Bifanas à moda do Porto

My name is Rui Costa and I come from Porto, Portugal.

Today I'll introduce you to a typical Portuguese recipe that you can easily make in Estonia.

I must confess I'm not much of a cooker that follows recipes but I like to make experimental cooking... And in order to cook Bifanas you must be willing to explore...

This recipe is for more or less 10 people and 30 bread buns.

Ingredients:

Olive oil

2 onions

3 bay leaves

3 gloves of garlic

1 really red tomato plus one can of smashed tomatoes

2Kg pork meat (without any bones)

30 breads

2 shots of whisky

1 shot of port wine

1 beer (0.5L)

2 glasses of white wine

Salt, white pepper, lemon

piri-piri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_piri) or 3 malaguetas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malagueta_pepper)

Cooking is divided in two parts. Preparing the meat and cooking it.

1st part - Prepare the meat

Duration 30 minutes.

Bifanas in Portuguese means small thin pork steak. In Portugal you can go to the butcher and ask him "I want 2Kg of bifanas" and he already knows he must cut the pork into thin slices. Maybe here in Estonia you can ask them to do it also. But what I do, is I buy a big piece of meat and freeze it for a while but only for a few hours, just for the meat not to be soft. Then I take a very sharp knife and I start cutting it into thin slices...

This is how it looks at the end. Put all the meat into a bowl and add some garlic (cut 2 gloves or use powder), white pepper and salt. Mix everything very well. Cut half of a lemon and squeeze it all over the meat. Pour a bit of white wine if you have. By a bit I normally use 2 glasses. Cover everything and let the meat rest for a few hours in the fridge.

2nd part - Cook the meat

Start by slicing the onions and the garlic.

Cover the bottom of a big pot with olive oil and heat it in medium high heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook them until they are transparent .


Add salt, the bay leaves and white pepper. Add piri piri or cut the malaguetas very thin and add them to the pot.

Let it cook for some minutes. If needed add a bit of water so the onions and garlic won't burn.

Meanwhile cut the red tomato into pieces. If possible peel the tomato, but it's not necessary or important! Add it to the pot along with the smashed tomatoes from the can.

Now its time to add the alcohol. This is a recipe that likes alcohol :)

Normally I start adding a bit of beer (not the whole 0.5L, maybe half of it), a glass of white wine, a shot of port wine, and a shot of whisky. Brandy is also welcome if you have.

Let it cook for a few minutes and then use the hand blender to smash everything and turn it into a sauce.


Add the meat and let it cook in medium low heat.

While the meat is cooking add the rest of beer. You can also add different types of beer, for instance red beer and blond beer. Now comes the part of exploring your taste! Check if it needs more salt or more pepper. This is also a recipe that is supposed to be spicy! So don't be afraid in adding more piri-piri or pepper!

Let it cook for at least 30 minutes. It depends how much meat you have. But at the end the meat should look like this:


Now its time to serve it!

You can eat it with rice and french fries but the way we eat it in Porto is with bread buns.

This type of bread can easily be found in Estonia in some Selver shops at least.

Open the bread and place the meat in the middle. Close it and dip it in the sauce so the bread gets wet.

Enjoy it with a fresh beer or a glass of wine!

Bom Apetite!

Zesty Salmon- Brazilian origin

When my snobbish and  demanding husband pointed out that we had not been to a Brazilian place that was on the way to our favorite Japanese place in New York, I felt compelled and emotionally blackmailed to make a Brazilian dish. Ok I am kidding, I just wrote this because sometimes it is very hard to figure out how to start a blog. I chose this dish because we were talking about Brazilian cuisine. This is a very simple fish recipe but once it is cooked it is really a big surprise for one's taste buds.

Cooking Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients
Two Salmon fillets
Juice of 1 large orange or 2 mandarins
Zest of one orange
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper or 1 table spoon of paprika
Salt and pepper to taste

Steps:

1. I think it is easier to get the zest ready first. I used a grater to scrape off the orange skin until i could see the white pith. You have the zest now :)

2. Mix orange and lemon juice with salt and pepper. Put this mixture in the pan you plan to put the fish in the oven. Next, put the fish in this mix and let it marinate for at least 20 minutes, the more the better.

3. Now mix brown sugar, orange zest and chili pepper together. Take the fish and rub it with this mix on both sides.

4. The fish is ready to go in the oven. If you want to eat it with potatoes I would suggest putting the potatoes with some sea salt and olive oil ahead of putting the fish as the potatoes take much longer to cook. I baked that potatoes for about 25 minutes at 200 C.

5. Add about two tablespoons of butter to the fish and put it in the oven. It takes about 20 minutes to cook the fish fully. It is good to turn the sides in between. You can serve it with potatoes or rice. It is ready to be eaten !!! We both loved the citrusy sweet and hot flavor :D It really wakes up all your taste buds!

Head Isu!!!!

Sultan's Delight (Hunkar Begendi)- Turkish origin

I fell in love with this Turkish meat and creamy eggplant dish the very first time I ate it at a restaurant. After some not so successful attempts to reproduce it (without a proper recipe), I referred to Sultan's Kitchen cookbook. Here is the recipe!

Ingredients

For Meat Stew:
4 tablespoon olive oil
500g boneless lamb/beef
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic minced
3 tomatoes
2 teaspoon tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1 1/2 cup water
Salt and black pepper to taste
1/4 cup chopped parsley (garnish)

For creamy eggplant:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoon heavy cream
1 table spoon lemon juice (you can put more if you like it)
1/3 cup grated cheese ( most Estonian cheeses work)



Steps:
1. In a pan put oil and meat and cook on high heat for about 6 minutes. Brown the meat all over and keep on stirring it.

2. Add onions and garlic and cook for another minute before adding tomatoes, tomato paste,oregano, thyme and water. Add salt and water too. Let this mixture come to boil. Now lower the heat and let this cook for about 1 hour. Do peak in occasionally to check on it.

3. put whole eggplants in the oven at 225 C for about 20-25 minutes. Please make sure you make cuts in them otherwise they will burst in your oven. Don't call me for cleaning ;)

4. Take them out and if you have a gas stove or a ceramic plate then you can burn the eggplant cover a little bit to give it the smoky flavor. Just turn it around on each side for a little bit.

5. Peel the eggplants once they have cooled down a little bit and chop them up into pulp.

6. Put the butter in the pan and as it melts add flour to it. Stir gently with a spoon for about 2 minutes and then add milk and heavy cream. Use a wire whisk and try to mix the flour and the milk.

7. Add eggplant pulp cheese and lemon juice to the above mixture and mix it into a creamy smooth mixture. A whisk would help.

8. By the time you are done with eggplants the meat should be ready to serve also :)

Head Isu!!

Seafood rice (Arroz de marisco)

If you're a seafood friend, Estonia isn't really your dream place to live. However there are some things you can cook that have this salty taste of distant horizons. This seafood rice recipe is one of them.

Arroz de marisco ('r' in arroz is to pronounced like you're trying to cough out a fishbone that's stuck in your throat) is an easy to make dish that takes about 40 min to prepare.

Ingredients:

1dl extra virgin olive oil

2 onions

3 bay leaves

3 gloves of garlic

40cm of 3cm diameter leeks

800 g (two cans/packs) smashed tomatoes, you can also use puree if you like it smoother

1 cup if rice

2 cups of water or fish stock

500g seafood cocktail (in big Rimi's they sell this frozen mix of baby octopus, shrimps, squid and mussels)

salt, pepper, optional: ground paprika the sweeter version and rosee pepper

1. Chop the onion and leeks
2. Heat the oil in medium high heat, throw in the bay leaves and the onions, cook until transparent
3. Add the chopped/smashed garlic
4. Add the leeks, cook for 5 min
5. Add the chopped tomatoes, salt (I put 2 small teaspoons), pepper and others if you're using, cook for 5min stirring if you have nothing else to do
6. Add the rice and the water, cook for 20 min
7. Add the frozen sea food, cook for 10 min

Welcome message

We are a group of people devoted to explore the gastronomical richness of the world. Even so devoted that some of us have imported our own foreign cuisine's experts form Pakistan, Portugal and Canada. This blog is a socio-nutritional experiment describing how these people eat and how they have adapted their food-intake rituals in Estonia and also how Estonians culinary habits have changed in this melange.


Get your tastebuds ready for inter-cultural experiences!

Spicy scrambled eggs (Khageena) -Pakistani origins

As a child, this recipe saved me at numerous occasions when mother cooked radish, cauliflower or some other child-unfriendly dish :). This is still one of my favourite Pakistani dishes simply because it is fast to cook and incredibly delicious to eat :). As this is the first blog entry I have been civil to measure everything and time myself:)

Cooking Time: 16 minutes

Ingredients:
4 eggs
3 tablespoon oil
3 chopped tomatoes
1 green chili
2 tablespoon chopped coriander(cilantro)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon turmeric (kurkum)


1. Put oil in the pan and add tomatoes to it.



2. Cover the pan for about five minutes and from time to time mash the tomatoes until they reach this state


3. Add green chillies, cilantro, salt, cayenne pepper and turmeric. For those who are not used to the hot flavors you can use paprika in place of cayenne and skip the green chillies (or put a little bit of green bell pepper for nice aroma). Once you have added these ingredients, add the eggs.




4. Cover the pan for two minutes until eggs get to this state and then scramble them



5. Cook for two more minutes.




6. Ready to eat in almost 16 minutes! It is best served with Lavish or the Georgian bread as these are closet to roti (Pakistani bread).


Head Isu!!