Turkey roast with red pepper paste

- 1 big turkey leg (+/- 4 pounds or 2Kg)
- 2 tablespoons full of red pepper paste
- 1/3 cup (75ml/80ml) olive oil
- 1/4 cup (50ml/60ml) white wine vinegar
- a bunch chopped cilantro (stems too) fresh or frozen, not dry

Preheat oven to 500ºF (250ºC or Gas -10).
Put the turkey into a tall oven tray to avoid the sauce from spreading out. Put the red pepper paste, the cilantro and half of the olive oil over the turkey and rub it all over the meat (yes... with your hands , I'm sure you have washed them before coming to the kitchen), sprinkle the remaining olive oil all over it and place it uncovered in the lowest position of the preheated oven for ONLY 10/15 minutes with this temperature.

All roast meat must enter with a high temperature to seal the meat and make it more juicy and tasty. Not doing this will make the meat dry and hard to chew.

After the 10 minutes, reduce the temperature to 350ºF (175ºC or Gas 4). Open the oven door and carefully, without burning yourself, sprinkle the vinegar all over the turkey and let it roast for +/- 80 minutes. The vinegar is added at this point because adding it earlier would make the meat hard.


Each pound(455 grams) of turkey meat needs 20 minutes to roast at 350ºF (175ºC, Gas 4 ) and so 4 pounds of our recipe will be +/- 80 minutes. I think my temperatures and weight conversions are OK.

NOTE: You can do the same recipe with pork, but one pound(455 grams) of pork meat needs +/- 30 minutes to roast at 350ºF (175ºC, Gas 4).
Never forget to preheat the oven before placing the meat inside or else you'll have a very dry meat to chew.

Seasoning mixture recipe - Red Pepper Paste

In Portugal we can find Red Pepper Paste in food stores ready to use.
But you can do your own recipe, also ready to use several times, for a wide variety of meats preferably pork, turkey and chicken.



RED PEPPER PASTE

10 to 12 red bell peppers, cored and seeded
7 to 10 large garlic cloves peeled
3 tablespoons bulk sea salt

Put all the ingredients in a food processor, in portions if you have a small one, scraping down the sides, from time to time, and process it till the paste is very smooth (you can add 1 or 2 tablespoon of water if necessary).
Transfer the paste preferably into a glass container with a tightly fitting lid, but before close, add 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil to cover the paste, to increase its preservation.
After using it 2 or 3 times you can cover it again with another tablespoon of olive oil.
Put the container in the fridge, ready to use , it will stay good for a long time.

You can use two or three tablespoons of this paste and rubbed on a big piece of meat to roast in the oven, small pieces to fry or the ribs to barbecuing.

COOK RICE EASILY

Although some exceptions (such as risotto), some suggestions to cook rice:

1º. -1 measure of rice needs 2 1/2 to 3 measures of water (or a liquid mixture as water and wine/milk/chicken broth...)
- The water measure depends not only on the rice quality (long grain or short grain) but with the same amount of rice you'll need less water if you use a small saucepan instead of a large one.
-The saucepan must have a lid.

2º. - All spices, olive oil, butter or seasonings as salt and pepper, must go into the water before the rice.
3º. -Bring the water to a boil and only than add the rice and at this stage it must be the first and last time that you can stir the rice.
(If for any reason you need to add some more water, it must be very hot).

4º. -After adding the rice, wait until it boils again, cover pan, low the heat, let it cook for 15 to 20 minutes (major grains of rice need more time to cook) .

5º. -After turning off the heat, still with the lid on, let it steam at least for 5 minutes.

-There are others ways to cook it but this is the easiest one and many ingredients can be cooked at the same time with the rice.
-If you want a whiter rice, add into the water a few drops of lemon juice.

ONIONS SECRETS

After peeling an onion don't let it stay for a long time in contact with air, it quickly absorbs all air impurities, becomes dehydrated and loses it's good properties.

But we can use this onion ability, to absorb the smell of paint.
So when we do wall painting at home, we can put some water and onion slices in a open container and this way we can rid faster of the toxic smell of paint.

When you use raw onions in salads and want to soft its taste, put them into cold water for 45/50 minutes or into white wine vinegar for 20/30 minutes (in this case, pass them by cold water, after taking them out off the vinegar).

CLEANING INSIDE THE FRIDGE

First empty and turn off the fridge.

Instead of using strong detergents to clean it, use a soft cloth and warm water with a few drops of white wine vinegar.
The white wine vinegar will disinfect and remove all the bad odors.

FRYNG IN VEGETABLE OIL

When you fry food in vegetable oil and it begins bubbling too much, add an old wine cork to prevent it to spill out of the frying pan.

After the food is golden brown, take it out and let it rest over towel kitchen paper to remove the excess fat.

MARINADE FOR (chicken,turkey,fish ) FILLETS

If you want a different and delicious taste, submerge your fillets ( before cooking) into a marinade for 3 or 6 hours and put them into a covered container in a cool place.

Marinade for 5 or 6 thin and small fillets ( chicken, turkey, pork or fish ) Mix together :

1 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of sea salt
1/4 tablespoon of ground black pepper
4/5 garlic cloves pealed and sliced
1/2 tablespoon of ground nutmeg( if you can, buy the nutmeg seed and grate it yourself, the flavor is better)
1 lemon juice
2 bay leaves (cut each one into 2 or 3 pieces)

After taking the fillets out of the marinade, you can fry them with some olive oil and butter or even better :

First coat both sides of the fillets with flour, then with beaten eggs and then use bread crumbs and with your hand stick them well to your fillets.
At this stage they can be frozen, preferably wrapped individually to use some days later.

They must fry (floating) in vegetable oil (medium heat) till both sides are golden brown.You can see previous post "Frying in vegetable oil".
If they are frozen, fry them immediately after taking them out of the freezer.

Fish fillets can be coated this way or coated only with flour and beaten eggs .
(This way they can't be frozen)