Month: February 2022

This is another typical sweet from my hometown I like a lot and it was in my to-cook list. After several failed attempts with magdalenas, I decided finally to give it a go. I had good memories from last December in the bakery so I followed a recipe from my aunt and see.

Ingredients:

• 3 large eggs
• 200gr sugar
• 170ml olive oil
• 1 lemon zest
• 4gr bicarbonate sodic + 4gr tartaric acid
• 400gr-500gr+ plain flour

Process:

• Whisk eggs and sugar very well. Until the mix is foaming
• Add olive oil and lemon zest. Keep whisking
• Add bicarbonate and tartaric acid, keep whisking
• Add flour, shifting it, bit a bit into the mix.
• Pre-heat oven at 200C
• At one point, you will have to use a wooden spoon to keep mixing. This is a critical point. I added the 400gr of flour, and the mix was still too wet so I keep adding bit a bit more flour until I had a dough no too sticky. Keep in mind you need to be able to use a roller and a cookie cutter. So at one point, I pour the dough into the table and tried to knead it adding bits of flour. I was lucky because I had some flashbacks from I was a kid doing the same thing so It helped me to carry on until I had that kind of playful dough but still a bit sticky. If you add too much flour, the biscuits will be hard as stone.
• So once you have the dough ready, use a roller to spread the dough around 1cm thick and use the cookie cutter. In my case it was a round one, in my hometown use a rectangular one with round corners. I may try to “build” something.
• So always putting flour in the surface before spreading the dough with the roller. Use the cutter, and transfer the biscuit to a baking tray with a bit of flour to avoid sticking. When you use the cutter, the biscuit can’t be too sticky, if so, you need to add a bit of flour.
• Once you can’t cut more cookies, form a ball again, and a bit of flour in the surface and roll it. Cut and repeat until you use up all dough.
• Bake the cookies until golden on top. 20 minutes or so.
• Let them cool down, it is very important!

This is before getting to the oven.

This is after the oven.

And these are the real ones I try to match!

They dont look very similar but still I was quite happy with result. For being the first time, it was tasty! I could add more sugar?, maybe a bit less time in the oven?

It is a simple recipe, basic ingredients, and brought me good memories. What else?

And this is a snapshot of how it is really done by the real bakers!

This is a recipe that a very good friend recommend me but using smoky tofu instead of bacon. So I decided to give it a go:

Ingredients:

• 1kg of fresh spinach
• 1 onion
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 250g of smoky firm tofu
• 150g of cheese (of your taste)
• 1 cup of rice (paella or risotto style)
• 1 can of tomate sauce
• 200ml of cream
• 1 cup of chicken/veggy stock.
• 1 cup of plain flour
• 3-4 eggs

Process:

• In big sauce pan, add boiling water and cook all spinach. They will reduce a lot. Once they are soft, drain the spinach and chopped them very thinly.
• In another sauce pan, add some olive oil and fry for a bit the chopped garlic cloves. Then add the rice. Fry everything for a bit, then add two cups of boiling water to the rice and let it cook at low-medium heat. Try to get it as much dry as possible to hep making the balls later.
• In a frying pan, add a bit of oil, at medium-heat. Add chopped onions, and fry until golden, then add chopped tofu. Fry everything, try to get a golden color from the tofu.
• In another frying pan, add the tomate sauce, stock and cream. Mix well, and let it cook at low-medium heat.
• In a big bowl, put the chopped spinach, rice, tofu and cheese. Mix everything very well. Make you a big favour, let it cool down! Put it in the fridge, outside, whatever.
• In one plate/bowl add the flour and in another the whisked eggs.
• From the spinach mix, start making some balls, then pass them through the flour, cover properly, remove any excess and the pass through the eggs. Prepare all balls before frying. If you let the mix cool down, it shouldnt be much effort, and then frying would be easier.
• In the small frying pan, some a bit of oil and heat up. You dont need to deep fry.
• Then in the small frying pan, put 3-4 balls and fry them until golden in all sides. Them add to the tomate sauce mix.
• I filled the tomate sauce pan with spinach balls, so I used the left over and did some other balls and “omellete”.
• Keep the spinach balls in the tomate sauce until it thickens up a bit.
• Then you can remove from the heat, and ready to eat!

The recipe is very tasty. I didnt manage to get a good ball form, I think my rice was a bit too wet? In the video the balls look super rounded. But anyway, I had a good lunch the whole week!

It was normal to have a small snack or tapa in most bars in Spain, from a small plate of crisps, salty peanuts or fried almonds to some seafood. Even buying a 1kg sack of almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts wasnt that expensive.

Now, when I go to Portugal or Spain, I try to buy some small bag of fried almonds. But now I wanted to do it myself because I had the gut feeling that it couldnt be that difficult. I found this video and I used it as reference.

Ingredients:

• 200gr almonds (with skin)

• pinch of salt

• olive oil for frying

Process:

• Put the almonds in a sauce pan with boiling water. Boil for 5 minutes.
• Remove the almonds from the water, let it cool down for 1 minute and then remove the skin. It should be quite easy. Recommended to push with your fingers from the side of the almond, not the tips.
• Dry them in kitchen paper.
• Put a frying pan at medium heat with the oil. Once the oil is hot, add the almonds and kit stirring.
• Once the almonds get golden, remove the pan from the heat and take the almonds for the oil, trying to drain as much oil as you can. Then put again in kitchen paper to soak up more oil.
• While warm, add salt to the taste of the almonds.
• Once they are cool down you can store them in a glass jar.

Really tasty!