Bottled Water

You can see it here: Doce-ou-Travessura?

SIX RECIPES IN ONE

This next recipe you can do it with any type of clams, shrimps, fish fillets, pork (sliced or in small pieces), chicken or turkey (sliced or small pieces).

After choosing above the main ingredient, you need (for 2 or 3 people) :

4/6 garlic cloves peeled and cut ( any manner or crushed)
4/6 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of margarine or butter
Chopped fresh or frozen cilantro (I like a hand full,you can put less)
Coarse sea salt
Ground pepper
Half or one Lemon juice

First, spread some salt and pepper over the fillets of pork(or whatever you choose).
Fry for 1 or 2 minutes the garlic+olive oil+butter+cilantro, then add the fish or the meat into the skillet and fry it till it's done , stirring occasionally; pork, chicken and turkey(medium-high heat) need more time than fish(do not stir fish- cook first one side and then turn it and cook the other side) (medium-low heat).

Turn off the heat and spread lemon juice over the meat.
You can also add some fresh cilantro leaves.

Cooking and natural sea salt

For healthy food I only use natural sea salt instead of commercial refined salt for several reasons.
During the refining of table salt, natural sea salt is stripped of more than 60 trace minerals and essential macro nutrients, and in the process is also heated at such high temperatures that the chemical structure of salt changes.It's also chemically cleaned, bleached and treated with anticaking agents that unfortunately performs the same function in our bodies, as they do not dissolve are unable to combine with the water and fluids of our body cells leaving deposits which can cause health problems.

Two of the most common anticaking use are sodium alumino-silicate and alumino-calcium silicate, both are sources of aluminum, a toxic metal that has been implicated to some diseases, which certainly is not acceptable in a healthy diet, and to make it worse, the aluminum used in refined salt production gives a bitter taste, so manufactures usually add sugar in the the form of dextrose to hide the bad taste of aluminum.

These are some reasons, among many others, why instead of commercial refined salt I only use natural sea salt , a natural source of sodium needed to play many and important roles in the body.

But even natural sea salt, as all things, must be used without excess.


http://askwaltstollmd.com/archives/salt/290243.html


If you only like refined salt, you can do your own with coarse natural sea salt, put it in a small grinder and process it to your taste.
Instead of having chemicals in your salt to avoid caking like in the one you buy, just add some raw rice that prevents it from sticking.

You can also add some dry herbs to give it a more exotic taste.

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).