Acarajé

Acarajé is tradititional and very characteristic food to Brasilian cuisine. It is deep fried snack food, what is made from black-eyed pea flour and origin from Bahia state. 
For filling originally used paste from shrimps, nuts and coconut milk, so called Vatapa and salsa. Acarajé is most known street food in Brasil. 
I read from different web-pages, that it is not so easy to prepare this snack. Part of ingredients will give specific taste to this dish, what is not possible to replace with other ingredients. One of these ingredients is unrefined palm oil, what has specific taste and colour.

As usually I have made some developments in recipe. I made filling where I used cheese, mayonnaise, ham, garlic and ginger. I tried to use palm oil for fritting, but this unfortunately had too strong and specific taste for me so I changed the palm oil to rape oil. In rape oil fried Acarajé I liked very much. 😊

Some preparings and sourcing of needed materials and it is possible to make Brasilian street food also at Estonian home.😊

Idea I got from this web page:
https://www.tastemade.com/videos/acaraje-recipe

Acaraje ingredients:
450 g black-eyed peas
1 onion (chopped)
salt for flavouring

In a food processor, add the peas and process until coarse. Transfer to a bowl and cover with cold water. The skins will float to the top. Scoop them out and discard. Allow peas to soak at least for 8 hours. Drain the water.
In food processor, add the soaked peas and chopped onion. Blend until it turns into a paste.
Transfer to a large mixing bowl, season with salt and mix with a wooden spoon until the volume doubles. 
Heat the oil. Make from dough small balls and fry them from both sides until these are golden brown from both sides. Let the balls cool a little and slice in half and add filling and salsa.

Filling ingredients:
100 g grated Gran Regale cheese
100 g chopped ham
100 g mayonnaise
small piece grated ginger
1 grated garlic glove

For making filling mix all ingredients.

Salsa ingredients:
half red bell pepper (finely chopped)
1 tomato (deseeded and finely chopped)
half onion (finely chopped)
chopped parsley leaves
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp white wine vinegar

Mix all salsa ingredients.

Serve Acarajé with filling and salsa.

Sweets from Blueberry quark cream

Sweets, what are very easy to make:
200 g oat biscuits
100 g jelly candies
100 g Alma bilberry quark cream 300g
20 g blueberry flour

Crush oat biscuits in blender until these are very fine.
Chop the jelly candies into small pieces.
Mix all the ingredients until you get even mass.
Weight ca 11 g pieces and roll these into balls between your hands.
Roll balls in the blueberry flour and put balls into refrigerator for 2-3 hours, before serving.
Take sweets out of freezer just before serving- these need to be cold, when you serve these.

Recipe is made in cooperation with Valio Eesti AS

Torta de Tres Leches or Three Milk Cake

Torta de Tres Leches or Three Milks Cake is a popular dessert in Colombia and Latin America. This cake gets the name from the three milks used, condensed milk, evaporated milk and whipping cream and it is what makes this cake so moist and delicious.

Every country has their own version for the frosting and in Colombia the egg white frosting with syrup or Italian meringue  is very traditional. I served cake with strawberry sauce which gives a little sour taste nuance to cake.

Recipe I found from here:
https://www.mycolombianrecipes.com/three-milks-cake-torta-de-tres-leches

Cake for 10 person.

Sponge cake::
240 g wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
210 g whole milk
5 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
85 g butter
340 g sugar
0,5 tsp salt

Three milk sauce
1 tin ca 400 g sweetened condensed milk
1 tin ca 320 g condensed milk without sugar
200 g whipping cream
0,5 tsp vanilla extract

Frosting
2 egg whites
100 g sugar
50 g water
0,5 tsp vanilla extract


Preheat oven to 180 C.
Prepare cake tin. Slightly grease and flour cake tin. 

To make a sponge: In a bowl whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder. In a small pot heat the milk and butter until butter is melted, remove from the heat and set aside. In a large bowl beat the eggs with sugar until you get a strong foam. Add the flour mixture, butter mixture and vanilla extract and mix.
Pour the batter into the baking dish and bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean. Remove cake from the oven and with a fork make holes all over the top of the cake. Set aside to cool for 10 minutes.

When the cake is cooling, make the milk sauce, whisk together sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, heavy cream and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl. Pour the sauce over the cake until it is all absorbed. Refrigerate for a least 3 hours before frosting.

For the frosting, in a small pot mix the water and sugar, over medium high heat, stirring constantly for 5 minutes. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks are formed. While beating the egg whites, add sugar syrup and continue beating for 5 more minutes. Add vanilla extract and beat 1 more minute. Spread the frosting over the cake and refrigerate into ready to serve.

For making strawberry sauce take deep freeze strawberries and let these melt a little. Crush strawberries into puree with hand blender. Add sugar to taste and let the strawberry sauce melt totally. Serve sauce with cake. You could also add passion fruit syrup (with seeds) to cake for giving a color. 😊

Panamanian Tortillas Asadas

Good morning Panama!

Next stop in Food trip 2019 is Panama. I prepared Tortillas Asadas or in other words grilled corn tortillas. Mostly these served for breakfast in Panama with grilled sausages. These are thicker corn tortillas, which are grilled in small amount of vegetable oil. I served these tortillas with poached eggs and green herbs. It turned out to a very delicious and nutritional 
breakfast.

Recipe I found from this blog:
https://thegiftedgabber.com/tortillas-asadas/
Unfortunately it was not possible to buy dried corn in our shops and I have made arrangements in recipe according to ingredients what were possible to buy.

Ingredients:
160 g Veski Mati corn groats
450 ml water
50 g cheese with strong taste (chopped into very small pieces). I used Valio Royal Gouda Red cheese, which gives to tortillas nice and strong cheese taste.
salt and black pepper
vegetable oil for frying

Place corn groats and water to pot and boil until the groats are soft. Add water in time of boiling if needed.
If you have got porridge with thicker consistency, then add chopped cheese (porridge should be still warm, so the cheese starts to melt right away). Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Let the tortilla dough cool down a little and form dough into small tortillas (with thickness up to 1 cm and diameter ca 6 cm) using your hands.
Heat the oil and fry tortillas from both sides until tortillas are nice and golden brown.

Grilled sausages and poached eggs are very suitable for serving with tortillas. 

Delicious and nutritional breakfast is the  best way to start a beautiful day. 😍

Pernil Relleno con Moros y Christianos

This week we have reached to Cuba and I am making exiting dish, what is called Pernil Relleno con Moros y Christianos. This is slowly cooked marinated pork shoulder roll, what is filled with black beans and rice. It was not easy to choose the dish among very interesting choice. There are lot of exiting meat dishes, what were so inviting like Boliche (beef roast filled with Chorizo) and Ropa Vieja (beef braised in tomato sauce). Finally I decided to cook pork.😊

Recipe main idea I got from this blog. I have also made changes in ingredients and preparing methods. 
https://ayearcookingtheworld.com/2016/05/25/cuba/

You need 1,5 kg pork shoulder 

Marinade ingredients:
120 ml vegetable oil
60 ml orange juice
60 ml lemon juice
10 pcs chopped garlic gloves
0,5 tsp dried oregano
Sea salt and freshly grounded black pepper

Filling ingredients:
1 tin ca 400 g conserved black beans
2 tsp vegetable oil
4 pcs chopped garlic gloves
1 small onion , minced
100 g white long grain rice
50 ml lime juice
Sea salt and freshly grounded black pepper

Mix all marinade ingredients and let the marinade stand 1 hour. Cut meat open, so it will be possible to fill the meat and make it into roll.
Put meat into marinade and let it stand in marinade overnight. 

For making the filling heat oil in the pan. Add garlic and onion. Fry until onion and garlic are soft. Add rice and 240 ml water. Heat until boiling and lower the heat. Let the mix slightly simmer until the rice is soft. It will take about 20 minutes. If needed add water. Do not let the rice become too soft. Add washed and drained beans. Season filling with salt, pepper and lime juice. 


Heat oven until 150 C.
Put filling in the middle of meat and roll the meat. Close with wooden sticks, so the filling will stay in roll. 
Put meat into the baking pan and add marinade. Cover baking sheet with foil and bake ca  5 hours.Rise oven temperature to 220 C and bake until the meat is golden brown outside. At the time of baking you could spread the meat roll with liquid from baking pan.

Rice with beans and green beans are suitable for serving with this meat dish.

Slightly salted biscuits from oat and corn flakes

Tasty and slightly salty crunchy cookies. They disappear from the table so fast, it seems like they were not even there. Luckily they are easy to bake. If they run out, you can always bake new ones. They taste delicious with ice cold milk.

With this recipe you get 18 big cookies.

120 g of butter
80 g of sugar
180 g of brown unrefined cane sugar
120 g of flour
0,5 tsp of sea salt
1 tsp of baking powder
2 eggs
240 g of whole grain oat flakes
50 g of dried cranberries
60 g of cornflakes

Heat oven to 165 C.
Melt the butter and mix it with sugar. Add eggs one by one.
In the other bowl mix flour, baking powder and salt.
Add the flour mixture to the butter-sugar mixture. Stir it to equal dough.
Add oat flakes and cranberries and mix it to equal. At the very end, add cornflakes.
After adding cornflakes, mix the dough carefully so the cornflakes will not break.

Form the dough to 50 g balls and put them on the oven plate covered with baking paper. Squish the balls with hands or with bottom of the glass until they are flat. Leave a gap between cookies so they don't bake to one big cookie.

Put the cookies in the oven and bake for 25 minutes or until the cookies are light brown on the top. Take the cookies out of the oven and let them chill for 5 minutes on the oven plate.

Bon appetit! 

Buns from yeast dough,covered with Craquelin, filled with baked apple filling and whipped cream.

These buns are crispy outside  and soft inside. Covered with crunchy Craquelin and filled with baked apples and whipped cream.

Craquelin:
60 g of brown sugar
60 g of flour
55 g of butter
Little bit of salt

Make the Craquelin. Put sugar, flour and butter in a bowl and stir to even and sticky dough.
Form the dough into a thick disc and place between 2 sheets of food film. Roll it out to 3 mm thick and place the dough (still between the food film) flat in the freezer.

Dough
500 g of flour
50 g of sugar
1 tsp sea salt
230 ml milk
100 ml vegetable oil
25 g fresh yeast
1 egg

Mix yeast with sugar. Mix all the ingredients (except flour).
Flour add in parts. Put the dough warm place to rise for 60 minutes.
Make the balls from the dough with weight 60 g each and place them on the baking sheet. Let them rise for about 30 minutes.Grease with egg yolk.

Remove the Craquelin from the freezer, peel off the food film and use the 5 cm cutter to stamp out the discs. Place a disc on top of each dough ball
Bake buns at 220 C about 15 minutes or until the buns are golden brown. Let the buns cool down completely.


Baked apple filling
500 g cleaned and chopped apples
50 ml water
50 g unrefined cane sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp corn starch

For making apple filling put the heat the apples with water and let the mix boil until apples are soft. Add sugar, cinnamon and starch mixed with a little water.Let the mix boil some more minutes and let it cool down completely before using. 
For making whipping cream filling, whip 500 ml of cream with 100 g of sugar. Put cream to piping bag.

Cut off the upper part (with Craquelin) from the buns. Scrape out a little content from bun lower part to make a place for baked apple filling and whipped cream. Add 2 teaspoons of baked apple filling to the bottom of bun and fill with whipped cream. Place the upper part to the filling.