Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Portuguese cooking night

I made a random post about Pizza waffles and haven’t even said a word about my Portuguese cooking night like I intended. So I’ll be doing that now! Please forgive me the pictures as usual, but here's what I made: Batatas de Rebolão (apparently translates to: pan roasted potatoes), Bifes de Cebolada (Braised beef and union), Peixinhos da Horta (fried string beans) and Ovos verdes (egg and parsley croquettes). The last one especially caught my eyes since I've never actually had frittered eggs and it sounds kind of odd, which means we totally have to try it out. The rest was more or less randomly picked from the dishes in the book ‘Portuguese cooking’ brought by my parents all the way from the Azores.
I’ve order the recipes to what will take the longest and you should start first with to what’s better off last. Enjoy!

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Bifes de Cebolada (Braised beef and union)
Ingredients:
2-3 (cooking) tomatoes
2-3 unions
3 cloves of garlic
4 slices beef or steak
Parsley
Salt & pepper
Oil


1. Wash the tomatoes and cut them into slices after you’ve removed the seeds. Peel and slice the onions as well.
2. Use a casserole and cover the bottom with sliced tomato and unions. Lay a slice of beef or steak on top with salt and pepper. Cover this with garlic (sliced or chopped), parsley and drizzle oil over it.
3. Repeat with another layer of tomatoes, unions, then more beef, salt&pepper, garlic, parsley and oil until all beef is used.
4. Preheat the oven to 200-250 degrees Celsius or 400-480 degrees Fahrenheit. Put the lid on the casserole and leave for 45 minutes to an hour. If the beef doesn’t seem to be cooking or runs dry, you can add water.

Forgive me the inaccuracy of the heat of the oven and the cooking time, but the recipe said ‘cook’ and nothing more than that, which completely confused me. The recipe wanted me to use an earthenware casserole, so I guessed that I was going to the oven. My mom helped me a bit on the timing and the heat and I think it took about an hour before it was done, at least way more than the 30 minutes it said was needed. Also, after a while my mom suggested I’d poor some water in, since apart from the bit of oil I used, the beef was completely dry. It’s not something I’d try again, except perhaps with chicken since it cooks faster, and a lot more seasoning.

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Peixinhos da Horta (fried string beans)
Ingredients:
1 can beans
100 grams flour
1 egg
1/2 union
Salt
Water (about a glass)
Frying oil


1. Take the beans from the can and drain out the water.
2. In a bowl mix together the flour, the egg (slightly beaten) and half the onion (chopped in pieces). Add a bit of salt. Then add enough water to get a smooth batter (like that of pancakes for example).
3. Add the beans and leave for about 30 minutes. (This is the perfect time to start the next recipe or any other dish you wanted!)
4. Heat the frying oil in a pan and add the beans a few at a time. Use a spoon with wholes to drain out the excess of batter. Fry the beans until the batter around it becomes golden brown then remove and repeat until all the beans are used.

My sister was especially fond of this recipe and kept asking for more. I noticed these beans aren’t bad at all even when they’re cold and don’t actually need any sauce or so over it. I was too lazy to do this bean by bean, so we had clumps of beans instead. Trying to fry every single bean seems way too time-consuming too me, and very messy.

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Ovos verdes (egg and parsley croquettes)
Ingredients:
9 eggs
30 grams butter
Parsley
Salt & pepper
30 grams flour
Frying oil


1. Cook 8 eggs. When done leave them to cool slightly or put them under cold water. Peel them and cut in half.
2. Take out the egg yolks and mix it with the butter, salt&pepper and parsley. Put the mixture back into the eggs.
3. Take out two bowls and fill one with the last egg (slightly beaten) and fill the other with flour. At this point, or even before, start heating the frying oil.
4. Take a refilled egg and roll it in the flour until completely covered. Then roll in the beaten egg until completely covered. After that put it aside, or put it into the frying oil immediately.
5. Keep repeating this until all the eggs are fried.

This whole process reminded me of making schnitzel. It’s really easy it just takes a lil' and it gets your hands dirty. You can start cooking the eggs way beforehand. It tasted really nice as well. Perfect as a sidedish!

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Now last but not least (nothing comes least when it comes to food, ever, almost):

Batatas de Rebolão (pan roasted potatoes)
Ingredients:
Potatoes (I used a kilo)
4 cloves of garlic
Parsley
Salt & pepper
Olive oil


1. Put everything but the potatoes in a pan and put it over the heat.
2. Add the potatoes and fry them until golden brown.

These are just simple fried potatoes, but there’s never anything wrong with potatoes, especially when theyre fried and seasoned properly.
That was it for my Portuguese cooking night! Enjoy!

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