What do you associate with holidays at the seaside? For me, apart from the beach, waves and sun, I think of fish – fried, grilled, smoked and the freshest you can imagine. Small fish, fresh from the cutter, baked on a griddle and crunchy as crisps, is the most pleasant snack on the boardwalk.

Recently, I was pleasantly surprised by the fish selection in one of my favourite markets. It appears that I can buy fish which we know from holiday dinners by the Adriatic Sea. Sea bass, also known as bar or moron, is a sea fish living in the Mediterranean, North sea and Black Sea. It is bred due to its exceptional palatability in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Spain and Croatia.

I recommend it baked or grilled with herbs and citrus fruits, though its gentle white meat doesn't need too many ingredients.

Ingredients:
4 sea bass
6 cloves of garlic
4 spring onions
100g of butter
2 tablespoons of olive oil
8 tablespoons of fresh minced herbs: coriander, dill, basil
3 sprigs of rosemary

I like halvah very much, but on a ten-point scale, I estimate its sweetness as fifteen.

I have prepared recently a very simple dessert with halvah, which doesn't cause hyperglycaemia after the first bite. In this dessert I combined the characteristic sesame taste of halvah with a hint of orange and cherry confiture to sharpen the flavour and for decoration. If the confiture you have is too thick, heat it up a bit, so that the purple cherry sauce spills out appetisingly onto the dessert .

Ingredients (for two people)
150g of mascarpone cheese
100g of vanilla halvah
the juice and peel from one orange
100g of oat-sesame cookies
3 tablespoons of cherry confiture

May is my favourite month of the year. The spring is in full bloom: greenery, flowers and sun. It is warm (most of the time), but not too hot yet, and on the market stands we have the first fresh vegetables.

The spring has made me a little crazy. All the salads I have made recently are green. The same happened last year. The main ingredients of today's salad are broccoli, feta cheese and fresh cucumber. You should make for this dish a light but distinctive garlic dip. So that it looks as good as it tastes, serve it in a separate small bowl, and only add it to the salad once it is on the plate.

Ingredients:
broccoli
150g of feta cheese
1 cucumber
1 small red onion
radish sprouts
a fistful of sunflower seeds
a fistful of almond slices

Kórnik Castle was always out of our way: too far, not the right direction, not enough time. This weekend we took the time to catch up and visit this place.

The castle on the lake shore, known since the XIV century, is an undisputed ornament of the small town of Kórnik. The first gothic castle was built here on a fortified island in the XV century. One hundred years later, the Górkowie family built a brick-built residence and, as with almost every other castle, each new owner altered it according to the prevailing style and their own personal preferences. The current look is the creation of the Działyński family. Tytus Działyński and Jan Kanty Działyński remodelled the castle with the intention of displaying works of art and national memorabilia. Their relative, earl Władysław Zamojski, enriched the collection with his own ethnographic repertory from Australia, Polynesia and Madagascar. He left as his legacy the whole estate to the Polish nation. Since 1954 the castle and library has belonged to the Polish Academy of Sciences.

The front of the castle didn't make a huge impression on us. Maybe the neo-Gothic bridge across the moat bestowed upon it a bit of airiness and charm. Only a walk around the castle changed our mind. The round tower with asymmetric windows and the deck and porch from the direction of the park made a much better impression. You can go inside the castle. We "danced" on a beautiful wooden floor wearing huge felt slippers. A long time has passed since I last visited a museum with such old-school shoes. My children put them on for the first time and they had great fun sliding on the floor as if they were on ice. All the children accompanying us in our tour group did the same, and the stoic calmness of the museum staff impressed me.

When I put on the table my recently made cake, my family looked incredulous – green, maybe with cabbage or worse still with spinach. I calmed them down a bit with the information that one of the main ingredients is chocolate. Cake and chocolate – it sounds familiar, but this colour ... The secret of the colour and taste of the cake is matcha – a special kind of Japanese green tea. It differs from normal green tea in that it grows in the shade, which is what gives it its intense green colour. The leaves are harvested by hand, dried and triturated.

Matcha is a rich source of antioxidants, which could prevent the progression of cancer, hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. Additionally, it rejuvenates, speeds up the metabolism, reduces stress, boosts immunity and lowers cholesterol.
Matcha is a versatile product. With it you can prepare not only tea, but you can also add it to cakes, cocktails, yoghurts and ice-creams.

The brownie which I prepared with matcha was my first but definitely not my last encounter with this remarkable tea. I'm not the author of the recipe for this cake. I found it in my recipe book, but unfortunately, there was no source.

Ingredients:
110g of butter
300g of white chocolate