Mommy´s sous-chef

My son got promoted to sous-chef, mommy´s sous-chef!

He likes to help me in the kitchen, specially if it involves pouring and mixing (and messing of course), so I decided to get him this cool apron. I actually found this in the painting section at a kids store and what´s nice about it is that you can personalize it!

I´ve recently started to ask for my son´s help in the kitchen and so far so good. It´s a great mom-child activity, keeping the kids entertained and helping them to feel useful. Recommend it to all the moms and dads!

If you´ve never tried to cook with your child, give it a try... obviously it can get messy, but who cares if you have to clean up after cooking anyway? I once read that mothers with happy kids never have clean homes :)

Happy 2013!

1st Christmas in Singapore

Christmas Eve was really nice! The best company, delicious food and great wine - lots of both, I must say!

For some of us this was the very first Christmas away from home, including for me, and celebrating it without our families could have been a bit sour. On the contrary, it happened to be really sweet! I guess it´s quite easy to feel at home when you find good friends and you´re able to recreate what´s traditional and familiar at Christmas time. Thanks to that, last night definitely tasted like home!

In total, we were 8 couples plus 3 kids.  Two couples were in charge of the drinks and cheese and the other two were the chefs - me and other good Portuguese friend who recently moved to Singapore.

I think we both wanted to do even more than we did - for God sake, we could not waste the Christmas opportunity to cook 20 dishes if we wanted!! But then we came to the good sense of choosing only one starter, besides the cheese, 2 main courses and 3 desserts. And trust me, this was plenty of food!

Shall we take a look at the menu?

To start with, along with some very nice drinks, we had several types of cheese, not Portuguese, but all very yummy! If there is one thing I had to live with for the rest of my life I think that would be cheese! In terms of food, I mean.

After the cheese we had other starter, this one very traditional at any time of the year in Portugal - eggs with farinheira.  
Farinheira is a specific type of choriço, but a lot softer, made with pork meat, flour and fat. It´s pure sin on a plate... out of this world! I think the farinheira is only made in Portugal and it was sent to me by my family. I was saving it for Christmas! 

These eggs are extremely easy to prepare! You just need to cut the farinheira in pieces, let it fry on a pan (no need to had oil, the farinheira has enough grease) until it gets crispy, add the eggs and the coriander and five minutes later should be ready. The coriander is a personal touch, I put it in every dish I can!

You can try to do this with normal choriço, also good, but not as good...

For main course we had none other than Mr. Codfish. For a Portuguese family, Christmas is not Christmas without a codfish dish. And we had 2...

I´ve prepared codfish with cream, whose the recipe I´ll share on another post. It´s something I do quite often, pretty much every time I have guests over. Only the best for them :)

And my friend prepared other dish that I can´t translate, called Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá. I have never cooked this one before, although it seems pretty simple. I´ll let you know the recipe when I try it out. What I love about this dish are the liters of olive oil in it!

After all this, time for dessert! A belly is never too full when there´s dessert, right?

And to begin with, chocolate mousse! It´s my husband´s specialty and one of my favorite desserts. On another post I´ll be glad to share the recipe.

Sonhos de Cenoura, or carrot dreams. I´ve been doing the same recipe for years! It´s impossible not to every Christmas, since everybody loves it and, unlike chocolate mousse, it´s something you can only have during this season.

If you´re keen on trying these gorgeous dreams, here´s the recipe:
500 grams of carrots, 200 grams of sugar, 600 grams of flour, 8 eggs, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, juice of 2 oranges and a pinch of salt.
After boiling and mashing the carrots, add all the ingredients and mix it until you get an homogeneous batter. Using a spoon, fry small balls of that batter in a very hot oil. In the end, roll the dreams on sugar mixed with cinnamon. By the way, cinnamon is a major ingredient in many of the Portuguese desserts.

Besides these 2 desserts, there´s was another one very popular in Portugal, named Farófias, but I don´t have a photo of it. It´s a very light dessert made with egg whites. We ate all of it!

On the 25th, today, it would be usual for me to have a roasted meat and a bunch of more sweets. Instead, we didn´t cook (too tiered for that!) and went out for Dim Sum... Once in Asia, why not starting a new tradition?

Merry Christmas!

Happy Christmas everyone! Enjoy this special day with your family and the big feast, sprinkled with happiness and smiles!

Since I didn´t go home for Christmas, I´m spending it with some of my good Portuguese friends in Singapore and our Christmas dinner couldn´t be more traditional...

Speaking of each, I´m off to the kitchen! My day will be spent there :)

I´ll have a lot to write about the Christmas delicacies!

A multicultural Christmas celebration

With Christmas only a few days away, there are so many arrangements to make, places to go and events to attend! It can be a pretty exhausting season, but when it gets to part where you see your family and friends, have a nice meal and stay up until late just because the conversation is so good, then it´s very easy to remember why all the work is worth it!

This is my first year in Singapore and we decided not to go home for Christmas this time, so all the gatherings with friends are most welcome! While for some of us there will be no snow (it´s in fact very hot here!) or a family reunion, at least we have each others company and our food to celebrate!

Yesterday evening I had a very nice gathering with my closest neigbours, where each of us had to bring something traditional in our home countries at this time of year, since we are all from different nationalities.

Representing the Portuguese community, I´ve prepared Arroz Doce (sweet rice), very typical at Christmas in my country. My second time doing it and I´m glad it turned out very well.

The trick for a good sweet rice is milk (my father, the chef in the family, always says that!). Per each 150 grams you should have 1L of milk. It seems too much, but it´s not, as the rice needs to cook in the milk for around 30 minutes until it gets really creamy. Only in the end it´s necessary to add sugar (same amount as the rice), 6 egg yolks and 50 grams of butter (per each 150 grams of rice).

From the British family we had mince pies, which is a fruit-based mincemeat sweet pie traditionally served during Christmas season, as well as mulled wine, a red wine cooked with several spices and it´s served warm.

I had heard about this beverage, but had never tried until yesterday and it´s actually very good! And I´m not really a red wine fan. Definitely need to try this wine again but in a cold weather... and see how it warms up the body instead of making me sweat :)
That´s the thing when you live in a Tropical weather...

And last but not the least, from the French community we had not only a super delicious duck salad but also one of my favorite things in the world - cheese! And this one is quite special, since it was brought from Switzerland and ideal to prepare a dish called raquelette. Pure perfection for the cheese lovers like me!

To prepare the raquelette it´s important to have a proper appliance, so that you can grill/melt small portions of the cheese, which is then put on top of boiled potatoes along with pickles. Divine!

A big thank you to my dear friends and neigbours for sharing all their delicious food!

Next event: Christmas eve with traditional Portuguese food!

Portuguese soup

Here in Singapore I´m often asked about how´s a Portuguese soup and how it´s prepared. Don´t even bother to grab a pen and paper, because it´s really simple - and delicious!

For starters, I´m a big, big fan of soup, whether it´s the familiar Portuguese soup or the exotic Asian one, being the Thai soup one of my favorites! If you open my fridge, it´s always there! (The Portuguese / Mediterranean type, as don´t know how the prepare Asian soup).

The Portuguese soups are extremely easy to prepare and a great option as a light and satiating meal at the same time. Normally, it´s what I like to have for dinner and my son also always has a bowl of it before the main dish. It´s a great way for me to make sure that he has his veggies and he really likes it.

A Portuguese soup consists, nothing more nothing less, of boiled and blended vegetables, preferably from different color groups. Like this:

One green veggie - broccoli, spinach, cabbage, zucchini or peas...
One orange veggie - pumpkin or carrots (sometimes tomatoes)
One yellow veggie - chickpeas (my favorites!), butter beans, potatoes or sweet potatoes

On top of this, with no exception, I always add coriander, one of my favorite ingredients that adds an amazing extra flavor to the soup. If you prefer, you can replace the coriander by basil.

Put all these ingredients in a pan, 2 teaspoons of sea salt, cover everything with water and let it boil for around 45 minutes. Right before blending everything altogether, add a spoon of olive oil and it´s done! You got yourself a creamy soup, ready to eat!

Now, if you want to add an extra flavor, before putting all the ingredients and the water in the pan, you can brown one onion and/or garlic first and some chouriço as well (5 slices are enough). Living in Singapore you can´t find the Portuguese chouriço, so you can try to use the Spanish one instead. I think it can work just fine.
         
To finish of, if you also want some texture, after blending the veggies,you can put the cream back into the pan and add some chopped spinach or cabbage, whatever you prefer, and let it cook for more 10 to 15 minutes.

Simple, healthy and delicious... Take my word for it! 

Compliments to the Portuguese food

Just came back from a BBQ and couldn´t help to share the great comments I got to the Portuguese food today :)

As usual, this was a multicultural gathering with people from different countries, including a Brazilian couple I had the chance to meet for the first time. It was great to speak in Portuguese for a change and, of course, to talk about food!

Normally I´m the one who brings up the food subject - yes, I keep trying to "sell" the Portuguese food as one of a kind! Not this time though. This Brazilian couple has been to Portugal and is so passionate about the Portuguese food and the country that as soon as we met they immediately started to talk about how much they loved visiting Portugal and trying all our delicacies.

From the very traditional codfish to the feijoada or the egg tart, they expressed such feelings towards the Portuguese delights and a great pride in its Portuguese roots that my homesick Portuguese heart started to beat faster! Among the several episodes they told, there´s this one wherein the girl even dropped happy tears while in a restaurant in Coimbra (north of Lisbon) just because she was enjoying the food so much!

I keep saying that Portugal is an amazing country to visit and to have a great gastronomic experience. Only good memories can come from there, I promise!

In this conversation I learned that many of the Portuguese traditional dishes are also traditional in Brazil, the codfish for example. I didn´t know any other country besides Portugal where this fish is consumed dried and salty, but apparently that´s exactly the way the Brazilian also have it. And I had no idea of this...

Like my new friends said: "We inherited the best things from the Portuguese!"

Thank you, thank you!

Granola - one of the best recipes ever!

Granola lovers, this post is for you!

I learned this amazing granola recipe with my English neighbor Claire, who also got it from her American sister in law. And it´s probably one of my favorite recipes ever - so simple, so full of flavor, so crunchy!

Today I made it for the third time in less than 1 month. We are all addicted to this granola at my home, including my son and other friends who have tried it and now want the recipe.

So no more waiting, here is the recipe:

3 cups rolled oats
1 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 1/4 cup raw pecan halves
3/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon coarse salt

Mix it all together and bake it in the oven at 150 degrees for around 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes until it´s toasted. Remove the granola from oven, season with a bit more salt and let it cool down in the tray before you save it.

And voilá, this is how it looks like:

Very important: as you let it cool down keep stirring the granola, otherwise it will get glued to the tray.

Also make sure that you get a good maple syrup. The reason I say this is because the first time I did the granola the one that I bought was very sweet and overpowering. There are lots of different brands out there, but following my neighbor´s advise, this is the one that I use now:

I personally like the pecans, but if you don´t you can always replace it by other type of nut or dried fruit. Today, for example, I used dried banana and added just a little bit of cinnamon (a very Portuguese flavor!) and worked perfectly.

Next time: walnuts!

Enjoy the granola with milk or yogurt. My favorite way to have is with yogurt and sometimes with fruit as well.

João´s Omelet

My husband - João - just came back from a business trip to Sidney, where he had a funny episode at a restaurant because of an omelet. This was his second time there and the funny situation actually happened during his first visit. But only now had a conclusion.

I´ll explain...

During one of his lunch breaks at work he went to this restaurant right outside the office where he ordered an omelet with ham, although he couldn´t see it in the menu. Apparently, the waitress was astonished at his request, followed by an even more astonished chef (and owner of the restaurant) who stepped outside the kitchen to speak directly to my husband and understand what is it that he wanted!

All he wanted was eggs mixed with ham, a simple combination to me and many of us (I think I´ve seen it in menus here in Singapore as well), but not to that cook. She did say that it was a mix of ingredients that she had never tried or heard of! And that´s why she needed to talk to João, so that he could explain to her exactly how to prepare that omelet. She cooked it - apparently very well - and said she would introduce that new dish in the menu and call it "Joao´s Omelet".

I obviously made my husband promise to go back to this restaurant and check how loyal the owner of the restaurant was to her word. Guess what? She did add the omelet with ham to the menu. Did not call it "Joao´s Omelet" though. Half loyal to her word then :)

Anyway, the Portuguese don´t disappoint their predecessors! Even accidentally they are still good at introducing new cooking techniques to different people and cultures. I like it!  

Anything like homemade bread?

Unlikely. Homemade bread is homemade bread. Nothing is so comforting to the palate as a freshly baked bread with butter or cheese, specially while it´s still warm!

Even more than flavor, to me bread is all about memories. My dad´s mother, who passed away a few years ago, at the age of 99 years old, always baked her own bread. She actually used to grow, make, bake and eat her own food, as I hardly saw her going to the supermarket every time I went to see her in a very small village up in the north of Portugal.
And her bread is one of the strongest memories I have from those times. To be honest, I wasn´t particularly fond of it, only when it was still warm, because she used to bake big quantities of bread and 1 to 2 days were enough to turn it into stone. But the good feeling that I can´t forget is the smell of the wood burning and to see the bread bake in the big oven made of stone or clay, I can´t really remember.

My mother-in-law, for example, has a house in the countryside, 1 hour away from Lisbon, where me and my husband used to go quite often during the weekends. And she has this neighbor who makes and sells an absolutely amazing bread - rustic, flavorful, dense. All the good qualities you can expect from a great and more traditional bread (not difficult to find in Portugal!)

And this big introduction brings me to my own neighbor and good friend Claire who invited me this week to make bread with her. Like me, as an English she´s used to a much denser bread, hard to find here in Singapore, so every now and then she prefers to do her own (among other things that she has taught me as well - thank you!)

This bread - called Irish Soda Bread - was extremely easy to make, with wholemeal flour, plain flour, salt, baking soda and buttermilk. And it´s not necessary to let it rest to grow. Once everything is mixed the bread goes directly to the oven...

... and ta da this is the result:

Really tasty and delicious with butter or cheese.

And speaking of which, take a look at this Portuguese cheese I had at my Portuguese friends house last friday. This cheese is called Serra da Estrela, which is the name of the highest peak of the country, where this cheese is made. The flavor is strong, but not overwhelming, and the texture very creamy. If you ask me, it´s bread´s best friend!

The cookbook

This is more than a pretty and girly note book. It´s my cookbook! And I got it just a few days before starting the blog. If was going to take this cooking mission seriously a cookbook would definitely come in handy.

Guess how many times in my life I had a cookbook? None. That´s right. I always kept my recipes on pieces of paper and some drawers thinking that I would find them again. Wrong! I lost some nice recipes by trusting my memory and I´m sure there are lots of people out there who can relate to the situation...

So with that in mind (plus quite a few recipes already piling up), there I went to buy this book. Cute enough to make me want to use it again and again ;)

What a great Portuguese BBQ!

This was a fun weekend, with a great Portuguese BBQ on Saturday night.

I really love BBQs here in Singapore! I´ve always been a fan, but here seems to be just the right plan to gather some close friends and a easier one, since all of us live in condominiums with BBQ pits. The only downside is that now it´s rain season (the temperature is still around 30 degrees) and we never know when the unpleasant guest is going to pop up. It almost did this time! 

We were 10 at the BBQ and most of us didn´t eat any of the delicacies prepared in a long time - months and even years! Speaking for myself, some of the dishes were so normal and easy to get back in Portugal that I wouldn´t have them very often. Shame one me...

To start with, my dear friends and neighbors Ana and Nuno prepared Pasteis de Bacalhau (which I can translate to "codfish cakes"?). Nothing is more traditional than codfish and we have a thousand ways to cook it (I´m sure the cod will be in the spotlight many time here). One of my grandmothers was a true codfish cake master and some of my best memories as a child are related to that. I remember her feeling very upset and swearing if by any chance she didn´t get the recipe right!

All it´s needed to prepare these fish cakes are codfish, boiled potatoes, eggs, parsley and voilá...

My other Portuguese friend Fátima, living in Singapore only since September, prepared the bread. She has a proper machine to do it and I´m glad she has, because finding a bread similar to the Portuguese taste, consistency and texture is beyond difficult. It´s actually impossible and for me the tastiest bread is pretty expensive, 3 to 4 times more expensive, I´d say. I´m not suggesting the local bread is not good, it´s just different from the Portuguese one. 

And as a main dish we had Frango no Churrasco (chicken piri-piri) and Entremeada. Entremeada is a fatty pork meat, which you can see in the photo below, along with chicken. Delicious, delicious, delicious!!

And to complete the meal we had Arroz Doce (Sweet Rice).  It´s literally rice with sugar, cooked in milk and egg´s yolk, with ground cinnamon on top. It was my first time ever making it and judging by the comments it turned out pretty well! My dad does the best Sweet Rice ever, which he inherited from his mother. I don´t think I outdid them, but I´m close :)
In Portugal, this dessert can be found throughout the year, but it´s particularly traditional at Christmas time. This means I´m going to try the recipe again very soon.

The photo is bad, the flavor and the creaminess expected from this dessert were perfect!

Food aside, this gathering was really fun! Good company, good conversation, our kids playing together... my favorite kind of plan. To be repeated soon, I hope!