This was our New Year’s eve dinner. Let me use this opportunity to invite all our friends to the house warming party here in Luxembourg on 17 January 😉

Pumpkin soup: cook pumpkin and a potato, both cut up into cubes in small amount of water until cooked, drain a bit, mash, season, add some cream and cook some more.

Blanched asparagus with yoghurt sauce: drop asparagus in boiling water for a minute or so, drain, soak briefly in ice cold water. Mix yoghurt with fresh squeezed lemon juice, salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil; pour over the asparagus.

Mangold cheese pie in buckwheat crust: make buckwheat dough, roll out, place in baking pan. Cook mangold and a sliced carrot for about 15 minutes. Drain, cut mangold in slices. Mix mangold and carrots with cheese (we use skuta, but could use ricotta or perhaps cottage cheese) and season to taste. Add a couple of whisked eggs if you like (I did not this time). Fill the crust, bake at high temp for about 45 minutes.

Pita sirnica (cheese burek): I assume everyone knows how to make burek 🙂 Just layer phyllo dough and a mix of fresh cheese (skuta), sour cream, salt and egg, greasing each layeras you go. Finish with two layers of the dough and bake at medium temperature. The trick is to pour a cup of hot salty water on top when baked, cover and let it sit for a while.

Å unka v testu (ham in bread): this beauty deserves a separate entry as far as recipes go. Basically, cook ham, make dough, wrap and bake. I only helped a little, but the bulk of the work was done by the man of the house. Hat’s off!

Apple skuta cheese cake (see recipe here) with a twist: this time I used wholemeal flour and brown sugar. Came out even more declicious!

We had a wonderful evening and our guests seemed happy enough 🙂 Thanks for the great company, guys! We’ll be eating leftovers for a while, but not complaining about it one bit!