Meat Pie with a twist

For yesterday´s dinner I decided to make Meat Pie (we call it "Empadão"), a dish of my childhood. This was the dish I liked the most when I was in the kindergarten. If I liked that much, I thought my son would like it too :)

This meat pie isn´t nothing more than mashed potatoes with stewed beef. I did everything with the thermomix and followed their recipe, which you can be easily made without the machine.

Why Meat Pie with a twist? Because I didn´t have white wine at home and replaced it by  coconut milk, giving the dish a more Asian flavor. It worked perfectly!

Ingredients

- 400 gr of minced beef
- 1 onion
- 3 clovers of garlic
- 1 bay leaf
- olive oil
- parsely
- 100 gr of tomato or tomato paste
- 50 gr of white wine (which I replaced by coconut milk)
- salt and pepper
- parsley

For the mashed potatoes, you can should to follow your normal recipe or this one from thermomix.

- 1kg of potatoes
- 350 gr of milk
- 50 gr of butter
- salt and nutmeg 

To prepare the meat, first chop the onion and the garlic thinly and brown then in the olive oil, also with the bay leaf.  Then, add the meat, tomato, wine, salt and pepper, and let it cook for about 10 to 15 minutes. The meat is supposed to dry out or it will soak the mashed potatoes later on. Add the parsley chopped before removing the meat from the stove and remove the bay leaf. The meat is ready, set it aside.

For the mashed potatoes, cook them in the milk and mash them about 30 minutes later. After that, add the butter and nutmeg.

Now you just have to prepare the tray: first one layer of potatoes, all the meat next, and another layer of potatoes. Brush the top with egg yolk. Then pop the tray into the oven at 180º for about 20 minutes, until the top becomes golden.

Ready to serve... the kids will like this recipe!   

Seafood Rice

With such a long coastline, the Portuguese cuisine includes numerous delicious dishes with seafood and fish. The seafood rice is one them and I´ve cooked just recently. This is one of the "must try" dishes if you ever visit Portugal! There are actually specific restaurants, called "marisqueiras", where the specialty is precisely the seafood.

The seafood rice is very easy and quick to prepare. There are only 2 secrets to it: don´t overcook it and add enough water... this is the type of dish where you don´t want the rice to soak the water. For this reason, it must be served right away.

Ingredients

- fish at your choice (anglerfish is a good choice), prawns and crab sticks
  (you can also use mussels, clams, crab, up to the chef to decide)
- 1 cup of rice
- about 3 cups of water
- 1 small can of peeled tomatoes
- tea spoon of paprika
- 1 large onion
- 3 clovers of garlic
- olive oil
- salt, pepper (piri-piri instead of pepper if you have it, here in Singapore I can´t find it)
- coriander 

Preparation

- first brown the onion and the garlic in the olive oil and add the tomatoes and paprika afterwards.

- add the fish cut in cubs and the prawns, stir and let it briefly cook in the tomato sauce not for more than 2 minutes. 

- then add the water, the rice and season with salt and pepper or piri-piri (this spice is very popular in the Portuguese cuisine and it´s different from using pepper or chili or any other type of spice, in my opinion)

- let the rice and the fish cook altogether for about 15 minutes. Add more water little by little if you see the rice is becoming dry.

- only at the very end, 1 minute before removing the pan from the stove, you can add the crab sticks. Season again if necessary.

- sprinkle the rice with coriander, without stirring, and serve right away!

You´ll like this dish!

Cod fish with corn bread

After the corn bread, here´s the recipe for the cod fish with corn bread. I love cod fish in every way, but this is one of my favorites. Once you have the bread, the recipe itself is very easy and delicious, of course! Again, if you can´t find the dry cod fish, why not using the fresh or even other fish? Only the bread is not replaceable, I would say.

Ingredients:

- About 4 pieces of cod fish (already soaked)
- Potatoes (about 10 - enough to cover a big tray)
- 2 large onions
- 4 clovers of garlic
- about 150 gr. of bacon
- Lots of olive oil (half a cup at least)
- Corn bread (use only the crumb)

Preparation:

- Scald the cod fish for 5 minutes and shred it. Put it aside.

- Peel the potatoes, cut them into slices (2 to 3 cm thick) and deep fry them, but don´t let them turn brown. 5 to 7 minutes should be enough.

- Then let the onions brown (cut into thin slices) with the garlic and the bacon in the olive oil. Add the cod fish. Cook it for about 3 to 5 minutes altogether.

- And now it´s only necessary to combine everything in a large tray. First, place the fried potatoes, then the mix with the cod and the onions, without pouring the olive oil, and on top the corn bread already crumbled. Pour the olive oil used to cook the onions on top and add more if you feel that it´s not enough.

- Pop the tray into the oven at 180º. Let the bread turn into a crispy and golden color. About 15 should be enough.

Enjoy!

Corn bread recipe

Here´s the recipe to make Corn Bread (broa de milho). I should have tried this one out before, because it´s just divine and made me happy in a way I can´t even explain! Me and my growing bump... yes, I´ve been keeping the news, I´m 16 weeks pregnant and this explains why I haven´t been posting lately. Up until now, I was just extremely sensitive to smells and cooking was the last thing in my mind... But I´m feeling much better now and happy to feel good in the kitchen again!

Now, back to my bread... I made it with the help of my Thermomix, which made the task faster and easier. However it´s ok to do it by hand and definitely worthwhile!

Just some context: corn bread is obviously a bread made with corn flour, it´s very rustic, quite dense and it goes very well with some of the most  traditional Portuguese dishes, like grilled sardines or cod fish. The reason why I made this bread was precisely to prepare a traditional cod fish  dish - by far one of my favorites in the Portuguese cuisine!

With this recipe you can expect to have a great balance between density and softness, even more if compared to the corn bread I would buy in Portugal. And that´s why I loved it so much. One of each happened: the recipe is really like this or I misstepped something, because the bread was denser than I expected. Either way, it worked for me... twice!

My big lunch with friends was last Saturday, so I decided to prepare the bread on Thursday night. My husband and I, because honestly he´s the one who masters the bread technique, not me. Our problem - or joy! - is that we couldn´t resist the temptation and as soon as the bread was ready we ate most of it :) On the following day it was my breakfast and afternoon snack... yes, it´s that good!

On Friday we prepared a new one.

And here´s the recipe:

First it´s necessary to prepare a leavened dough:
- 100 gr of water (sorry, don´t have the equivalent in litters)
- 5 gr of yeast
- 50 gr of wheat flour
- 1 tea spoon of sugar

It´s only necessary to mix these ingredients and let it rest until it gets twice as big.

For the second step the following ingredients are necessary:
- 300 gr of very hot water
- 250 gr of corn flour
- 30 gr of olive oil
- 1 tea spoon of salt
- 100 gr of wheat flour

Mix the water with the corn flour and let it cool down. Only then, you can add the leavened dough, the olive oil, the salt and the wheat flour.

Then, sprinkle the tray with flour and let the bread rest there until it doubles the size and before going to the oven for 60 minutes at 200ºC (preheated).

The bread is ready to devour!