We Go (coco)Nuts!

What if you have more coconuts than you can drink their water?



Yes! We primarily plant coconuts for the water it stores in young green fruit.
And...what if the coconuts are becoming riper and the water inside is drying out, while its pulp is getting thicker?




The only solution is to use the ripe pulp to make sweets and baked goods.

This one is called "queijadinha" - cheesecake, but it is actually made with grated coconut and just a little bit of cheese.



RECIPE:

4 eggs
1 cup sugar or sweetened condensed milk
2 TBSP butter
4 TBSP grated cheese (we use "meia cura", mild parmesan-like cheese)
200 grams fresh grated coconut (or hydrated dry coconut flakes)
1 cup coconut milk (or milk)
3 TBSP white flour
1 tsp baking powder

Beat the above ingredients item by item, until all incorporated. Bake at 375 F.
Now, the country cooking will throw all ingredients, and perhaps omitting the liquid, and leaving out flour and baking powder, for they prime the real taste of coconut.

Green Papaya Compote

What should we do when we have soo many green papayas on the tree?




Green Papaya Compote, of course!




We don´t have real winters in most of Brazil, so no need to preserve seasonal fruits or vegetables - we have them all year round. When we do, it is because we want to eat it for our afternoon snack (we call it "afternoon coffee" - café da tarde). Green papaya compote is one of the most popular, as papaya trees can grow anywhere taking up little space.

RECIPE: get a fully grown green papaya (not baby one, but before it starts to ripen) from the tree. Let it stand one night to draw out milky sap. The next day, peel it, cut it into pieces. Thicker pieces make creamier ones. Let the pieces soak overnight in water with one teaspoon of baking soda (for a crispy outside and creamy inside). Add sugar (less than a kilo of sugar for a kilo of green papaya) and about 2 cups of water to make syrup. Cook all the ingredients together with cinnamon sticks and cloves. Optional: add 2 fig leaves for aroma. This is a homemade recipe. You can have syrup in various degrees of thickness, color, or sweetness.

Green Fig Compote

I have a young purple fig tree with lots of green fruits...





So I had a good idea!





Made into green fig compote and served with Gorgonzola cheese...



Today I sliced the figs, placed over crackers, and sprinkled with Gorgonzola cheese for our afternoon tea at the church. It was rather an exotic plate for the type of cheese. Brazilians usually like to combine homemade preserves with fresh farmer´s cheese.

RECIPE: A bit laborious but well worth it. Pick green figs with gloves (or the milky sap may cause allergy), wash them, and put into boiling water for 10 minutes. Put them into the freezer until rock hard. Under the running water, peel each fruit (unless you don´t mind the skin). Drop peeled figs, some whole, some cut into half (your choice), cover with water, and add coarse sugar (granulated sugar is fine) to your taste. Usually, 1 kilo of fruit calls for 500 grams to 1 kilo of sugar. I used something in between. I allowed the fruits to cook and added a little more water to keep the syrup level at fruit level (that is, plenty of syrup). To make the compote taste and smell like figs, I added 3 leaves while cooking. Very often, we make green papaya compote (same process) but add fig leaves for the aroma. We like to add cinnamon sticks and cloves.

Okra

Okra plant. Pods clinging too long...they may get woody. Not all Brazilians like okra - slime is to blame - nonetheless, the rest of us is absolutely crazy about it. To avoid getting it slimy, I heard you can add vinegar or lemon while cooking or washing, I am not sure. I do none of them. My strategy is to fry in hot oil, without stirring too much. Cutting into bigger pieces and patting washed okra dry also helps. Okra goes well in tempura, deep-fried coated with cornmeal, fried like potato chips, smothered with tomatoes, and combined with shrimp or chicken. We, country people, hundreds of miles away from the beach, eat smothered chicken with okra which is previously fried and added at the end (to avoid slime). Yeah, we can pickle okra too. I also eat it raw, sliced in diagonal, with soy sauce and drops of lemon. It can´t get any simpler.

Smothered Chicken in Fresh Turmeric, Mustard Leaves and Okra

My neighbor Rosa gave me a freshly butchered chicken that minutes before was freely running around her house. It was a payback for something that I don´t remember what. We trade goodies so often that it became part of our routine.
The free-roaming chicken was never part of my diet growing up. The first time that I saw it on a pot, I thought it was strange: skinny long legs, speckled yellow skin, though, and very little meat to eat. I have noticed lately that farm-raised chicken has been smelling strong, with soft slimy flesh, with fat marbling the breast fillet. So when my neighbor told me she would give me one from her stock, I watched as many videos possible on how best to cook it. While I used a crockpot to make the stock, I marinated the rest of the meat in garlic, onions, salt, and pepper overnight. (Brazilian cuisine is not much more than garlic-onion based seasoning.) In a large casserole, I fried the pieces until golden brown. I stepped out of the kitchen and plucked the roots of turmeric. I had never gotten turmeric roots before, so I was not sure I would find any. What a nice surprise to collect small, yet dark yellow roots that smelled earthy. I added small amounts of hot stock and ran again to my veggie garden to pick up some mustard leaves, cilantro, parsley, and green onions. Some more hot stock to pick up fresh corn, which was badly attacked by a bird from the parrot family. In the small patch of okra bushes, I have more pods than I can pick or eat. In an hour, lunch was late but ready. Such a delicious, substantial meal that I need a nap now.

Coffee Roasting Steps

This is a 2 - 3 year old coffee tree. Almost all coffee farmers harvest their coffee cherries by hand. It needs to be done in a fairly short period of time, as they may dry out in the tree or fall on the ground, yielding inferior quality. In most of Brazil, ripe cherries are first dried in the sun. This process produces coffees with less acidity and more body compared to the wet process.

Processed coffee beans are the result of ripe coffee cherries which are harvested and processed to remove the skin, pulp, and parchment, but still not roasted.

I learned to heat up the roasting pot first and then to load it with half of its capacity so to speed up the first batch.

Then we turn, turn, and turn the round roasting pot from 20 to 45 minutes until it starts smoking. At this point, neighbors go crazy for the enveloping aroma of roasting coffee...

As soon as start smoking, there is a split second in which we need to take the pot out of the flame to spread the coffee beans over a large sieve. At this moment, the coffee beans should be covered with shiny oil, and then they are perfectly roasted. One needs to shuffle or fan the beans so as not to over roast with their own accumulated heat. To achieve perfection, I am learning to roast imperfectly batch after batch.

This is a modern version of a coffee grinding machine, an electric one. The older one is done by a hand-cranking device. We like our coffee finely ground, with medium acidity and a great body. We usually drink it strong and sweetened with cane sugar.

Home roasted coffee is done only in rural areas where a great amount of smoke can be produced. It is becoming rare as time passes. Giving home-roasted coffee is a good gift and such a great one that everyone wants some. Just like any other things made by farmers´hands.

Bamboo Shoots

End of Spring in Brazil, the sun, the rain, the heat, the humidity bring new shoots of bamboo for our delight. It used to be my father´s job to harvest, to clean, to prepare, and even to cook the dish. I remember the last time he did it: he had kittens crawling on his shoulders as he worked. I tried to remember his steps, but failed on the important part, which was the preparation of the raw shoot into an edible one - to wash many times, boil with baking soda, to soak, and wash some more times. I rushed into cooking with basic Japanese seasoning, so have it all very bitter to the point of burning my tongue. I read that cianidric acid can make us sick, but even some boiling would remove most of the acid. So later, I boiled in clean water, turned off the heat, and added a little bit of baking soda. Immediately the water became dark browning yellow. I understood that it must the reaction between acid and alkaline. I changed the water a few more times, tried a piece and it tasted while slightly bitter, but it definitely had some sweetness to it. It is almost like artichoke. Actually, the bottom of the artichoke heart has the same texture as of bamboo shoot. The dish: I cut into thin strips the shoots, pork loin, ginger, green onions, and garlic. I stirred fry pork first with seasonings, removed it from the pan, and added a bit more peanut and sesame oil to fry the shoots. I seasoned them with a bit of sugar, soy sauce, and fish powder (Japanese seasoning). I returned the pork to the pan and let it combine for another minute. Voila. A quick Chinese dish eaten over rice. I will try some other recipes this week, as there are many shoots to be harvested and guests coming over to stay with us.

Mochi Making

Mochi is a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice traditionally eaten on New Year´s Day. The mochi making process can be a ceremonial event or not. In my case, I made the way I thought it would work. I soaked the rice overnight, drained it the next day, and then ground it in an electric coffee grinder and put it to cook in a microwave oven with a little bit of water. After about 6 minutes of cooking, I pounded it with either a wooden spoon or with my new Kitchen Aid. After a few minutes, I shaped it into 2-inch rounds. The rice cake itself is very bland, and I love it for the texture. I can fry in a little oil, and then season with soy sauce and sugar or boil in a soy sauce seasoned broth. This time I wanted to make daifuku, which is mochi filled with sweetened azuki bean paste I made from scratch. Not hard at all. I just soaked the beans overnight, cooked it, drained it a bit, and cooked with sugar. As I stir with a wooden spoon, the beans break turning into a paste. Yummy! My interest in Japanese cooking became revived by watching animes, where the presentation of traditional food is quite common. Then, I search online for recipes and ideas. I have enjoyed on youtube "cooking with dog", "runnyrunny999", and "delicious nippon". I am still to make some dango, which ingredient I can´t find where I live, and I believe, some found in Brazil is imported. I may try to make the rice flour myself and make the dumplings later. Let´s see...