Caramel Snails

03.01.2013

Caracóis de Caramelo / Caramel Snails

Here’s a quick recipe for all the people who didn’t start dieting as soon as the clock struck 12 and the year began. Or for all the people that, by the 3rd January already messed up the diet. Or for those who wisely wait until Epifany to start any resolution that envolves not eating cake..

To everybody else: please look away. Keep calm and move on. Come back later, when the diet is over. Whatever you do, don’t blame me!

Caracóis de Caramelo / Caramel Snails

This isn’t even a proper recipe. Honeslty, I should have it in some DIY section, as it only requires the careful assembly of two ingredients: puff pastry and dulce de leche. I’m a fan of doing everything fron scratch, but puff pastry and dulce de leche require enormous amounts of both time and patience, so I end up always going for the store bought version. With this recipe, you will want to make sure the puff pastry is rectangle shaped, so be ware of the rolled up round ones sold for pies.

Caracóis de Caramelo / Caramel Snails

These cute little snails are great for having friends over for a sunday afternoon snack. They are also great gifts for a friend with a sweet tooth, or that aunt you never know what to give for Christmas. Pile them up, and roll them in baking paper tied with string, and attach a nice label. They are gorgeous, delicious, and look way more complicated to do than in reality. Whoever they are for, they are the perfect bluff.

Caracóis de Caramelo / Caramel Snails

Recipe→

Coconut Crepes

12.12.2012

Crepes de Côco / Coconut crepes

Back to breakfast, then. Well, I have to confess this is not proper breakfast food but rather a dessert. That I have eaten first thing in the morning. Me and my sweet tooth.

Crepes de Côco / Coconut crepes

I stumbled upon this recipe while exploring Under the walnut tree, by Anna Bergenstrom and Fanny Bergenstrom, one of the marvellous books I ordered on my recent Amazon shopping spree. This elegant book is a real treasure of simple and well written recipes, organised around each of sixteen star ingredients. I already have it full of sticky paper bookmarks so I don’t forget which ones I want to try out. I’m not used to writing book reviews, but if I did, this one would be classified with big fat pile of stars. (There’s a great review here, though)

Under the walnut tree

As I’m totally addicted to crêpes, this was, inevitably, the first recipe out of the hat. The full on coconut flavour hits you unexpectedly, and the suggested pairing with fresh mango is spot on (though strawberries or juicy peaches would work equally well). In the absence of fresh fruit, just the sugar dusting with some drops of lemon or lime juice will be just fine.

The only things i did change in the recipe was to remove the desiccated coconut – a pet peeves of mine – and halve the recipe for convenience. It was still enough for 5 large crepes. The batter has a heavy consistence (even without the desiccated coconut) and we’re warned on the original recipe that the resulting crêpes will be slightly thicker than usual. But if, like me, you have lot’s of experience, a proper crepe pan and one of those T-shaped spreaders, you’ll be able to get them quite thin and crispy. Otherwise, they’re brilliant all the same.

Crepes de Côco / Coconut crepes

Recipe→

Stuffed Italian Pepper

10.12.2012

Stuffed Italian Pepper / Pimento Italiano Recheado

I was always a bit suspicious of stuffed peppers. Those with rice or ground beef always seemed to me a bit on the heavy side. Standard bell peppers take forever in the oven to be well done and, for me, are too intense to eat raw or undercooked.

As I did with almost every vegetable (finicky child as I was), I eventually went from 0 to 100, from hating to loving these true vitamin C bombs, specially when barbecued. Yet, when I lived in London, I stumbled upon a variety that managed to please me even more. Italian (or roman) peppers. Big and pointy as if they were giant chillies, green or red (my faves) they have a milder and sweeter taste and a thinner flesh.

Italian Pepper / Pimento Italiano

In Lisbon, they are much harder to come by, but whenever I spot them in a supermarket shelf, I make sure they come home with me. They usually end up julienned in some asian stir-fry, or grilled, in bigger pieces, as a hamburger topping or side dish.

Grilled Italian Pepper / Pimento Italiano Chamuscado

Yesterday, I knew in advance my bottom would remain stuck to the chair all day. To avoid feeling so very guilty for the lack of time to walk or go to the gym, I decided to go pretty light on the lunch, and stuff one of those beautiful peppers that had been winking at me every time I opened the fridge. No minced beef, no rice, not even couscous (which i’m doing some other day, as I’m sure it will be very nice), the day was calling for a low-carb veggie dish.

To make sure the pepper didn’t risk being undercooked, I gave it a head start by charring it directly over the stove top flame, which brought a bonus barbecue taste to the dish. (I didn’t overdo it, as you can see from the pictures, but the burned bits aren’t quite healthy, so feel free to skip this step, and then leave it for longer in the oven.)

Vegetarian Stuffed Italian Pepper / Pimento Italiano Recheado Vegetariano

Recipe→

Wrapped asparagus

07.12.2012

Wrapped Asparagus / Espargos Embrulhados

Asparagus. For me, they were always those whitish limp cigar-like things that came in a water filled jar and that my father liked to eat with mayo. And I truly hated them.

It was when I lived in London that I came in contact with lots of different new foods and flavours, namely the fresh green asparagus, but as I thought they would taste as their bottled counterparts, I never gave them a second chance.

Wrapped Asparagus / Espargos Embrulhados

When my canadian friends came to visit and stayed with us for a few days in Hackney, we had lots of dinner parties and barbecues it that little back garden of ours (how I miss that garden!). One day, Sephil and Josée insisted on cooking us a meal, and prepared us a spectacular pasta dish… with green asparagus. There was no escape, I had to try them and… I totally loved them.

Grilled, baked, stir-fried… I now love green asparagus in every possible way. This deceptively simple recipe is delicious, and though I’ve once had it as a main course, it’s better suited as an appetiser. If can cut it into smaller chunks (right before going into the oven), it’s well suited for a party, as it can be prepared in advance, and just chucked into the oven last minute.

Wrapped Asparagus / Espargos Embrulhados

Recipe→

Santa came early

05.12.2012

Pilha de livros de cozinha

Getting back to writing about food, and again having a place to share my recipes, has violently woken up my old cookbook addiction, that was until now kind of sleepy and under control. The book shelf was raided, books started piling up in the living room, in the office, and even on my bedside table. And the, the inevitable happened.

My hungry fingers fingers tapped the fatal url on the keyboard: amazon.co.uk . As in a diet-destroying refrigerator bingeing attack, this shopping spree knocked down all my money saving resolutions and, pretty soon, my virtual shopping-cart was filled with all they books I had been sheepishly eyeing for months.

The delivery guy was very happy that I don’t live higher than a first floor, heavy as the box turned out to be, and ecstatic as a kid in Christmas, I wilfully ignored the fact that this wasn’t a present at all, and that it was all coming out, guilt-ridden, from my bank account. Mere details.

The dilemma would have been to figure out where to start, but the answer came in the shape of a real anticipated Christmas present. Way more precious than all of those brand new books, combined.

Tratado completo de cozinha de copa de Carlos Bento Maia / Old Portuguese Cookbook

“Tratado Compacto de Cozinha e de Copa”, by Carlos Bento da Maia, was the bible of all portuguese housewives in the old days. Translating into “Compact Treaty of the Kitchen and Pantry”, it’s the king of cookbooks, has a recipe for everything traditionally Portuguese. My mother has her own copy, which in turn belonged to her mom, that I hoped to inherit some day. But my dear cousin Ana, always the first-row spectator of my culinary experiences, decided to give me this super valuable first edition that once belonged to my great-grandfather Zézinho.

I’m sorry to everybody who’s going to give me a wonderful gift this Xmas, but this one has already won the Best Present of the Year award, a month ahead of time.

Tratado completo de cozinha de copa de Carlos Bento Maia / Old Portuguese Cookbook

Golden Oat Pancake

03.12.2012

Panqueca Dourada de Aveia / Golden Oat Pancakes

I love breakfasts. It’s the most creative meal of the day. You can mix savoury and sweet. You can stay with a simple piece of toast or dare bake some crepes, pancakes or even scones. Drink a plain white coffee or orange juice, or delight in an exotic fruit smoothie. Eat a healthy mix of cereal with milk, or go full english, with eggs, ham, bacon, sausage!

Unlike many, I always wake-up hungry as a wolf, and because I’m lucky enough to work from home, I use the time I’d waste commuting for a calm start of the day in my sun-bathed kitchen, cooking and enjoying proper breakfast. Bur even those who are forced to start the day rushing and just swallow something quickly on their way to work can take a bit longer and try something special on weekends.

Panqueca Dourada de Aveia / Golden Oat Pancakes

This is an oven pancake. I usually do it in a large cast iron skillet, with metal handles that can go into the oven, and use it on the stove top to melt the butter and get it buttered in one go. But it can be made in any round cake tin.

As for the oat flour, it can be bought in any good heathy food shop, but it can also be made at home, by processing regular oat flakes to a fine powder. It’s gluten-free and very healthy, specially for breakfast.

For the topping, the sky is the limit. Instead of oat flakes, you can use any other cereal, sunflower, pumpkin or sesame seeds, flaked almonds, dried apricots, raisins… The base of the pancake isn’s sweet at all, so if you have a sweet tooth, you might want to up the honey dose a little bit.

Recipe→

We’re back!

30.11.2012

Café Patita

Once upon a time, there was a recipe blog. Well, it’s wasn’t really a whole blog, rather just a category in a bigger website, all mixed up with design, illustration, photography and personal ramblings.

I confess I stole the idea from Fleur. The tiny but larger-than-life french girl i shared a house with in London was a fantastic costume and set designer that worked with hi-tech materials with LED lights and fiber-optics and all sorts of magical stuff. Within the site where she showed off her amazing portfolio, she had a small section of recipes with photos by the brilliant Beate Sonnenberg.

I found the idea truly wonderful and in the next version of my own design portfolio, “Recipe Book” was born. Soon it had a life of it’s own, way more active than the rest of the site. The recipe for portuguese rice pudding was the most visited page ever, and ranked no.1 in Google for “Arroz Doce”.

When my workload got very heavy, shooting and writing recipes took a step back, but it was because of pure distractions that “Recipe Book” came to an end. As I was doing some maintenance, I deleted by mistake the database of the site, with all the post I had written along the years, both on the portfolio and recipe side of things. Everything was gone.

I took the chance to redesign everything, and separate the blog mess. Patriciafurtado.net only has my design and illustration work, O inferno são os outros stores my personal misadventures, travel journals and rants and, from this day on, Café Patita is open for service. I’ll be recovering some of the old “Recipe Book” posts, and add loads of new yumminess.

Welcome. Make yourselves at home while I fetch something to eat.

Little Almond Cakes

29.11.2012

Amendoinhas / Little Almond Cakes

This morning, as I was getting ready for breakfast, I decided it was a good day to write down the recipe for my favorite breakfast recipe – an almod and apple oven pancake that I always improvise. Contrary to what I always do, I chose to do a sugary version, and distractedly ended up adding way too much sugar than intended. I hesitated: should I have an extra-sweet breakfast – just this once – or should I start over? I did start over, but couldn’t through away what I already had in the bowl, so I made up some petit-fours to bring to my parent’s for lunch.

And they turned out delicious. Sweet, but mall enough no to be over-the-top, and very elegant and delicate. You have to try them!

Recipe→

Portuguese Rice Pudding

28.11.2012

Arroz Doce / Portuguese Rice Pudding

My friend André wanted me to keep this recipe secret, isn’t he selfish? But it’s my mom’s recipe, (her mom’s before her) and she’s ok with sending it out to the world, so why not?

Mind you, André isn’t the only fan of this Arroz Doce recipe. It’s got such a legion of fans, I could even open up a fan club. And it’s so simple, I can just prepare it in a whiz in case of an emergency.

Arroz Doce is a traditional Portuguese rice pudding, but there are several variations out there, some of them with condensed milk, some with no eggs at all. This one is a very creamy custardy one. And also very sweet. (Be prepared to cut down on the sugar if you’re not a hardcore sweet tooth).

Recipe→

Teresinha’s Lemon Roll

27.11.2012

Torta de Limão / Lemon Roll

This is one of those recipes from my childhood, a dessert my mother does all the time, and has always been a family favourite. From the moment I learned how to do it, it also became a regular guest at my parties and dinners, very entertaining with its disappearing act. I guess we can call it a best-eater.

Torta de Limão / Lemon Roll

It’s a good thing my mum knows the recipe by heart, because every time I do it, I forget where I’ve written it down (which i probably did about 5 times already) and I can’t seem to memorise it myself.

- Hi mum, it’s me, guess why I’m calling you again…

- The lemon roll recipe??

- Yes, please…

- Will you write it down already?!

So this is it. I’m writing it down. I’m not losing it this time, mum, I promise!