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Chloe

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Everything posted by Chloe

  1. Sorry about the previous post. This is my own photo of Magefesa Laredo cutlery showing the whole set, with the perfect-miniature dessert fork and a very nice sturdy little coffee spoon. Oops, just remembered that I forgot to include the dessert knife. It's exactly the same as the main knife, but in length comes to about half way up the blade of the larger knife. I must have bought them about 16 or 17 years ago and I've been really happy with them ever since.
  2. Can I add that the strange, sad looking cake that appears in several of the pictures is a sponge cake made with so many egg yolks that it really does simply sag in the middle Typical recipes: 10 whole eggs, 30 egg yolks, 500g sugar, 250g flour; or 22 yolks, 4 whites, 250g sugar, 125g flour. Baked in a tin lined with thick white paper. The saggy mountain effect is also helped by a very hot oven to start with, then turned down as soon as the cake has risen. It should be almost liquid in the middle. Yummyyyyy!! Chloe (wishing Alcobaça wasn't so far ... the church itself is one of the most beautiful I know) Edit to add the name of the cake: Pão-de-ló de Alfeizarão - now pronounce that if you dare
  3. Ah! To be really pedantic, in Portugal it's bacalhau ... Seriously, I always translate "bacalhau" (whether salt or fresh) as "cod" and always change "codfish" to "cod" (or salt cod, or whatever) on menus sent to me for revision. I don't quite know why the Portuguese are so fond of "codfish" but it is commonly found here. For menus, I much prefer plain old "cod" and "salt cod". Codfish somehow sounds faintly comical, slapping fish around in Asterix books, or something ... Chloe
  4. Actually, in correct Galician octopus is polbo - not nearly as amusing to Castilian speakers as the Portuguese spelling... ← Oops, that's true. Sorry ...! Chloe
  5. The story is that the monastery in Carballiño owned the port in Marín, near Pontevedra, and the fishermen from the ría would pay their rent in octopus, which were abundant and not their normal source of income. Not sure how long the octopus is boiled for - depends on its quality, I dare say - I just boil it until it "pokes" tender, normally at least 20 minutes. For the "feiras", it is boiled in large copper pans. I was there this year and enjoyed some tasty, but (unsurprisingly) overpriced "polvo" (as they call it Galicia - and Portugal - to the amusement of Spaniards from other parts of the country). The next night bar-hopping in Ourense was more interesting, with yummy pigs ears and Galician "chicharrones" (appeared to be some part of the stomach??), among other delicacies. Chloe
  6. Chloe

    Spaghetti Squash

    The squash used for cabello de angel or chila is actually a totally different squash, Cucurbita ficifolia. See my own post on Malabar gourd jam a couple of years ago. Chloe north Portugal
  7. Chloe

    Mint: Uses & Storage

    Throw some mint into the water when you're boiling new potatoes or peas. Very English! Chloe north Portugal
  8. I posted a Lemon Polenta cake here http://recipes.egullet.org/recipes/r1298.html reckon it would make a nice addition to the recipe. ← Thanks for the idea! How long do you normally soak the polenta? Chloe
  9. I have about a pound of crystallised lemon (in "whole" quarters) that I bought a few months ago and haven't used. I'd be most grateful for suggestions for cakes or desserts. Chloe north Portugal
  10. When I was at primary school I told my teacher that my favorite food was Dover sole. Chloe north Portugal
  11. Pinxtos should be pintxos tx is a Basque spelling of the sound ch, which is ch in English too. pintxos = pinchos Chloe North Portugal
  12. Chloe

    1/2 pound of Linguica

    Note that Brazilian and Portuguese linguiças are very different things. Brazilian linguiças are Italian-style fresh sausages, while Portuguese linguiças are cured sausages, i.e. a type of chouriço. Chloe north-west Portugal
  13. I spent six months in Brazil and greatly enjoyed something called Frango em Molho Pardo -- literally "Chicken in Dark Sauce." The sauce was blood-based; perhaps it's a similar dish. I tend to be a little squeamish, but this dish was always very tasty. ← Free-range supermarket chickens in Portugal come with a little bag of blood alongside the giblets so that you can make cabidela whenever you want! In northeast Brazil Molho Pardo is also known as Cabidela. Chloe In the bloody (porky) rice capital of Portugal
  14. Both my children adore olives and olive oil on everything. Grilled beef has to be very rare otherwise they turn up their noses. They adore goose barnacles and octopus, and whole sardines - grilled or fried. Most types of cheese. They love Portuguese bloody, soupy rice dishes - sarrabulho, arroz de frango - and they might call them chocolate rice, but they know very well what's in the dish. My 7-year old girl's favourite foods are mussels and salmon (fresh or smoked). She also loves parmesan cheese, artichokes, snails (French style and Iberian style), fish and shellfish in general. In the summer down south in the Alentejo she was quite crazy over grilled Iberian black pork - segredos and plumas 4-year old boy loves mushrooms, broccoli, artichokes, not so much of a shellfish or snail fiend as his sister, but he's improving! Crunchy chicken skin. They don't like pizzas, hamburgers, hotdogs, peanut butter ... I'm sure I've missed some things out! Salt cod for lunch today. Chloe North Portugal
  15. Tuna fish? ← Cod fish!! csp North Portugal
  16. I don't know about pork cake, but in Portugal there is a creme caramel with pork fat in it to make it extra unctious! Chloe
  17. Then again, to state the obvious, broa is broa - heavy, rough cornmeal bread with or without rye. Whilst "Portuguese bread" is more or less bread as we all know it and, outside Portugal, it could be anything under the sun. Even within Portugal basic bread varies quite strongly from region to region. A broa normally starts off as a large, heavy, round object, and is sold by the weight in more or less irregular pieces. Broa also shouldn't be confused with broas/ broinhas which are various bready little cakey things, frequently made around Christmas time. Chloe North Portugal
  18. In the sitting room, I have a very tall, slightly Baroque, antique wardrobe, with drawers underneath. The side and front panels have been removed and replaced with glass and several shelves have been fitted. It contains a mixture of bottles, glasses, china and pottery, all a bit haphazardly arranged. "Everyday" booze lives on the kitchen sideboard - i.e. vermouth and Spanish or Portuguese brandy for cooking or the cook! And an excessively large bottle of whisky we were given once lives in the pantry until I can think of what to do with it (ideas for using it up welcome ...). Chloe North Portugal
  19. Since foie is French for liver, I think you can be quite sure that anyone who writes fois gras is quite simply spelling it wrong! Forget Chef Gregoire and his red pen!! "Fois" means time, as in one time, two times, three times ... Chloe North Portugal
  20. Anything disclosable? Chloe Ponte de Lima
  21. Chloe

    Soupish, anyone?

    Aha! I see from my cookery books that it's Sopa do Espírito Santo from the Azores. Which explains why it looks so very unfamiliar! Actually a lot of the "mystery" Portuguese recipes in North America and Hawaii are from the Azores, so I should have guessed! Chloe North Portugal
  22. Chloe

    Soupish, anyone?

    Most unfamiliar. I wonder who invented that recipe! Chloe North Portugal
  23. The terminology is certainly irritating or incorrect, but the concept of only occasionally eating meat/fish for whatever reason surely cannot dismissed out of hand! For some people, the quality of the meat they can easily buy is so poor that they have little enjoyment in eating it. Chomping through typical lacklustre beef and pork or plasticky chicken just to prove a point isn't really much fun. I know that this is the opinion of my father back in the UK. And as organic meat is distinctly more expensive (the thread over whether organic chicken is tastier than normal chicken must be a very US thread - in Europe I don't think many would question the difference), is it not better to eat better meat and less often??? Surely this is valid for any type of foodstuffs? I am not the faintest bit vegetarian or vegan, but I find the somewhat hysterical reaction of anti-vegetarians/vegans similar to the hysterical reaction of vegetarians/vegans I only willingly eat beef if it is really good and most of the butchers where I live sell dreadful beef most of the time. Luckily for me a) I have cheap restaurants that source good beef; b) I can easily travel a good few miles to buy better beef; c) I can occasionally buy organic "mountain" beef (and "pata negra" pork now, oh joy!); and d) I occasionally get given home-grown/slaughtered beef. So I do eat quite a lot - but only because of a, b, c and d! Chloe Wet, windy and warm north Portugal
  24. It hadn't occurred to me to worry about diseases - I was actually thinking more of flavour/oiliness! Chloe North Portugal
  25. I don't particularly like soft butter, and I certainly don't liked being served soft butter in a restaurant. I prefer it to be cold and, if necessary, for it to "warm up" in my presence so that I know it hasn't been hanging around at room temperature for god knows how long. And I prefer butter on my bread to be cold and hard I was also wondering what is wrong with room-temperature bread? Unless you mean that if it's crappy, it should be toasted/warmed. If it's good bread, surely room-temperature is perfectly satisfactory or even ideal?? Chloe North Portugal
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