Piri-Piri - Portuguese hot Sauce

This is the simplest form of Piri-Piri. From here you can have fun by adding garlic, herbs, etc.

INGREDIENTS

1 bottle of extra virgin olive oil
Whole dried red chillie peppers from Mozambique or anywhere from Africa

DIRECTIONS

1. Remove about 2 to 4 tbsp of the olive oil
2. Add the chillie peppers until the bottle is half full with them
3. close bottle of Olive Oil
4. Let it stand on the kitchen counter until most of the peppers have fallen to the bottom (approx. 20 to 30 days)
5. Start using it in your meals

Excellent in stews, grilled meats or anything else you like to add a little extra spicy kick

My very first award!

So today, during my lunch break I noticed someone had left me a comment on my blog. I decided to check out and it was my new-found online foodie friend Mhel, from The Philipines letting me know about the Award she was giving to my blog. On a beautiful Spring sunny day, it could not be more perfect. I met her through halfhourmeals.com as I was checking out some of her recipes that sounded fabulous. Needless to say I had to try to make a few of them and loved every single one of them. Since we have been following each other's blogs and am always looking forward to seeing her next recipe. So DO check out Mhel's site and again thank you for the award!

So now it is my time to choose the bloggers and pass on the award. The people I chose are those that I enjoy reading their blogs on a regular basis, give me great ideas and inspirations to keep on blogging and sharing my culture and recipes with the rest of the world.

Please do check out these fabulous bloggers:

I have a piece of news for you

Sleeping Kitten - Dancing Dog!

A Thousand Soups

Portuguese Cook's Blog

The Redhead Riter

Women's Marriage Ministry

Mimi's Kitchen

Chef Tom Cooks!

Living the Gourmet

Eco.Logical.Mom

Greek Food & Beyond

Life As Mom

Congrats to the winners! And now, it's time for you winners to share the award and make somebody happy:

1. Put the award logo on your blog or within your post
2. Pass the award to 12-well-deserving bloggers
3. Link the nominees within your post
4. Let them know they received this award by commenting on their blog
5. Share the love and link to the person from whom you received the award

Pan seared tilapia fillets with lemon cilantro marinate

I love to eat fish as well as to cook it. I must admit though I prefer to cook a whole fish - that means with its head- than fish fillets. I was feel a little overwhelmed with them. After much reading recipes from halfhourmeals.com, two of them caught my attention and I decided to blend them together in my own way. My inspirations were Fried Fish with Coriander/Cilantro Sauce and Herb and Lemon Butter Tilapia.

INGREDIENTS

12 tilapia fillets
oil
salt & pepper to taste
chives

For the cilantro sauce
1 bunch Cilantro
1/2 bunch Parsley
1 cup Green onions
4 cloves garlic
lemon juice from 3 lemons
1 cup seafood stock (from the shells and fish bones)
1 cup Heavy cream
1 tbsp peppercorns
a dash of sea salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Season the fillets with salt & pepper
2. Add a little oil to a cast iron pan
3. Slightly brown the tilapia fillets
4. Remove them from pan

For the cilantro sauce

1. Add all ingredients in a blender and blend it until you get a nice smooth green sauce
2. With the cast iron pan still warm, remove excess oil add the green sauce
3. Let it simmer for about 2 minutes, then add the heavy cream
4. Add the Tilapia fillets for about 2 minutes
5. Decorate the fillets with chives

A week of being vegetarian

Well a week passed and we all enjoyed this venture. My daughter wants to keep on going so we will keep this style of cooking. Last night we make a quiche pie type. It has just about everything in it was very hearty and filled with protein.

My challenge now to to try to come up with last minute meals as I used to do when cooking with meat. It is way early in the morning, everyone is still sleeping and I have no idea what dinner will be. During my lunch break I will go to the local supermarket and hope to be inspired by the ingredients I will find.

Almondegas do Mar - Seafood balls with green sauce

This whole idea started from a group I joined in facebook called A Portuguese Cook - The Series.
As we were talking about food and comparing the Portuguese Meatballs with the Italian ones, the Founder of this group came up with the idea of what about creating seafood balls with the traditional Portuguese flavours.

A few days ago I did a fish sauce that I was real happy with so I decided to incorporate it here. In terms of the seafood balls themselves, imagine an açorda but thicker in a ball.

INGREDIENTS FOR THE SEAFOOD BALLS

2 lbs of Minced Shrimp
1 lb Minced Crab Meat
2 lbs Minced fresh cod fish
1 can Clam Juice
1 bunch Cilantro
1 bunch Parsley
2 Minced Onions
6 cloves Minced Garlic
4 Eggs
salt and pepper to taste
Canola oil to fry

DIRECTIONS

1. Mince all of the seafood, onions, cilantro, parsley, garlic
2. In a bowl mix it all together along with the clam juice and the eggs
3. Create 1.5 inches balls
4. In a pan add the oil then gently brown the balls. Remove them and set aside

INGREDIENTS FOR THE SAUCE

1 bunch Cilantro
1/2 bunch Parsley
1 cup Green onions
4 cloves garlic
lemon juice from 3 lemons
1 cup seafood stock (from the shells and fish bones)
1 cup Heavy cream
1 tbsp peppercorns
a dash of sea salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Add all ingredients in a blender and blend it until you get a nice smooth green sauce
2. With the pan still warm, remove excess oil add the green sauce
3. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes, then add the heavy cream
4. Add the seafood balls to warm them up

Serve over white rice and chopped fresh tomatoes over it along with a few cilantro leaves

Day 4 of Becoming a Vegetarian

I am amazed. I was a little worried to venture myself into this but with a little imagination it REALLY is easy to become a vegetarian. Last night we made a traditional Portuguese meal called Ervilhas Guisadas com Ovos Escalfados, which translated it means Pea stew with Pouched Eggs. This recipe is supposed to have chouriço and other meats, usually pork or it really can be made with just about any meat and even better if leftovers you may have in your fridge.

So instead of meat I substituted with Morningstar Farms Meal Starters Grillers, Soyrizo and Tofurky Sweet Italian Sausages. Recipe will be posted later on.

Day 3 of becoming a Vegetarian

Everyone is adjusting amazingly well. Even my husband is. For breakfast we had eggs and morningstar bacon. Lunch as usual was left-overs. Dinner I made a shrimp, veggie whole wheat pasta dish that came out fabulous especially considering the little amount of time I had in my hands.

Now that I am starting to get the hang of this, I am going to start creating some traditional Portuguese meals in a vegetarian way. We will see how that works!

Pasta with shrimps and vegetables

Tonight was an absolute crazy evening as after work I picked the little one from daycare, arrive home prepare a fast meal, eat then off we went to the Cheer leading meeting for my oldest daughter who just made the team for next school year. Yet dinner could not have meat, so I could not just go and buy a rotisserie chicken, which by the way, for those who live in the area. Piggly Wiggly has fantastic ones and the chickens are from a local Amish farm.

INGREDIENTS

Olive oil
2 lbs of frozen shrimps
1 medium onion chopped
3 garlic cloves minced
2 tomatoes cubed
 2 zucchinis cubed
1 yellow squash cubed
1 cup of fresh Portabella mushrooms sliced
1 package of seafood dry soup ( you can find those in Hispanic or Asian store as well as online at www.portuguesefood.com)
1 cup of cold water
1 cup of soy milk
parsley to garnish
Organic whole wheat pasta

DIRECTIONS

1. In a big pot get water boiling with sea salt
2. Add the shrimps when water is finally boiling and lower the heat to medium
3. Sautee the onions and garlic in olive oil
4. Add the mushrooms, zucchini and squash
5. Remove shrimps from water when pink (but keep the water)
6. Add olive oil to the water and add the pastas if water is still boiling
7. Add the shrimps to the sautee as well as the tomatoes
8. In a small pot add the cup of water with the soy milk and the seafood package, whisk until all blend together, warm it up a little
9. Add the sauce to the sautee
10. Drain water from pasta, pour pasta in a bowl then add everything from the sautteed pan over the pasta and mix
11. Garnish with parsley

1 serving of:
Whole wheat pasta has about 9 gr of protein and 8 gr of fiber.
Boiled shrimps have approximately 6.5 gr of protein
Zucchini has .6gr of protein and 1.4 gr of fiber
Yellow squash has 1.6 gr of protein and 2.5 gr of fiber

Starbucks type Pumpkin Bread

This search for the closest recipe we could find for Starbucks Pumpkin Bread came about a dear friend of my oldest daughter who both a slice for my youngest one. My little squirmier LOVES this bread, but I came to find out the older one also does much like her friend! So, instead of spending almost $2 per slice, we decided to try to come up with our own version at home and simulate the taste of the original one. After reading various recipes online. this one seemed the closest one even though I still changed a few things.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup butter
3 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
3 1/3 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
4 tsp ginger
1 tsp cloves
2/3 cup water
2 cups organic canned pumpkin

DIRECTIONS

1. Cream together margarine, sugar and eggs in a mixer
2. Combine all dry ingredients 
3. Add to creamed mixture alternately with water and pumpkin
4. Beat well until a smooth consistency
5. Pour into 2 well greased loaf pans
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until the toothpick comes out barely wet

Day 2 of becoming vegetarian

So as we had so many left-overs from the day before I did not bother cooking. For Breakfast we had a slice of pumpkin bread and a smoothie made out of 2 bananas, 2 cups of frozen berries and 2 cups of organic strawberry yogurt. For lunch we had the curry again and dinner the pasta dish. Also another thing I have been forgetting to add is that we are enjoying a nice fresh salad every night with our dinner!

Vegetarian Curry with tofu

This was my first attempted at doing vegetarian curry. Thankfully it came out very good and everyone loved it!

INGREDIENTS

Olive oil
1 medium size onion finely chopped
4 cloves of minced garlic
1 package of firm tofu
2 tbsp of curry powder
1 tbsp of turmeric
1 tbsp of ginger
1/2 tbspm cloves
1 tbsp of celery seeds
1/2 bunch cilantro chopped
2 zucchini
2 yellow squash
2 red peppers
2 cups of broccoli
1 can of red beans
8 roma tomatoes diced
1 cup of white wine

DIRECTIONS

1. In a sautée pan pour the olive oil
2. Once warm, add the onions and garlic and stir until lightly golden
3. Add the tofu cut in cubes and allow it to golden too
4. Add all dry spices and cilantro
5. Add the whine then all vegetables cut in cubes
6. Bring heat to simmer for about 20 minutes
7. Serve over a bed of rice

First Day of My Daughter Trying to Become a Vegetarian

Today was the first day all I cooked with non meat meals. I wanted to make sure we would eat very balanced meals and have a good amount of protein due to the lack of meat. After much research I found a great Web site where it shows how much protein a person should consume depending on age and weight. Do check out this site where I found this chart from. So for my daughter I had to make sure she would have about 40 grams of protein.

Age	Protein RDA (grams per kilo of body weight)
0-6 months	2.2
6-12 months	2.0
1-3 years	1.8
4-6 years	1.5
7-10 years	1.2
11-14 years	1.0
15-18 years	0.9
19 + years	0.8

We started breakfast with coffee, scrambled eggs and MorningStar Bacon which means 15 grams.

For lunch I made a veggie curry with firm tofu and rice, another 12 gr of protein. As she had friends over we all decided to make a pumpkin bread that is very similar to Starbuck's. Each of the kids of course ate such for snack time so there would be about 3 more grams of protein.

We finished the night with whole wheat pasta with a tomato based sauce with  Boca ground crumbles and white beans. Here we were able to achieve the final 10 grams of protein plus a bit more!

Pretty good start of this venture. We all loved the meals and was real surprised how both my daughter and her friends LOVED it all!

Becoming vegetarian?

There is a movement going on at my daughter's Middle School in terms of becoming vegetarian. Do I agree with it? I fully understand and do support their reasoning. A few of them came across some videos on youtube and they realized how inhumane the meat company are towards their animals. The way chickens, pigs and cows are slaughtered is beyond belief. If any of you has never watched any of these movies I DO dare you to!

For a while now we have been buying organic local farm meats, where I know how they treat the animals. It is still far from perfect, but at least my conscience does not feel bad about supporting the inhumane treatment some animals go though. I must admit though, when we pass by fast food places or restaurants we have no idea where those meats came from and how they were treated, but I can only imagine.

My daughter wants to try to go one week fully vegetarian along with eating fish. Thankfully I do know enough about it in terms of how to substitute the meat proteins into other ingredients, such as legumes. As many of her other friends are making that transition too, I am going to try to update this blog everyday with what I fed her, what she likes, what has been tough on her, what she craves. Hopefully this will not only be a good experience for her. Hopefully some of her friends will also add their own comments on facebook as how their transition is going. If you have any tweens or teens also going through this pahse of their lifes, or IF you have been a vegetarian for a while PLEASE do add your comments as I am hoping we will all learn from each other through this transition.

Good links to check for tweens and teens who are or want to become vegetarian:
Tips for Teens on Becoming Vegetarian
Vegetarian Nutrition for Teens
Vegetarian Kids
Teenage Vegetarian
Healthy Tips for PreTeen Vegetarians

Breakfast Pizza

I was first introduced to Breakfast Pizza while living in Iowa and right away loved it. It took me a few trials to finally get it right. Imagine a full brunch on dough. That's exactly what it is. I love making it when we have company sleeping over as it feeds many. This last time I made was actually for my daughter 12th birthday party sleep-over. All kids loved it.

For the Dough (to be made in a bread machine)

INGREDIENTS

1 cup of warm water
1tbsp of olive oil
2 cups of unbleached flour
1 tsp of yeast
1 tsp of salt

DIRECTIONS

1. First add the water, followed by the oil and other ingredients
2. Set bread machine for the "dough" setting
3. Once ready check if it needs a little extra flour and work it with your own hands
4. Place dough over a round pizza stone and roll it until you have a thin layer
5. Place the stone in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes

For the toppings

INGREDIENTS

3 tbsp of oil
3 cups of frozen hash browns
1 cup of chopped onions
1 cup of cooked bacon into pieces
6 eggs
1/2 milk
1 to 2 cups of shredded cheese
optional: mushrooms, bell peppers, ham, breakfast sausages, tomatoes

DIRECTIONS

1. In a skillet brown the hash browns with half of the oil
2. Once golden place then in a bowl
3. Lightly sautee the onions and place them in a bowl when ready
4. Mix the eggs with the milk and a little salt and pepper to taste
5. Lightly scramble the eggs in such a way for them not to dry up
6. Place eggs on top of partially cooked dough
7. Spread the hash browns, the onions and the bacon
8. Spread the amount of cheese you would like
9. Place the pizza stone back in the oven at 375 for about 15 minutes
10. Remove from oven and cut it into slices just as a normal pizza

SUGGESTIONS: you can totally create this pizza as a vegetarian one, simply by omitting the bacon and adding the vegetables you may enjoy

Açorda de Marisco - Portuguese Shellfish Bread Stew

Let me start by saying I am not happy with how I translated the title of this amazing dish into English, but there is no easy way to say it. If you like seafood, DO give this dish a try as it is so very good.

INGREDIENTS

2 lbs shrimps
2 lbs mussels
2 lbs seafood mix
1 onion
6 cloves of garlic
1 bunch of cilantro
1.5 loafs of stale bread (I like to buy some type of peasant, Italian boule or French country bread from 2 to 3 days ago)
6 eggs
2 diced Roma tomatoes
water
3 cups of white wine
Olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. In a skillet bring white wine with a little salt to boil
2. Add the mussels
3. Cover the skillet and lower to medium heat
4. Once mussel shells are opened remove them from heat, put the shells in a big pot and the meat in a bowl and set it aside
5. Add the juices from the skillet into the big pot
6. Add water and salt to the big pot and bring it to heat
7. Once boiling add the shrimps and the seafood mix
8. When shrimps turn pink (about 7 minutes), removes all seafood from stock and unshell everything apart from about 10 shrimps
9. Add the shells back again into the pot and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Adjust salt and pepper as needed
10. In a different pot add a little olive oil, the chopped onions and garlic and half of the cilantro leaves
11. Let it simmer until the onions are slightly golden
12. Meanwhile break the bread into small pieces put them in a large bowl and add enough of the seafood broth you created to fully cover the bread
13. Let it stand for about 20 minutes
14. Add the bread to the pot with the onions, garlic and cilantro and add more seafood broth as you want to create a very moist consistency
15. On low heat mix the bread until it is fully disintegrated (almost as mashed potatoes)
16. Add all of the seafood (apart from a few to decorate the plate) then turn off the heat
17. Add the eggs and mix well
18. Serve immediately with some cilantro leaves on the top

Suspiros - Sighs - Meringue

Each time you have leftovers of egg whites such as when I did the Pão de Ló, this is the perfect recipe so not to throw anything away. But do not expect these to last if there are children around.

INGREDIENTS

6 egg whites
3 cups of white sugar
1 tsp of vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

1. Beat the egg whites with the vanilla extract until they are well stifened
2. Add the sugar and mix until a smooth creamy paste and not grainy
3. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper
4. Place soup spoon amount of the cream on top of the baking sheet allowing a little space in between each
5. Place the sheet in the oven at 200 degrees for about 2 to 3 hours
6. Suspiros will be done when firm and crunchy yet will melt in your mouth when you eat them

Pão de Ló - Portuguese Sponge Cake

I have always loved this recipe, especially when one is able to cook in in such a way that the middle part is still wet. I have always been afraid of making this recipe as I am not the best at baking. But amazingly enough it came out perfect and I am very proud of myself.

INGREDIENTS

9 egg yolks
3 eggs
12 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp slightly warm water
6 tbsp flour
2 tsp baking powder

DIRECTIONS

1. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar for about 10 minutes
2. Add the eggs until reaching a creamy paste
3. Add the water and mix it with a wooden spoon
4. Finally add the flour and baking powder and mix it softly with the wooden spoon
5.  Pour the mixture into a circular baking dish covered with parchment paper
6. Place it in the oven
    for about 20 minutes at about 375 degrees