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).

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)

To cut meat easily

If you want to cut raw meat easily, put it first in the freezer for 10 to 20 minutes, depending of its size.

You'll get nice slices as a professional.

Why not save some money?

When you don't use all the fresh ingredients you bought to cook a meal or even after it, you have leftovers as: one or two slices of roast meat, slices of fresh bread...and other precious things, don't let them "die" in the fridge or rotting in the kitchen cupboard.

We already can find frozen vegetables, frozen fish or meat in food stores, 99% of our fresh ingredients and leftovers can be frozen, to use later so, why not save our money?

On the day we have no time to go shopping or an unexpected visit shows up for dinner; one carrot, one fish fillet, one "lonely" potato, all of them together can become treasures of a tasty meal.
Peel, slice and put them into small freezing bags well closed, but please don't do as some people I know, they have "prehistoric" bags in the freezer.

Some years ago I had no time to cook as often as today, leaving home to work at 6 AM and get home around 9 PM, I only had time to cook on the weekends so instead of leaving small amounts of food or ingredients to shrivel and rot, I got the "freezing habit"and the challenge was, two or three weekends later, to do one of the meals with what was already frozen.

By the way, the soup I've already posted, was one of those days when a flu forced me to stay at home, and almost all of its ingredients were frozen, including the bread(but in this case don't put the water over the ingredients like it says in the recipe, wait for the water begins to boil and only then add the frozen vegetables).
Of course olive oil, sea salt and some other small, but important things, must not ever be missing at home.

Fast soup

4 carrots peeled and sliced
2 potatoes peeled and sliced
1 turnip peeled and sliced
1 onion peeled and sliced
coarse sea salt to your taste
1 teaspoon of rice
5 teaspoon of olive oil

1 slice of toasted bread cut in small pieces (optional)


Put the carrots, the potatoes, the turnip and the onion in a pan and cover them with water, when it begins to boil add the rice and let it boil gently for 10 to 12 minutes, it's faster to cook because the vegetables are sliced. Turn off the heat, and beat the soup with an electric hand blender or food processor. Now add the olive oil and stir. Serve in plates or bowls and put the small pieces of toasted bread in the middle.

Fried Pork with Red pepper paste

10 to 12 small pork meat cubes (+ or - for 2 persons)
1 or 2 tablespoon of red pepper paste
6 tablespoon of olive oil (4 + 2)
2 tablespoons vegetable margarine
2 tablespoon of white wine vinegar or 1/2 lemon juice or both
1 hand full of finely chopped fresh (or frozen not dry) cilantro


Cut the pork meat into small cubes and with 1 or 2 tablespoons of red pepper paste (that I've already posted the recipe here) do the same way as I did with the turkey (also posted here) and rub it all over the meat.
In a skillet put 4 tablespoons of olive oil, wait until it is hot enough and you can hear the fizz when you dip the meat into it. Cook it until golden brown, this must be a quick process in a medium-high heat to seal the meat and you can cook less cubes at once to achieve this faster. The golden brown meat cubes can be put aside on a plate until you have them all done.

Next, into the same skillet add 2 more tablespoons of olive oil , 2 tablespoons of vegetable margarine and the cilantro, stirring till you have all mixed together, add the meat and its juices, put the lid and let it cook in a low-heat for a little longer until the meat is not pink inside.

Before turning off the heat, sprinkle the meat with the vinegar and stir. If you want to add the lemon juice it's after turning off the heat.

For decoration and a little more flavor, spread fresh cilantro leaves over the meat.
Instead pork you can do the same with turkey breast fillets cut into strips.

Seasoning & Freezing

If you are going to cook meat for dinner, it's better if you add the seasoning in the morning, or at least some hours before cooking, storing it in the fridge inside an appropriate container or just well covered with aluminum foil or food wrapping film. This way the flavor will be better. If the seasoning is done some hours before, you add less salt, as time goes by, salt have more time to dissolve, its effect is bigger and if we put too much ,we have a salty meat.

Freezing:
If you are not going to cook all the meat you bought, never forget that before freezing it, to wrap each individual steak (not seasoned) in its own wrapping film, avoiding to have them sticking together. This way when you want to cook another meal, you can use the number of steaks you need, without defrosting all of them. We can use the same technique to freeze fish in individual fillets.

Another quick tip: You can add the seasoning as soon as you take the steaks out of the freezer, and let them defrost inside the fridge the same way.

Avoid burning margarine

If you fry with vegetable margarine, you can add a little bit of olive oil to
prevent it from burning too fast and giving it bad taste and appearance.

Best choice

Our first choice must be always for fresh ingredients .

Our second choice for frozen ingredients.
But if you have to choose between products in cans or glass bottles, choose in glass, for me the taste is better and they are the most environmentally friendly, between these two.
This doesn't mean that you can't use products in cans, I use them too, but I always follow this order.

To your lettuce live longer

If you don't use all the lettuce on the same day, start to use the outside leaves and wrap the rest in a clean and dry cloth, put it in a bag and store it in the fridge drawer.

You will see that your lettuce will be fresh for several days.

Be organized

Big empty plastic bottles of water can be cut and lined with old plastic bags for rapidly put the remains near us, when we are preparing a meal.

I already saw many portuguese kitchens after making a meal, with scattered remains all over the bench work (remains of vegetables, egg shells, potatoes peels...).



If we are organized, we will save time and we don't need to do so many trips to the garbage can, even if it is three steps away.By the end of the meal you saved at least 20 steps.






In the countries that have recycling we can have up to three containers for the different types of remains.Take the bags and put the garbage into the right places.

First approach to PORTUGUESE CUISINE

"Portuguese cuisine is characterised by rich, filling and full-flavored dishes and is an example of a Mediterranean cuisine..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_cuisine

Information about cooking recipes

Who knows me and know how much I like cooking, are anxious for my cooking recipes.
They are disappointed not to see them in the blog.

I promise to start as soon as possible.Until then, I know(and I'm sorry) that some of you still have to eat plastic food.

I also have to learn to solve some technical problems. Don't forget I begin to work with computers only a few days ago and I'm still waiting for details of ingredients that can be found in U.S.A. to adjust to Portuguese recipes.

Thanks for your patience.

The Task I left behind

Trying to escape from computers, inventing excuses, I reached the inevitable point; 10 days to do what I should have done , or at least begin, 10 years ago.
Day 5 , my head is about to explode. I´m dizzy, but I would like you to see the panic on my face each time I touch the wrong button.

If I lived 100 years ago, instead of being here fighting with the computer, sweating a lot, I would be sitting on a beach ,putting messages into bottles, and preparing myself to the day I'll throw them overboard. Here, and now, in only a fraction of a second, my bottles will be thrown into the ocean of information, among millions of others, where only those who know the location on the Internet map, can find them.

Of course, it can happen that an errant boat, may find it by accident.

Where our Will fits

If you want to travel somewhere, you can choose a thousand ways and paths to get there; on foot, by car, by truck, by plain, on motorways, secondary roads, you can get lost for a while, to sleep during the journey, without due value to each piece of the voyage, and better yet, you can learn something new, during the trip, about yourself or the places you´re passing by.

If destiny are checking-points on the map of our life, compared to a journey, our will, is never absent, the options are infinite and... eventually we can choose between the quick version, in one lifetime or the long version, to be born several times, perhaps as that person, which is only different (ideas,race,religion,country,costumes...) from us, and we so quickly mistreat. I like quick versions, trying to fulfill all my checking-points, but sometimes, I know, I will regret not to have done something( laziness or accommodation), postponing something that must be done,sooner or later. When something is left behind, a time will come, we have to do it imperatively , for yesterday. The task will be tougher. Right now I'm paying for the task I left behind.

First Things First

My daughter says that I'm too serious. I don´t agree with her, I just have to have a reason to do something.
But first things first.
I´m Portuguese, and the last time I wrote in English was 31 years ago, to get my Certificate from the British Institute in Portugal, so, 31 years later, I have an excuse for bad English.
In those days, I did not know the real reason to learn another language, and between German and English, I felt the second as the right choice.

We cannot escape from destiny.

Some say that destiny doesn't exist, only our will commands our life. Others do nothing, and even don't try to do better, because if destiny is already written , why to bother?
For me, destiny are checking-points on the map of our life and if you don't go there on a life time, perhaps we will be born, again and again, in another body, another sex, race, religion , in another country or continent.But if we have to fulfill all the points, if so, where do our will fits?