Attempting Portuguese Cuisine #1: Stewed Chicken

Since exhausting all of my go-to Korean recipes, I’ve been looking into new cultural influences to draw from.

I’ve found that many of the recipes that caught my attention were of the same origins: Asian and Italian. Having familiarized myself with these two types of cuisine, I guess that shouldn’t have been too surprising…but it didn’t help my cause of switching things up, either.

I did some serious soul searching, narrowing down my favorite foods to both eat and cook and it came down to the following groups:

• Seafood
• pasta
• chicken

My Italian grandmother taught me recipes that highlight each of these quite well. But it wasn’t until I was going through my recipe arsenal that it hit me…my Portuguese grandmother had a few tricks up her sleeve as well; and I had never tried cooking Portuguese style.

With this new-found inspiration, I began a new search and instantly struck gold. I have so many new ideas that I think I’ll keep busy for the rest of the winter. That being said, my first attempt was a  easy recipe for stewed chicken. I wanted to start off underwhelmed, just in case things decided to go wrong…

I’ve decided to make a few modifications to the original recipe, just to appease my own personal tastes. Here is what I used:

• 1-2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
• Amaral Portuguese style chourico
• 1 can of whole tomatoes, smashed
• 1 cup chicken stock or seasoned water (I used a mix of salt, pepper and garlic powder)
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 3 large cloves of garlic, smashed
• 1 can of large black olives, drained
• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 1 bay good sized bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon rosemary finely ground
• pinch sugar
• salt & pepper to taste

Word of warning: there IS a difference between Mexican chorizo and Portuguese chourico. From a basic standpoint,  chorizo is often spicy and is a raw product whereas chourico is a pre-cooked smoked meat and, therefore, has a smoky flavor profile. This strongly affects the flavor of this dish, so be sure to use the correct one!

I seasoned my chicken with kosher salt before browning both sides in a tall pan. Once the chicken was browned, I literally left it in the pan, turned the heat down from high to medium-high and added the rest of the ingredients, stirring only occasionally.

Looks good, right?

Prep time for this recipe took MAYBE 5-10 minutes; cook time took about 90 minutes to break everything down and meld the flavors together. For a twist, I shredded the chicken instead of serving it as whole pieces.

This recipe had a number of perks:

1. One-pan dish. Makes for easy clean up
2. meal prep < cook time
3. Leaves plenty of left overs to freeze for later

Because I was sharing this with a friend, we chose to serve it over shells – though I would imagine serving it over rice would be just as delicious.

Views from the dish.

This recipe can be on the salty side, due to the sausage, but is one Id definitely make again.

Fall-Time Favorites

Hi, all!

So, as you are all aware (and I’m sure most of you probably aren’t pleased), Fall is right around the corner and I couldn’t be any more excited.

While many people sulk because Fall means end-of-summer-almost-winter, I’m in my element. I love Fall activities. But even more-so, I love Fall baking! Apples are in season and all of the fun flavors become available. (For those who didn’t know, I’m an extreme pumpkin fan). That being said, I’m warning you all now that most of my posts from this point until the Holidays will primarily revolve around baked goods.

However, I’m very curious to know: what Fall flavors are your favorite? I usually tend to stick to pumpkin and apple ANYTHING, but I want to experiment with different flavors this year; so your help will be greatly appreciated!

Yes, I’m aware that it is still summer…I just like to plan ahead :).

Braised Chicken with Tomatillos and Jalepenos, Courtesy of Anne Burrell

John will disagree with me, but I have a food crush on Anne Burrell. Sure she may be a bit eccentric, but her recipes look absolutely delicious. In case you aren’t familiar with her, she hosts Secrets of a Restaurant Chef along with a slew of other shows on the Food Network. John’s grandmother actually thinks she carries a striking resemblance to John’s mother, which is kind of funny…

Because John is not a fan of her, I only watch her when he’s not home. On one of those occasions, she was sharing her recipe for braised chicken with tomatillos and jalapenos. I love jalapenos. So much in fact, that I have a jalapeno plant working its magic in my garden right now. However, my peppers aren’t quite ready yet, so I had to go out and buy some. So I knew I wanted to try this recipe ASAP.

I was only a little hesitant because I had never worked with a tomatillo before. Come to find out, the tomatillo isn’t actually a tomato – despite how the name might sound. It’s a relative of the nightshade or gooseberry family; and comes wrapped in a husk. I could go as far as saying it could be compared to a tomato in terms of texture and mouth-feel.

This, my friends, is a tomatillo.

Much to my dismay, the fruit itself was sticky. For those of you who know me by now, you know that I HATE BEING STICKY. But other than that, it was generally easy to work with.

I found this recipe to be incredibly easy to follow; though it’s very time-consuming. With all the chopping and browning of the chicken, you’re standing at the stove for quite some time. Well, at least that was the case for me; because my chopping skills are less than average.

I chose to make a couple of alterations to her recipe based on my own personal preferences. Anne’s recipe calls for 4 thighs and 4 legs. I chose to go with all thighs and I chose to leave the skin on, since it creates some nice flavorful brown bits at the bottom of the pan as it browns.

I’m a thigh girl, what can I say?

When working with the jalapenos, I chose to leave some of the seeds in. The recipe calls for no seeds, since that is where the heat of the pepper stems from. But John and I both like a little heat, so I chose to let some stick around for the ride.

The first word that I used to describe the taste of this meal was “delightful.” I kid you not. It was a light and bright sauce, it was savory because of the chicken, it was just everything I was hoping it would be when I first watched Anne make it. I was also pleasantly surprised with the flavor of the tomatillos. They’re sweet enough to counteract the spice from the jalapenos and added a really nice balance. John even liked it! Thank you Anne Burrell 🙂

If you’re looking for something fun to make that’s not in your every day routine, try this recipe.

Healthy Eating: Day 1.

I don’t know what started our health kick…

Maybe it was the Popeye’s dinner we had last night; or maybe it was me seeing pictures of myself from the 4th of July and coming to the sad realization that I’m not as in shape as I thought. But I guess that doesn’t really matter. The point is, John and I have decided that we are going to be more conscious about what goes into our bodies.

Of course, that is no easy feat considering him and I are junkies for junk food. We love anything and everything bad for you; from desserts to pasta to almost anything fried…but we’re not the most active couple – confession time: I still pay for a gym membership that I haven’t used in over a year – so we have to start somewhere if we want to get our health back on track.

For lunch today, John decided to put together his spin on summer rolls. We went to our favorite Asian super market (I’m sure they know us by name now) and picked up some shrimp, baby bok choy, bean sprouts, green onion and rice paper. We also added some cilantro from our garden. Normally, a spring or summer roll has vermicelli noodles in it to act as a binder; but we chose to replace them with the bean sprouts.  He chose to keep the dipping sauce light with hoisin, soy and sesame oil as opposed to a Thai peanut-based sauce; thus keeping it on the healthier side.

John’s Summer Rolls

They don’t look like much, but they’re more filling than I thought they’d be.

Dinner was another healthy treat. We had some skirt steak in our freezer from our last trip to the grocery store and wanted to use it before it went bad so John got yet another idea into his head: steak and mozzarella paninis!

I won’t lie, this scared me a bit. As we all know, I am NOT a fan of cheese. I do O.K. with mozzarella; but was still hesitant. However John, being the gentleman that he is, cut my slices of cheese super thin so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed. How sweet is that?! (Back off ladies, he’s mine).

John marinated the meat in olive oil, basil (also from our garden), garlic, salt and pepper and placed it on the grill until it was nice and rare. (We both like our steaks as close to mooing as possible without being a health risk). Because he’s such a big fan of citrus, he made a sauce out of lemon juice, olive oil. pureed tomatoes, basil, salt and pepper. The sandwiches were built as follows:

Bulky roll cut in half (obviously), light coating of the citrus sauce on both halves, thinly sliced mozzarella, thinly sliced tomato, fresh chopped basil, skirt steak, another layer of mozzarella.

Sorry for the lousy lighting, it’s been a dreary day and this was the best I could get in my kitchen….

I thoroughly enjoyed this sandwich. It was light and satisfying and the best part: John estimated each sandwich to be under 300 calories.

All-in-all, day one of healthy eating was a success in my book. Though I can not and will not give up pasta in this lifetime, I’m willing to give this healthy eating thing a shot.

My Day Out at Sea

I’ve wanted to go clamming and crabbing for as long as I can remember. I asked my dad to take me every summer and for one reason or another, we never got the chance to go. So I feel pretty damn lucky to be living with a guy who was totally down to go.

We were sitting on the couch staring at each other yesterday morning throwing around ideas for things to do and the option of clamming was thrown on the table. The only thing with clamming, though, is that you have to go during low tide or else you’ll have a terrible time trying to rake and dig in the mud. Luckily for us, low tide was at noon. So we hopped in the car, went to Benny’s to get ourselves a clamming rake and, along with John’s best friend Steve, headed to Oakland Beach for the day.

Our digging field at Oakland Beach

I’m glad it was slightly overcast, because there was  no way I would have enjoyed it anywhere near as much as I did if the sun was shining on us all day.

I won’t lie, though. It took us a looong time to get into a groove. Because we’ve never dug for clams before, we weren’t sure what spots were the best or what the tell-tale signs of clams are. (Come to find out, after extensive YouTube research, John found out that holes in the sand, bubbles rising from the sand or squirts of water = jackpot). We also brought along the crabbing cage that my brother gave me for my birthday baited with a raw chicken leg; but the only thing we caught was a crab the size of a dime. Clearly not big enough to take home….

We made sure to keep our catch within the Rhode Island shellfishing regulations; and even with that, we ended up with a nice handful.  Though we didn’t end up getting as much as we would have liked to, I feel pretty accomplished…and I must say, they tasted pretty damn good fresh off the grill too. 🙂

Not bad for our first time out.

I’ve always been a marine nerd, so digging for clams was definitely my kind of beach day. I’m a happy girl.

Paella – My Version!

So John and I have become couponers because we practically live at the grocery store. That being said, we were able to hit some pretty nice deals on seafood this week; and because I still had my homemade chorizo still sitting in the fridge that I had made the day before, I decided to take a big risk and attempt paella.

Now, for those of you who are not familiar, paella is a Spanish rice dish that is often adorned with chicken, seafood and peas – but I ABSOLUTELY HATE peas, so I opted to leave them out. (No really. I won’t even touch a dish that has peas in it…even if they’ve been removed for my sake. I’ll know they were there).

John and I are pretty big fans of Tyler Florence, so we chose to use his recipe as the main guideline for this and made a few changes along the way to better serve our needs with the ingredients that we had. Our recipe called for:

• 4 cups of short grain rice
• 6 cups of water (we chose to use chicken stock for added flavor)
• 2 large chicken thighs cut in half – skin on
• 1 pound chorizo
• 1 pound cherry stone clams
• 1 pound large peeled and cleaned shrimp
• 1 pound rock crab claws
•  1 tablespoon dried cilantro (most of the time it will call for parsley)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 can crushed tomatoes
• 1 Spanish onion, diced
• 5 cloves of garlic, crushed (I left them as large chunks because we love garlic, here)
• 1 teaspoon turmeric (because the price of Saffron is just outrageous)
• 1 lime cut into wedges
• 1 teaspoon paprika (to season the chicken)
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano (to season the chicken)
• salt & pepper to taste

Now, this is quite an expensive dish to make and if John and I hadn’t hit the sales that we did, I probably wouldn’t have tried it.

Step 1:

In a paella pan or large shallow skillet (we used the latter, as we don’t have a paella pan…yet) add the 1/4 cup olive oil and saute the chorizo over medium-high heat. Once cooked through, remove and set aside.

Cooked Chorizo

Step 2:

In the same skillet, brown the chicken – skin side down first. Once you have a nice crust on both sides, remove and set aside.

See the nice golden crust?

Step 3:

Again, in the same skillet saute your onions, garlic and cilantro (or parsley, if that’s what you prefer) until they are nice and tender. Then add the tomatoes.

Delicious paella juice, as I call it.

Step 4:

Fold in the rice so each grain is coated in the juice and pour in your 6 cups of warm water or stock – let simmer.

Every now and then, make sure you GENTLY stir the rice mixture so nothing ends up sticking to the bottom. Later on you might notice some sticking, which is fine – that part is quite yummy – but you don’t want any stickage right now.

Step 5:

Once the rice has soaked up the liquid and has swelled and become somewhat fluffy, add the chicken back into the pan. I tried burying my chicken pieces a little bit, so they had a better chance of cooking through. This is also a good time to add your chorizo back to the pan as well.

Step 6:

Add your seafood to the pan. Shrimp will usually take between 7-10 minutes to cook through. Clams even less but because we didn’t have a proper paella pan, our skillet was a bit over-crowded, causing the cooking time to extend. We actually had to pull the seafood out and steam in a separate pan so they would all cook through. The crab claws we pre-cooked, so we were essentially just warming them through and letting them take on the flavor of the paella juice.

**NOTE: At this point you do not want to stir your paella – this will cause the rice and fish to not cook properly. Let it sit. This is when you’ll start to notice some rice creating nice, yummy crispy bits at the bottom of your pan.**

Step 7:

Once everything is cooked through, remove from the heat and let sit for a few minutes. Garnish with lemon or lime wedges (we also used a handful of chopped green onion).

Step 8:

Eat!

Ta Da! This was so big it needed an aerial shot.

 

Now, if I had thought this through instead of just jumping right in, I would’ve cut this recipe in half – maybe even more than that – because when all was said and done, we had enough food for about eight people.

We’ll have leftovers for days!!

Thanks for reading, stay tuned for my next delicious recipe!

Birthday Lemon Bars

Lemon & Powdered Sugar birthday bars

My cousin’s been living with me and John for about four months now. He attends New England Tech and had to move up here from North Carolina, so we opened up a room for him while he figures out the area and finds a nice place for himself that he can afford.

Today’s his birthday, so I decided to make him lemon bars in place of a birthday cake. He loves lemon anything, so I thought this would be perfect. It’s also a very easy recipe.

You’ll need:

• 1 cup of softened butter
• 2 cups of granulated sugar, divided
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs

Step 1:

In a medium bowl, mix together 2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and the butter. Once combined, press onto the bottom of an un-greased 13×9 baking pan.

Step 2:

In a 350 F degree oven, bake the crust for 15-20 minutes or until the crust is a nice golden brown.

Step 3:

Whisk together the remaining sugar (1 1/2 cups), flour (1/4 cup), eggs and lemon juice. Pour this mixture over the cooked crust and spread evenly over the top.

Step 4:

Bake again for another 20 minutes. Add powdered sugar once the bars are cool.

 

I’m not a big fan of lemon desserts, so I will not be partaking in these, but John and my cousin seem pleased.

Homemade Mexican Chorizo

If you could have experienced the smells coming from my kitchen, you’d die.

I’ve decided that I want to embark on the homemade sausages adventure. We spend so much money each week on pre-made sausages that it’s almost a sin – and I find that my stores tend to carry packaged meats in a variety of cuts for a cheaper price. In the spirit of Cinco de Mayo, I decided to take a stab at homemade chorizo first.

(I’m also a fan of Portuguese chorico – which is smoked and not as spicy…I might make that in the near future as well).

Of course, I had no idea what I would even need; so I consulted my good friend Google and stumbled upon the blog “La Cocina de Leslie” in which I found a nice recipe for Mexican chorizo that didn’t seem too intimidating.

It called for:

• 2 dried guajillo chilies ( we ended up using Pazilla chiles, since we couldn’t find guajillos in our local market)
• 2 dried ancho chilies
• 2 to 4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 medium onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 pound ground pork (with at least 20% fat)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• !/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

John and I are the spice family. We have a copious amount of spices in our kitchen from our various adventures over the past year. The only thing we needed to make a trip out to the store for, were the chiles and ground pork. I tried to follow her recipe as closely as possible despite having different chiles.

Step 1:

Toast the chiles in a dry skillet for 10 seconds on each side. Once toasted, add enough water to cover the chiles. Bring the water to a boil, then shut off the heat. Allow the chiles to soak in the water for twenty minutes. This re-hydrates them and gets them nice and tender.

Here you can see the chiles have softened from the liquid.

Step 2:

In a blender combine the chiles, onion, garlic and 2 tablespoons of the cider vinegar. (You should have seen me at this point. I was practically bawling my eyes out thanks to good ol’ Mr. Onion…) You want the mixture to come out resembling the texture of ketchup. While Leslie says to add more vinegar or water to the mixture to help it reach this consistency, I chose to use the liquid that the chiles sat in. This gave the mixture deeper flavor.

See? Ketchup!

Step 3:

Add the chile mixture and all of your spices to the pork at this point and mix well.

**NOTE: If you are combining by hand, make sure you only use one hand. Using both will alter the temperature of the meat and could cause it to spoil on you**

If it weren’t for the fact this could make you sick, I’d eat it like this!

Step 4:

Let the mixture sit overnight in the refrigerator. This allows all of the flavors to marry.

Step 5:

When ready to serve, saute in a greased pan and enjoy!

Hot and delicious!

Wait until you see what I decided to use mine in ;). Stay tuned!

 

 

 

My Chiles Rellenos

I swear, I come up with some real good ideas sometimes.

John and I were at the supermarket just the other day and I saw that poblano peppers were on sale. Now, I had never had them before, but I love peppers AND I happen to follow Kraft recipes on Pinterest so – enter that *bing* noise you hear in your head when you come up with something brilliant – I thought I’d try my own version of chiles rellenos.

Prepped for the Oven

The Kraft recipe calls for:

• 4 large  poblano chiles (we ended up going with 3 – the store’s peppers weren’t very impressive)

• 1 cup  TACO BELL® Thick & Chunky Salsa

• 1/4 cup  chopped fresh cilantro

• 1/2 tsp.  ground cumin

• 1-1/2 cups  chopped cooked chicken

• 1 cup  cooked long-grain white rice

• 1-1/4 cups  KRAFT Mexican Style Finely Shredded Four Cheese, divided

Now, I followed the process of this recipe almost verbatim, but decided to stray from their version of salsa and make my own. Actually, I made something very similar to the sauce I used in my huevos rancheros. I used:

• canola oil
• 1 medium white onion
• 1 12-oz can crushed tomatoes
• 2 chipotle peppers in adobo
• 2 tsp. adobo sauce
• 1 tsp. chili powder
• 1/2 tsp. cumin
• 1 tsp. fresh garlic
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• 1 tsp. paprika
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro

Cook the onions in the oil over medium heat until they’re translucent. Then add in (one at a time, of course) the tomatoes, peppers adobo sauce and the spices. I promise you that once you try this, you may never want to buy the jarred stuff again. There’s nothing better than that fresh taste….unless you’re into processed sugars; then stick with the jarred stuff.

The Steps:

To roast the peppers, place on gas stove burner over medium flame. This will get the skins nice and charred, making them easy to peel off. To make the process even easier (yes, it can happen) hold under running water, then peel away blackened skins.

Cut lengthwise slit in each chile, but don’t cut through both sides. Remove the seeds.

Take your salsa mixture and spread half onto bottom of your baking dish that has been pre-sprayed with cooking spray. Mix the chicken, rice and half of the cheese into the remaining sauce and mix until all combined. Stuff the peppers with this mixture.

In a 350 degree oven, bake your peppers for 30 minutes, and enjoy!

complete with roasted corn.

Oh yeah, I’m a genius ;).

 

 

Traditional Tiramisu

You know, I never realized how spoiled I am.

The weather was gorgeous earlier in the week, so John and I decided to take advantage of it by traveling to Federal Hill in Providence to explore the Italian Markets. I’ve been stressing with finals so he thought it would be a nice break to go walk around and see what the markets had to offer. Of course, I welcomed the break :).

Federal Hill Center.

Now, I realize that I’m very late to the party; but I recently discovered a splendid YouTube channel called “Laura in the Kitchen” hosted by Laura Vitale. We’ve been watching at least ten episodes a day. She makes traditional and modified versions of classic dishes from Italy, France and the U.S. I’m not a promoter or anything, but you should check her out if you’re feeling like trying something new. (Her cupcakes looks AWESOME! Anyway…)

On her site, I found a recipe for tiramisu – which I love; so I decided to give it a try. Luckily for me, I was in the perfect area to get the ingredients. John and I explored all the shops, but did our shopping at Tony’s Colonial. There we bought:

Anchovies! Not for Tiramisu, but still delicious

and

Ladyfingers. You want the hard ones for this recipe, not the soft.

We also bought Marscapone cheese, heavy cream and unsweetened cocoa powder. John and his family are espresso drinkers, so I didn’t need to buy that, but it’s necessary to soak the ladyfingers. Speaking of espresso…..we also stopped for cappuccino!!

mmmmmmm

On to business. Here’s what you’ll need for tiramisu:

All the ingredients

• Ladyfingers
• 1 1/2 cups cooled espresso
• 1 16oz tub of marscapone
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups whipping cream
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• She used rum in her recipe, but we didn’t have any on hand so we omitted it

Step 1: Whip the heavy cream in a large bowl and let chill in the fridge.

Step 2: In another large bowl, cream together the mascarpone, vanilla and sugar. Once combined,  fold the whipped cream into mascarpone mixture one half at a time.

Step 3: Add espresso (and rum if you’re using it) to a good-sized bowl and set aside. Also have a 9 x 9 baking pan and your ladyfingers and cocoa ready.

Step 4: Dip each ladyfinger into the coffee mixture and lay in the bottom of your pan until the bottom is covered.

Step 5: Pour half of the mascarpone and cream mixture over the first layer of the espresso soaked ladyfingers and spread it evenly. Sift 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder over the cream once it’s spread.

Step 6: Lay one more layer of soaked ladyfingers and repeat step 5 – using the last of the marscapone mixture and cocoa.

Unfortunately, you can’t dig right in. You have to let this chill for at least 3-4 hours before serving.

Yeeeah buddy

There you have it! Laura Vitale’s Tiramisu. I’m thinking next time, I’m going to try to use strong coffee instead of espresso, as I found the taste to be too strong – though everyone else seemed to disagree ;). Stop by and check Laura’s site and YouTube channel out and TRY THIS RECIPE!!!