Meatless Monday

Kale Soup with beans

Put down the chouriço everyone!! It's Meatless Mondays! You can still make your sopa de couves delicious without chouriço or pork by adding extra yummy flavors like carrots or even sweet potatoes. Experiment with your vegetables and see if you can bring a new dish to your table. 

Ingredients:

• 1 quart of water, vegetable or chicken broth
• 1 large onion, roughly diced
• 4 cloves or minced garlic 
• 2 medium potatoes, cubed
• 2 sweet potatoes, cubed
• 4 celery stalks chopped
• 2 carrots peeled and chopped
• 1 large bunch kale or collards, remove stems, wash well  and chop
• 1/2 cup  of small pasta like mini bowtie or elbow
• 1 (15 ounce) can of white or red beans
• 4 tablespoons olive oil 
• s+p to taste

Directions: 

1.  To make your own flavorful broth, begin by sauteing onions and celery with olive oil until softened, then add in your minced garlic. Saute until you start to smell the garlic. Add 2 cups of water and bring to a slow boil. Cover for 10 minutes. Remove pot from flame and with an immersion blender, blend your celery, onions and garlic until smooth and water becomes this cloudy delicious broth.  

2. Now add the rest of the water, potatoes, kale or collards and  s+p.

3. Bring to boil and cook covered for about 25 minutes.

4. Add your beans and carrots and cook for about 10 minutes. I smash half the can of beans for a thicker brother. .

5. After cooking the beans and carrots you can add your small pasta and simmer for 5-8 minutes.  

6. Taste for s+p.

Hope you Enjoy! 

Salada de Bacalhau

Salada de Bacalhau com Batatas

We sure love our cod fish don't we? I was handed a binder of  over 100 bacahlau recipes from my mother to look through. Overwhelming, but I will be sure to try many of them out and share with you! So for starters if you have never tried to make bacahlau on your own, this recipe to me is the easiest. 

Ingredients:

1 lb salted dried codfish 

4 large potatoes

Evoo

White or Red Vinegar

Half Red or Yellow Onion Chopped

1/4 cup of chopped fresh parsley

4 whole cloves of garlic peeled

1/2 cup of chick peas

1/2 cup of black eyed peas

1/3 cup of green or black olives 

3-4 eggs

s+p to taste

Start off by soaking your piece of salted cod in water in a cool place or in the fridge. Soak 24-48 hours. Changing the water up to 8 times. This process will rid of the excess salt that is used to preserve the fish.

After fish has been soaked, you start by boiling potatoes until cooked through. About 20 minutes. Test with sharp knife. If knife goes through potato easily, they are ready. 

Place them gently onto your serving platter and cut each half in half again. Drizzle evoo and season with s+p.

While water is still boiling place your fish and garlic into the pot and boil for 15 minutes. 5 minutes in I place the eggs inside the water to cook them as well. (side note: you can also cook the potatoes with the cod and add the cod half way through the cooking process, but i take the safe route and wait it out.) 

While fish and eggs are cooking. Combine your chick peas, black eyed peas, onion, parsley, evoo, vinegar, olives, s+p and mix well. 

After 15 minutes, remove cod and place in separate dish to cool. Once cool enough to handle, remove skin and bones. I smash the garlic cloves and spread on the fish for flavor ;-) 

Break apart cod into small or large pieces over the potatoes. Drizzle evoo. 

Pour delicious mixed beans, olives, onions, etc all over the potatoes and fish. Slice eggs and layer on top how ever you want. 

This Recipe feeds 4 people. 

Easy right?

Enjoy! 

Queijadas De Leite

I love Queijadas.  I mean, really, who doesn't? These custard little egg cups are a little piece of heaven.  Queijadas de Nata are my favorite, but they are a lot of work.  Work that I will learn to do because of this blog, but these are the ones we grew up with.  These are easy to throw together and taste amazing :)

Queijadas De Leite

5 large eggs
3 cups of milk
1 1/2 cups of flour
3 cups of sugar
2 bars of butter at room temp. (very important!  you can not melt the butter as it will cook the eggs)
Vanilla extract to taste

Pull everything out for easy baking!  Seriously, it's my number one tip.  Nothing I hate more than running around grabbing stuff when I'm in the middle of something, and usually have dirty hands.

Put your sugar in the mixer

Cream the butter and sugar together

Whip them up til creamy

Always crack eggs in a separate bowl to help stop with the "oops a shell!" moments

Beat the eggs with the creamed sugar and butter

Add your vanilla.  This is my secret.  You're only suppose to put a dash, I usually put 1 tablespoon.  I love vanilla!

start adding in our flour a little at a time.

Time for the milk.

The batter is runny.  Unlike cake batter.  It may not look right to you, but it is right, I promise!

Pour your liquid into greased or lined cupcake tins.

This recipe will give you 3 dozen.  Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes. 

Cook until they start to crack and are golden brown.  Once you pull them out they will fall a little, they are suppose to!

Pull them out and enjoy :)

Ready to serve!

Let us know if you make these!  Take pictures!  Give us your tips!  We love to hear it :)

FRANGO COM MOLHO DE TOMATE

FRANGO COM MOLHO DE TOMATE

This dish wasn't typically made in my house growing up, but you can find this recipe in many Portuguese cookbooks. Usually my mother would make her chicken stews with rice or potatoes and maybe one tomatoes cooked down for a little color. In my house we eat less starch and my husband is obsessed with any kind of tomatoes. Even if I'm making a dish that has nothing to do with tomatoes he'll tell me, "this is great, but would be even better with tomatoes". So here we have it, my Frango com Molho de tomate. 

Ingredients:

olive oil

4 cloves of garlic sliced thin

1/2 teaspoon of saffron 

1/4 teaspoon of chili flakes

1 small onion

1 16 oz can or fresh plum tomatoes

1/2 cup of red wine

1 sprig of rosemary

s+p to taste

Season/Marinate with your aromatics. 

Coat pan with olive oil and saute onions until softened. Season with s+p.

Start cooking chicken skin side down first. (note: I am using thighs. My husband will not eat chicken breast, you can choose any part of the chicken you'd like) Season again with s+p.

Do not peak or move around the chicken until chicken moves freely when you shake the pan. So that it creates a crust and will not stick to pan. Then flip. 

Add plum tomatoes and red wine

 Simmer low uncovered for 40 minutes 

Serve with a veggie or bread. 

Enjoy my foodie friends! 

Favas

There are a million versions for making favas.  Some have wine, some have tomato, some add chourico.  This is the recipe we use.  Feel free to play around with it and find the best balance for you and your family :)

Favas

1/4 cup of Olive Oil-Portuguese if you can

1 large onion-chopped

1 tablespoon or more to taste of pimenta moida

Parsley

2 cans of fava beans with the liquid-Portuguese brand if you can

1/2 tablespoon of paprika 

Put the oil in a pan and let it heat up.  Add in onions and saute.  Add in Pimenta Moida and paprika.  let it come together for a minute and then add the favas.  You can bundle the parsley and leave it on top or if you'd like you can chop it and stir it in.  

Let it simmer for 45 minutes or more.  The longer they cook, the better they taste!

This is good for a couple people.  Please double or triple if making for a large family.

Enjoy :)

Ervilhas com Ovos Escalfados

Ervilhas com Ovos Escalfados


Eggs with poached eggs was cooked in our home a couple times a month. It's a pea stew that has molho to soak up bread and an egg for each person, sort of like a special treat on top. I love this dish and I'll be making it forever. 

Ingredients: 
2 lbs frozen peas
1 medium onion diced
4 garlic cloves chopped fine
2 plum tomatoes or 1/2 cup of Chunky tomato sauce
1/3 cup of red wine
1/4 teaspoon paprika 
olive oil
4-5 eggs
half of a chourico link sliced
s+p to taste

Drizzle olive oil onto pan and saute chourico on one side. When browned flip them over with tongs and add your diced onions with s+p and paprika. Saute till softened and golden brown. Add your garlic last and saute for 1 more minute

Add the wine to deglaze the pan and scrape off the good bits from bottom of pan.  

Add your peas and tomatoes. (I'm waiting for my tomatoes to grow so I opted for jarred chunky sauce.) Bring up to boil, then back down to a low simmer for 15 minutes. 

Make a hole using a spoon to drop each crack egg into. 

Cover and continue to simmer for another 10 minutes. The yolks should be cooked through. 

Serve with a hearty piece of bread. Preferably broa. That's my choice :)  

Happy Cooking, 

Vinho de Tomate

The first year my father made this, we all looked at him like he was crazy.  I mean, Tomato Sauce, ok.  Tomato Wine, umm what?  When it was finally done, and we tasted it, we couldn't believe it!  My father now makes it almost yearly to give away at Christmas.  I figured I could share this with you now so you could all plan to add a few more plants in your garden :)  Because this process takes a while, I have pictures of the beginning process only for you

Vinho De Tomate
2 gallons of water
12 pounds of tomatoes
12 pounds of sugar
6 oranges
2 pounds of golden raisins
2 packets of yeast

In a large pan cut the tomatoes and oranges into quarters. add in the raisins and sugar.
Boil the water and pour over the fruit and tomatoes.

Mix well and dissolve the sugar completely.

Put the 2 packets of yeast in a cup with warm water to activate.  Once it fills the cup it is ready.
Mix it in as well.

Cover and let it sit for 2 weeks.

After 2 weeks, pour the liquid only into bottles, let them sit for another 2 weeks uncovered.
After those 2 weeks strain the liquid through a cheesecloth into another bottle. 
You're ready to serve!
The longer this wine sits and ages, the clearer the liquid gets, and the stronger!!

Enjoy!