Fig and Walnut spread

Our neighbor gave us 9 figs. We had our fruit bowl full of fruit and Hungry Dad is not crazy about figs, so I'd be the only one eating all the figs along with the rest of the fruit. I decided to make a spread that we all could enjoy over bread, crackers, or, as shown above, english muffins.
I took the recipe from a French book I have that I'll post later.

Fish Rice

Being a coastal country, it shouldn't be a surprise that fish is one of the best things you can eat in Portugal. And that is what I make sure I eat a lot to compensate for the lack of it during the rest of the year.
While at the beach, we picked a bucket of mussels, right off the rocks that are covered during high tigh. Then we went to the market and bought fresh fish to make a fish rice. We put the mussels in the rice with the rest of the fish and it was simply delicious.

Lunch at the Farm

Our farm has a traditional outdoor oven. These ovens, regionally, are used to bake bread or cook meats and potatoes. We always like to make a special meal and enjoy our oven when we are there.
We cooked a chicken and ribs, white and sweet potatoes. Served with a cucumber and tomato salad, local bread, and finished with watermelon and Honeydew.
Here are some additional photos.

Our Farm

I spent the past few weeks at our farm, located on a corner of Europe where life is simple, neighbors are generous, people are happy, the air is clean, and the food is delicious.
There are no McDonalds or Starbucks, no dry-cleaners, nowhere to be at a certain time. No TV, no computer, no dishwasher,... heck, we don't even have a kitchen sink! (the house came with large, old fashion, clay bowls, where the old owners washed their dishes).
The closest town, 2 miles away, has 1 market the size of my small living room, 1 carpenter (the husband of the lady that has the market), 1 magazine/newspaper store, and 1 cafe. And one bench where all the locals hang out, right in the center of the village.
The second closest town, 5 miles away, is a beach town with restaurants and couple other small stores, where we buy our bread, eat out once in a while, or go to the beach.

When living on a farm, we only go to the supermarket to buy meat (if the neighbors didn't stop by, generously, to give us a chicken they just killed for us, or ribs from a pork they killed the week before), drinks, butter, milk, and some treats like cheese or yogurts (I guess we need to invest on some cows to resolve that).
The farm has a wide variety of vegetables and fruits that are available all year round. When we go there in the winter, all the citrus are ripe and sweet. This time of the year I found a lot of vegetables for salads, melons and watermelons, green and dry beans, onions, and garlic. Other things were planted and growing, but were not fully grown or ripped yet.
I find it so peaceful to be surrounded by nothing but the sounds of the wind, the smell of the salty air, the sandy dirt on my shoes, and the open fields. Oh yeah, and the neighbors' donkey.

I find it inspiring to see all the food growing right out of the earth and be reminded that cucumbers and watermelons do have a flavor. It's also so much fun to say "I'm going to make a salad" and instead of going to the fridge, run outside.
Here's some pictures I took of some of the goods.

Tuna and Rice

On a hot, summer day, light meals prevail. This tuna salad served on top of butter rice is light, yet filling, and very nutritious.
I added red onion, black and white pepper and olive oil to the tuna.

Picnic sandwiches

I make this sandwiches whenever we go to the beach, a park, or just to make a picnic. Everyone loves it and my little assistant can eat half of these portuguese roll without even thinking.
I often change the type of meat I put in - sometimes veal cutlets, sometimes roasted pork, chicken, or turkey breasts. I add mayo or mustard, cheese (swiss or some kind of portuguese), sweet pickles, and olive oil bathed sundried tomatoes (I let them stand on a bowl with olive oil for a bit before putting in the sandwich).
I wrap the sandwich well because they can drip, but they are absolutely delicious!

Stripped Bass

Grandma Cookie's nephew fished a big bass and shared with the whole family. Luckily, we were given a piece of it and cooked it on the same night. This was what I did - added some thinly sliced potatoes, sliced red onions, and small cut red peppers on the side. Cooked with some parsley, olive oil, garlic, and sea salt.

Spaghetti with vegetables

Another day using the left overs around the kitchen.
This time I cooked onions, red peppers, zucchini, mushrooms, and scallions on olive oil and garlic. I used a little broth to make the sauce and mixed it with the pasta. I loved it.

Creamy pasta with chicken and sundried tomatoes

I had a pack of chicken breast still half frozen by the time I should start making dinner, so I cut the chicken as small as I could to help it defrost and cook really quickly. I had no tomatoes, no tomato sauce, and no vegetables at home, as I was trying to empty the fridge before going grocery shopping again. But I found half of a zucchini and some sundried tomatoes in the fridge. While the pasta was cooking on the side, I cooked the chicken together with the zucchini and sundried tomatoes, with onions and garlic and olive oil. Added some broth from the pasta to help make some sauce, and added a bit of heavy cream to give it texture. Salt and pepper and dinner was done in half hour.

Tomato and herbs Frittata

This frittata is a recipe from a Food & Wine book I have and it is perfect for a brunch. The fresh parsley and a hint of fresh oregano and thyme gives it such a nice taste. And the tomatoes are so pretty set in a circle.

Fillet Mignon with Orzo

I often buy at Costco a big pack of their Fillet Mignon, that I find to be so tender and flavorful. When I get home I divide the meat in smaller quantities to make a variety of dishes. The other day I cut the fillet mignon into tiny cubes and made an orzo dish with it, using red peppers and spinach to give texture to the dish. It came out so delicious!

Pear and walnut tartlettes

Just for fun the other day we made some tartlettes and then shared the goods with the neighbors.







Here's the recipe:

1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
3 ripe Bartlett pears, peeled, cored and sliced
3 large eggs
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl, combine flour, confectioners' sugar, butter, 1 teaspoon of the cinnamon and salt; mix well. Press into the bottom of a greased 11 x 7-inch baking dish. Top with nuts and pear slices.
In the same mixing bowl, beat together eggs, brown sugar, vanilla extract and remaining 1 teaspoon cinnamon until well combined; pour over pears. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. (Because I made little tartlettes on muffin pans, I reduced the baking time to 10 minutes, but could have done 15 minutes at 325º also.)

Sardines and Chouriço

June is, in my mind, the month to eat sardines.
In Portugal, people eat them all summer long, however there's always a lot of festivals in June where sardines are the chosen food.
To celebrate, we went to a portuguese festival and ate grilled sardines and chouriço with bread and drank beer.
So good!

Empadao de Arroz

In portuguese cooking, Empadão is something similar to a lasagna but made with mashed potatoes (mashed potatoes on top and bottom and cooked ground beef with tomato sauce in the middle).
On this recipe, I added some vegetables in the meat mix and substituted the mashed potatoes for some rice.
It was delicious and very moist. My little assistant loved it and ate a lot of it!

Salads

The summer has arrived (unofficially) and time for salads is here!
Salads are healthy, lightly, refreshing, and very low in calories and it seems the perfect meal to have once the weather starts warming up. The tomatoes are starting to taste really good, but I also try to have a variety of different greens so that the salads are somehow different every night.

Cherry tomatoes:

Spinach salad with fruit and almonds:

Baby lettuce, spinach, cucumber, tomatoes, and cheese:

Lettuce, pea sprouts, cucumbers, and carrots:

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

This has been my favorite cookie of my whole american life.
I haven't made these in a very long time and I usually use a portuguese recipe that is very simple and uses much less sugar and fat than the well known cookies here.
The other day, as a treat to my assistant, I decided to make the actual american recipe. They were chewy and moist and as sweet as they are known for.
I was disappointed to realize my assistant is not crazy about these cookies and got tired of them a day later and preferred his trusted animal crackers to one of these.
(of course, I ate them all - this is how I gain weight!)

Baked Fish

We have one friend that is a dedicated fisherman. When I say dedicated, I mean, he's been known to drag the whole family out of the house at 3am to go fishing. But the rest of the family goes with it and they all have a great time.
We have gone fishing with them couple times (not at 3 o'clock in the morning!) but they never caught anything when we were with them, so we (and I mean, I) started teasing them and saying all the fish they say they fish, is all bought down the road at the fish market.
To prove me wrong, the other day, our friend caught a really big fish - a bass that was almost as long as his 3 y.o.. They took pictures of it and brought us some nice fillets of it. I cooked it with red onions, garlic, parsley, olive oil, and paprika. It was delicious.

Yogurt with berries

Berries are starting to appear in the markets and here's one of my favorite ways to use them. I buy the big plain yogurt containers and then like to add whatever is around to have a more natural flavor. To this one I added yellow sugar, that I brought from Portugal, with raspberries and blueberries.

Salmon with lemon

We were given 1 lemon that was smuggled on a plane from Italy. It was huge, the size of an orange, so I decided to use half of it to make with salmon.
I laid fresh dill and fresh lemon thyme on top of the salmon, sprinkled with sea salt and covered each piece with a slice of lemon. Drizzled all with olive oil and some lemon zest on top. It came out moist and juicy.
I served with corn on the cob, broccoli rabe, and roasted red peppers. So simple, so delicious. Definitely one of my favorite dinners.

Pork Loin with vegetables and mashed potatoes

During this time of the year, when we have one sunny day and 4 cloudy, cold, and rainy days, I try to get out of the house as much as possible as soon as I see the sun. The problem with that is we always come back inside too late to start any elaborate dinner. But since I already had this (luckily thin) pork loin out for me to cook, I challenged myself to cook it as fast I could.
I put it inside of a pan with butter and a touch of olive oil and let it cook on all sides. While cooking, I chopped onions to put inside, carrots, and zucchini. I added beer to start making some sauce and raisins to contrast with the bitterness of the beer. I let it cook for about 45 minutes and it was done.
On the side, I made mashed potatoes, to which I added broccoli for extra color and vitamins.
Little assistant loved it!

Stuffed Cabbage

The portuguese version of stuffed cabbage is made with fresh sausages. It is not a complicated recipe, yet it requires a little extra time than the quick half hour meals I usually make. It is a good dish to make on a cloudy weekend, I think, since this is a warm and comforting dish.
I start by giving a very quick boil on the leaves then after letting them cool off a minute, I roll the sausage. I bought italian sweet sausages and it worked very well.
I make a tomato sauce with onions, garlic, fresh tomatoes, and a tiny hot pepper (so it's not too hot for my assistant). I then add some of the water from the cabbage, salt and pepper, and place the stuffed cabbage inside. Let it cook on low heat covered. I served with rice and everyone loved it.

Spinach and presunto quiche

For a lighter dinner the other day, I made a quiche to go with the watercress soup I had made.
I love how quiche can be made with so many different type of ingredients to give it a different feel. I made this one with spinach, cheese, and presunto. And I used heavy cream as oppose to half-half. I think it comes out much better with heavy cream.
I follow my mom's portuguese recipe, but here is something very similar to what I make, except I use real butter on the dough (not shortening) and don't use cayenne pepper nor onions.
My assistant ate it pretty well.

Welcome to USA cookies

Grandma Cookie came back home after being away for 1 month in Italy. We welcomed her with these star cookies. They are basically sugar cookies made really thin with a layer of jelly in between before it bakes. It's a little tricky to put one layer of dough on top of the other, but it's so worth it!

For the neighbors that did not go away, we made the cookies with a flower shape.

When you have too much shredded carrots...

I bought a big bag of shredded carrots thinking we're going to use a lot of it in salads now that the weather was getting warmer.
I then realized that Hungry Dad is not crazy about shredded carrots in salads. And there's only so much salads I can have myself with carrots, so I had to start being creative with other uses for the carrots.
The first dish I made was veal cutlets with sun dried tomatoes, carrots, and spinach cooked on the same pan I cooked the veal.
It came out delicious.

On the second dish, I made chicken breast with garlic and lemon juice and served with a side of shredded carrots cooked with onions and raisins. I also cut some apple slices and served on the plate with the rest. The sweet of the raisins, carrots, and apples compensated for the lack of carbs and everyone was satisfied at the end.

Chickpea and cod fish salad

This is a traditional portuguese salad.
Chickpeas, cooked, deboned, and shredded cod fish, cut onions, parsley, olive oil, and black pepper.
It makes a very good lunch - filling and healthy.

Chocolate Tart

(sorry for the bad photos)

This is a recipe from my friend Nuno. He has mastered it perfectly and always makes it when we go visit.
I tried to copy the recipe and although was not as perfect as his, it was heavenly rich, very chocolaty, delicious, and not overly sweet. I love how it is "cakey" on the edges and so creamy and mousse-like on the inside.
Since it is a Nuno's specialty, I won't post the recipe, but I will offer to make this to whoever wants at any time. Just feel free to ask.

Setting the table

This is what happens when I ask my assistant to help me and put the bread on the table.

Tilapia Filets with Polenta and asparagus

I baked this tilapia with small shallot onions, a generous amount of garlic, olive oil, lemon, and herbs. Then cooked the polenta on the side covered with mozzarella. And served with steamed asparagus. My little assistant doesn't like the polenta, but he eats this tilapia and asparagus pretty well.