup was an interesting flavor, definitely an experiment rather than everyday meal, but I encourage you to try. And if cooking this is a bridge too far, at least try to source the coffee. Malawi production employs a high percentage of women, and is in majority fair trade. Thanks to Kimberly, Coffee direct is offering EU residents 20% off, given the use of tag: #loveMALAWIcoffee, from the 7th until the 31st of December. Here is the link: http://www.coffee-direct.co.uk/products/malawi-coffee. Maybe it's even a nice gift idea!

Cream of Celeriac with Coffee Drizzle

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 leek, whitest part

1 small head celeriac

1 apple, divided into two equal parts

4 bay leaves

4 juniper berries

2 cups vegetable broth

1/3 cup raw cashews

salt, apple cider vinegar and pepper to taste

1/8 cup sugar

1/4 cup strong coffee

3 tbsp intense olive oil

a pinch of salt

How to:

Peel and cube the celeriac, set aside. You can keep the peel on the apple, but core it and cube it, too. Set one half aside, the other half you can add to the celeriac. Slice the leek thinly and fry it in olive oil until soft, then add the cubed produce and spices, fry, stirring, for 2 minutes. Then cover with broth and let cook for 20 minutes.

Once all is soft, add the cashews and cook for 10 further minutes. Lastly, add the raw apples and blend immediately. Season with salt, pepper, and apple cider vinegar.

To make the drizzle, add the sugar and coffee into a small, heavy-bottomed pot, and cook without stirring for 5-7 minutes over low heat, to make caramel. Then, slowly stir in the olive oil, taking care not to burn yourself - the mixture will spatter.

To serve, pan roast a handful of cashews. Divide the soup between bowls, drizzle with the coffee syrup, and scatter the roasted cashews on top.

I actually liked the soup more once it has chilled.

Here are the other posts of the blog party:

Aimee – Twigg Studios – Winter Spices Coffee Cake
Bettina – Bettina's Kitchen – Coffee Crunch Chocolate Mousse
Kimberly – The Little Plantation – Vegan Malawi Coffee Ice Cream with Salted Caramel Swirl
Maria – Marrbell – Christmas Coffee and Vanilla Eggnog
Jenny – Jenny Mustard – Tofu Skewers with Chocolate Coffee Sauce ‎
Carole – Mademoiselle Poirot – Coffee and Hazelnut Buns with Orange Icing
Dorota – Plants on your plate – Cream of Celeriac with Coffee Drizzle
Valeria – Life Love Food - Zabaione al Caffe
Sophie – The Green Life – Coffee blondies with homemade nutella (vegan, gf)
Joscelyn – Wife Mama Foodie – Salted Chocolate Mocha Cupcakes
Gena – The Full Helping – Coffee Brownies
Ksenia - At The Immigrant's Table - gluten-free Jewish doughnuts with cardamom coffee cream

HA! It's been a while. A busy one, and full of changes, doubts, even regrets. A time to refocus, ask many, many questions, struggle with being an everyday daughter and worker. All the work is coming to life, and I hope to share the news here soon.

I have to come clean: cooking wasn't a tempting pastime in the past weeks, even though I got all of those beautiful books for my birthday in August, even though early autumn brings my favourite produce. I haven't touched my camera since early September, and there are still holiday photos on it, waiting to be developed. It's routine to see snow on the 1st of November here in Poland, so maybe I'll get to it then to evoke some gratitude regarding temperatures - of course zero is better than forty when it comes to degrees!

The other day my mom and I wandered into an old building housing a thrift shop, where the air was thick with dust and lights hardly worked, where arrays of old plates and cups were set on the floor for customers (visitors? the shop had a ring of a museum to it) to look through, undisturbed and unattained by staff. They have stands like that in London, and there is all the hype about them, and there's people instagramming info boards saying weirdo things like: 'the price of a tray is 1/2 its length' or 'i'll buy a red fox fur, head and paws necessary'. Comes out Bytom, Poland (inhabitants: 175 377) is not worse! We bought those little glass cake plates, and I found the tinies tea pot in brown clay; I made tea in it two days ago and haven't seen it since (not a sip of the tea, either). Those tiny glass plates, set out on our black kitchen counter, in the warm sunlight of late October, looked so good I just had to show them off. It's always the small things, right? ;)

I've mentioned that the bounty of early fall is my favourite - it is just perfect given my forgetfulness, as squashes stay good for many weeks, as do properly stored beets, parsnips, or carrots. I do love chanterelles and aubergines, but they go bad before I remember to put them in the fridge! Post-September cooking is basically pantry cooking, with the most beautiful colours courtesy of ruby-like beetroots and all the vivid orange. This salad is something I used to make all the time last year, to the extent where my flatmate wanted to kill me just at the smell of roasted carrots. And the knife in the photos is there because it's so pretty, but also because the squash is so soft you just want to spread it on bread like butter. Anna Jones makes a similar panzanella, which is styled so beautifully in her first book I peaked while shooting this.

Salad of Roasted Roots

(with extra vegetables for the rest of the week)

Ingredients:

4 medium beets

2 springs rosemary

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

a dash of olive oil

salt and pepper

6 large carrots

4 medium onions

1 hokkaido pumpkin

a dash of olive oil

a handful of mixed, toasted seeds

leaves of sage, mint, or springs of dill

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper, not too fine

1 tbsp water

optionally, just because I found them in the garden: a handful of raspberries

How to:

Preheat the oven to 200*C.

Peel and quarter the beets, place them in a deep roasting dish along with the rosemary, vinegar, oil, salt and pepper. Toss to mix, then cover with foil and pop into the oven for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, peel the carrots and slice them in half lengthwise. Peel the onions and cut them into sixths. Clean the skin of pumpkin of grey/beige dirty bits, then halve, clean of seeds (you can clean them and roast in the oven for 20 mins and snack on later in the week), and cut into 1,5cm slices. Place all of the vegetables on a tray - it will be crammed, but that's how everything becomes sticky and sweet. Add a dash of olive oil, toss with your hands, than add to the beets after they've had the 10 minutes, and roast everything for another 30-40, keeping an eye on things so they don't burn.

In a small bowl, mix the dressing ingredients.

To serve the salad, lay out the carrots (using a fork is best) on a large serving tray, thin ends out. Use as many as fit, and leave the rest for weeknight salads. Follow by beets, then half of the seeds, the squash, the rest of the seeds, then dressing, then herbs. Serve with cooked barley or crunchy bread and some more olive oil on the side.