Baked Fish Tagine with Chermoula sauce

One more delicious recipe from the Moroccan cooking workshop promoted by Creative Cultural Weavers. I can't wait to make it at home. Enjoy.

Chermoula/Tchermila is a sauce you can use with any white fish, cooked in the grill, boiled or in the oven. You can keep it several days in your fridge.

Ingredients:

For 1 kg/2lb  of cod or halibut, cut in pieces of 4"/10cm you will need:

1 bunch of coriander
1 bunch of parsley
5 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon hot or mild pepper
1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
salt

Onions
Carrots
Potatoes cut into half
Bay leaves
Cherry tomatoes
Bell peppers

Blend coriander, parsley and garlic in a food processor. Then add the cumin, pepper, olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and blend everything. Heat it (but do not boil).

Preheat the oven to 430F.

In a large pan, put onions, carrots, potatoes, bay leaves with half of the mixed spices (Chermoula/Tchermila) and cover with water. Cook for 20 min.
Optional: you can  add olives .

Generously coat the fish fillets with the remaining Chermoula and let it rest on a plate.

Pour the cooked vegetables into a big baking dish with a little bit of the broth. Lay the fish over the vegetables.

Top the fish with cherry tomatoes, bell pepper slices  and lemon slices.

Bake it for 20min.

Fried Calamari

If you like seafood, this is an easy appetizer to make at home.

Ingredients:

2 lb squid, cleaned and cut into rings
Flour
Salt

Olive oil
Lemon

Preparation:
 

Wash and paper-dry the squid rings. Sprinkle with salt. Drop them in the flour, turning around for the squid to get all covered with the flour. Shake the excess flour and fry the calamari in olive oil until golden. Serve with lemon wedges.

Fried Calamari

Shrimp Cocktail

Today I went to a Mexican Cooking Workshop, my friend Lucia prepared wonderful dishes. I can't wait to make them at home, too.
Lucia, besides being an artist with brushes and canvas, is also an artist in the kitchen.

Shrimp Cocktail

Ingredients:

1 lb of cooked shrimp, shelled and tail removed
1/2 cup clam juice
3 tablespoons chopped cilantro

1 avocado cut in small chunks

1/2 cup diced onion

juice of 2 limes

1 cup ketchup

1 finely diced Serrano chili

2 tomatoes, diced

1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce (more if your prefer spicier)

salt

Preparation:

Cut the shrimp in small pieces. In a bowl, mix the clam juice, ketchup, tabasco sauce, lime juice and salt. Add the cliantro, tomato, onion, chili and shrimp. Mix well. Serve with salted crackers.



Shrimp in a Pumpkin

Hi. I have a recipe blog in my native language (Portuguese) for almost a year. I live in the U.S. and some people have been asking me to publish the recipes in English. I have to say that I am already so busy maintaining the original site that I barely have time to work on the English version. But here it is, the first one I am proposing for this week, since we are approaching Thanksgiving and everybody wants to see recipes with pumpkin.

It is a very easy recipe, indeed. It's from my country, Brazil. And the good thing is, even if you don't have a pumpkin, you can still make the recipe, it just won't look as nice.

Ingredients:

1 medium sized pumpkin *
1/2 cup olive oil
1 large onion, chopped into tiny squares
6 large tomatoes, chopped, or the same amount of tomatoes taken from a can of tomatoes (preferably Italian) 
2 lb. jumbo shrimp shelled and clean, raw (no tails on)
8 oz. cream cheese
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
chopped parsley, to garnish

Preparation:

Pre-heat the oven to 350 ºF.
Wash the pumpkin. Cut a lid out of it, and scrape the seeds out. Brush the outside of the pumpkin with a little olive oil. Put the pumpkin on a baking sheet, take it to the oven for roasting, for approximately 20 minutes. The meat inside should be soft but the pumpkin should still be firm.
In a large saucepan, fry the onion in olive oil. When the onion has a golden color, add chopped tomatoes (and their juices). Cook for about 5-8 minutes. Add the shrimp, stir well and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the cream cheese and mix well. Adjust salt and sprinkle some pepper. Stir once more. Remove and place this mixture into the pumpkin. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and garnish with parsley. Bake for a few minutes.

When serving, scrape chunks of the pumpkin so that they come together with the shrimp cream.

Serve with white rice. 

* If you don't have a whole pumpkin, you can serve it in a baking plate.