Tuesday, February 10, 2009

B is for Brazil

The second alphabet dinner was held on 07Feb09 at Jane's place in St Kilda. Unfortunately it just happened to coincide with the hottest day in Victoria's history - 46.7C. That's just wrong! Luckily there was a cool change at about 6pm.

I knew that I would be misbehaving later in the evening so I went for a 8km bike ride that morning. I was hoping to beat the heat but at 9am and it was already crazy hot and I earned every calorie burned.

After some delicious Spanish bubbly and white wine with some classic nibblies, Jane served up our main -Moqueca de peixe made with Rock ling & prawns. The recipe mentions coconut but it isn't in the ingredients or prep instructions so Jane added coconut milk with the stock.

If you cant find dende oil you should be able to find a blend of Palm Oil and Canola in Woolworths.

Moqueca de peixe
A marvellous seafood stew with the fresh flavours of lime and coconut and finished with Brazil’s favourite mellow dende oil.
5 medallions of white fish (eg. snapper) and/or 1 kg of prawns
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 red capsicum, sliced
5 tomatoes, chopped
1 tbsp grated ginger
5 chillies, chopped
1 cup fish or vegetable stock
Juice of 2 limes
120ml dendê oil (optional)
1 bunch of spring onions, finely sliced
1 bunch of coriander, chopped


Pirao
2 cups of fish stock
2 tbsp butter
Butter
2 cups semolina
Seasoning

Marinate the fish in the lemon juice with one clove of garlic and seasoning for at least half an hour.
Sauté the onion, garlic, ginger, chillies, red capsicum and tomatoes, until a sauce is formed. Pour over stock.
Add the fish, season with rock salt and simmer gently until cooked. If using a combination of white fish and prawns, add prawns later as they require less time to cook through.
Stir through chopped coriander.
Place in serving dish and squeeze over lime juice and sprinkle with spring onions and extra coriander leaves. Drizzle over dendê oil.
Serve with rice and pirao.

Pirao
Bring the stock to the boil Add the butter and the semolina slowly, mixing well.
Cook on slow heat till desired consistency, season and serve with moqueca.
You can add small prawns to it as well.
Source: Food Safari.

As we weren't quite ready for dessert we decided to go for a walk down to Elwood beach. It was a lovely night and the cool sea breeze managed to sober me up a little...

When we got back the sweet, dense, baked custard with a layer of coconut that Jane served up were divine. I don't know how much my arteries appreciated dessert but I loved it and they were small enough not to make me feel too guilty..

Quindim
12 egg yolks
2 cups of sugar
1 cup of water
100g shredded coconut
2 tbsp butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla essence
Glucose syrup for the baking moulds

Preheat oven to 180ºC.
Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
Spread a thin layer of glucose syrup to line the baking moulds.
Pour mixture into moulds until ¾ full and bake in water bath for around 20 minutes.
Cool slightly before turning out and serve cold.
Source: Food Safari. Created by Dora Silva

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