Chicken Salad Brazilian Style

We normally serve this salad as an appetizer or main dish in informal parties for a crowd. It can be made ahead and doesn't need to be warm. Actually, it is best served cold.

 

Ingredients:

2 medium potatoes, peeled, diced, cooked al dente
1 cup cooked chicken, diced or shredded
1/2 small carrot chopped into thin strips, cooked al dente
2 tablespoons of peas, cooked al dente (from frozen is fine)
2 tablespoons raisins
3 tablespoons cooked ham cut into strips
1/2 cup cooked corn (from a can or frozen is fine)
A boiled egg, chopped

Sauce:

5 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tablespoon grated onion
1/2 tablespoon mustard

Salt to taste
Pepper to taste

Preparation:

Mix all dressing ingredients, add the other ingredients. Refrigerate for an hour or more. Serve.

 

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

Pesto

Today my 5 year old daughter made Pesto sauce. We served with "al dente" cooked spaghetti.

Ingredients:

1 clove garlic
1 cup basil leaves
3 tablespoons pine nuts
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

Smash the garlic with a pestle and mortar. Add the basil, continue smashing. Add the pine nuts, continue pounding. When it gets to a thick paste, add the olive oil slowly, and mix. It will turn into a paste. Add the Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Mix well. Taste, and adjust the salt. Add some more olive oil, if desired. Serve over cooked spaghetti.

Chinese Hot Pot

This is my adaptation to the Chinese Fondue, or Hot Pot. In Mandarin they call "huo guo": "huo" is fire, and "guo" is pan. Isn't it a simple language? It is a great comfort food. In cold days at the end of the dinner we're sweating, and we end up opening a little crack in the door, even with the cold and all that snow outside...

Here are the basics: you make a broth with some water and seasonings. Put some vegetables and thin slices of meat around the hot pot, and diners will drop these ingredients into the soup to cook. We "fish" the food with a slotted spoon and dip it in a mild or spicy sauce.

In China we used to buy ready-made sauces in the supermarket, but here it is difficult to find the good ones, so it's better to make our own. I had a peanut sauce in my friend Cindy's place, her dad showed me the ingredients. I developed my own sauce, based on theirs, only that I use easy to find ingredients. You don't need to look for them in an Asian shop.

Although we can make our own dipping sauce, I strongly recommend using the condiments for the broth that can be bought in a Chinese supermarket. Here I will show some packages with the brands I found in the Chinese grocery shop closer to my place in Michigan.

Later I will give alternate recipes for the broth, in case you don't find the prepared packages in your local Asian shops.

Peanut Sauce:

Ingredients (2-4 people):

4 cloves garlic, minced
5 tablespoons peanut butter
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup canola or other vegetable oil
2 tablespoons of sesame seed oil
1 teaspoon finely chopped capers

Preparation:

Mix everything in a bowl. Take to the table where the hot pot is to be eaten.

Meat, noodles and vegetables for the hot pot:

Vegetables (Choose one or more):

Napa cabbage, cut in 1" squares
Chinese cabbage (Bok choy)
Spinach
Bean sprouts
Mushrooms
Corn (on cob, cut into pieces)
Firm tofu, cut into cubes

Meat and other (choose one or more):

Kani Kama (fish sticks)
Thinly sliced Sirloin steak or lamb
Shrimp, peeled and headless (raw)
Fish fillets, raw
Chicken, cut into thin strips
Fish balls
Lobster balls

Noodles (best is the "transparent"ones) - Soak them in hot water for some minutes, until they are soft, then drain.

Preparation of the vegetables, meat and noodles:

Put the chosen ingredients in plates, then take to the fondue table and arrange them there.

Preparation of the broth:

After everything else is prepared and done (including the plates, saucers and cutlery or chopsticks), also when the guests are ready, prepare the broth:

Bring the fondue pot to the stove to start the cooking process. Add the package of seasonings, some garlic and ginger, 4 or 5 shallots (white part) and water to 2/3 of the pan. Bring to a boil. Carefully take the boiling pan to the table with the fondue "machine".
Help your guests put some of the vegetables, meat and noodles in the boiling pan, let it get to a boil again, "fish" the items with slotted spoons and chopsticks. Eat.

hot pot seasoning for the broth

noodles

Easy Grilled Indoors New York Strip Steak

I make these for my kids when it's winter and we cannot barbecue outside. They are quick and easy.
For them, you have to use a gas stove and a cast iron grill. The most important thing for this type of pan is that, everytime you wash it, dry and immediately season with oil or cooking spray.

Ingredients:

2 New York strip steaks
coarse salt

Preparation:

15 minutes before starting to cook the steaks, sprinkle them with the coarse salt on both sides. Let them rest.
Around 5 minutes before cooking the steaks, put the cast iron grill pan on the gas stove and, if possible, turn on the 2 burners below the pan, in medium-high heat. Let the grill pan get hot.
It's cook time: remove most of the coarse salt from the steaks by scraping them with a knife. Don't worry if some granules cannot be removed. Put them on the hot grill pan. Let them cook for some minutes. Turn them around, cook for some more minutes. Using a fork, put them both up on one side, let them cook for 1 minute. Turn to the other side, cook for one more minute or so, until they are browned on the 2 longest sides. If possible, do the same for the other 2 sides (shortest ones), by holding the meat for a while with the fork.
Then put each steak to cook with the flat sides down for 1 or 2 minutes on each of these sides, on a different position, so they get those nice crossings from the lines of the iron pan.

Be careful not to overcook the steaks. If you are not sure, get a sharp meat knife and cut a thin slice on one side. If it is a bit red but it doesn't look too raw, then they are done. They will be juicy inside, and when you transfer them to a plate to cut slices, they start to let some of these juices flow. You will want to use your finger on the plate and lick them....

Note: After seasoning the steaks with coarse salt, DO NOT let them rest for much more than the 15 minutes unless you come and scrape the most of the salt. Otherwise they will get too salty.

This is the way most Brazilians season their meat for barbecue. You can do the same way for barbecueing in a gas or charcoal barbecue grill, in Summer, or if you live in a good weather place (not like us, in Michigan, under all that cold and snow...)

We eat this with rice, potato salad and Brazilian style vinaigrette sauce (I will give the recipe in a later post).

Hot Mexican Fruit Punch

This wasn't originally part of the Mexican Cooking Workshop that took place some days ago, but it was a cold day, so my friend Lucia made this to warm us. Everybody loved and asked for the recipe, and here it is.

Ingredients:

10 guavas, cut in large pieces
6 tamarinds, peeled
15 sections of sugar cane, skin removed and cut in pieces
15 Hawthorn apples ("tejocote", in Spanish)
3 brown sugar cones
1 apple, cut in 4 pieces
1 cinnamom stick, cut in pieces
3 qt water

Preparation:

Put everything in a deep saucepan. Let it cook for a while. Serve the liquid, add some fruit pieces, if desired.

Sweet Fig Compote

I dedicate this post to the ladies at Beijing Haochi, my favorite Chinese food blog. They have published their own fig compote recipe.

This compote is a favorite of my family. We would fight for this at the Sunday lunches in my grandma's place when I was a kid. They were made by my aunt Alzira, she was a perfectionist. Now she can't cook any more, but fortunately my mother and I learned to make it. The challenge is getting the figs... Even here in Michigan, I only see them for sale in (our) Summer. And for a short period of time... 

  

Ingredients:

  

ripe figs (the skin is dark purple)

sugar (about 1 tablespoon for each fig used)

Preparation:

Soak the figs in cold water for 1 or 2 hours to help the removal of the skin. Cut the stalk. Remove the skin carefully, scraping or peeling with a small knife.

 

Also be careful not to smash them, if they are very ripe.

Place the figs and sugar in a deep pan and cook over medium heat. DO NOT STIR. The sugar will melt, and then it begins to boil. With enough care not to disturb the figs (they fall apart easily), remove the foam that is being formed on top, with a slotted spoon.
 

The compote will be ready when the figs turn brown and almost translucent and the syrup has thickened.

Allow to cool and store in glass jars with lids. Refrigerate and they last a long time. Freeze and they last forever...

 Serve with a bit of syrup on top or sprinkle grated cheese (Parmesan or another, if you prefer).

Notes:

After removing the skin, the figs are presented as shown below, a nearly white color.

  

The cooking time is quite high. For the 26 figs that I had here, it took over 1.5 hours. But it's totally worth it. Anyway, apart from the peeling procedure, there's basically not any work in this. You can peel them while watching TV (or listening to it). 

Optional: Place a clove in the pan with the figs and sugar before cooking. I personally don't like the taste with the clove.

Use the syrup leftovers with ice cream or pancakes.