Church Fair in My Neighborhood

Since my family moved to this farm in 1976, I always felt enchanted with the neighborhood. Very next to where I live, ten white houses facing each other formed a little "village", occupied by the Brazilian Italian families. The little dirt road had a one-room school and a tiny memorial chapel. But the main attraction to me was on another dirt road that took to two snack bars, a church, and a garden. It was not only very quaint to my teenage view, but the idea of having access to those bars where I could buy ice cream or candies blew my mind. So I hold this place dear to my heart. A few days ago, the community members promoted a church fair, where the main star is the chicken and not the cross. Even though the neighborhood has not longer many people living, many visitors come from the nearest towns to crowd the place.

The building on the left used to be a bar. It´s closed down. The house next to it is occupied by a lone widower. All the cars belong to the people working for the fair.

It´s a ghost square throughout the year. The great majority of helpers come with a car, and only three people living in front of the church come by walking. But, someone came on a horse today.

That´s the little chapel that holds a mass twice a month. Most of the time, it is just like this: closed.

Many men put the tents up. It is a beautiful sunny day, but sometimes it rains at this time of the year.

Women work together to chop up vegetables for 1000 kebabs (skewered beef with onion, bell pepper, and tomato).

Endless table with sliced potatoes being prepared for homemade potato chips. Wash, drain, and dry, three times.

This is where the real fun happens. I waited all year to be able to take a picture of the ovens running on high heat.

Four ovens are lit using natural wood from legally run wood farms. It´s hot all over.

500 marinated and stuffed chicken being prepared to go into the ovens.

130 chickens being loaded into each of four hot ovens.

Look at that smile! It´s for a reason.

That´s the reason for the season-ing.

Unbelievable works of art. All 500 perfectly roasted chickens.

Draining off excess fat, for golden brown skin, tender, moist meat falling off the bones. This good!

Country people love to fry in an open-air kitchen. Look at the background. That´s a real farm with plowed land.

1000 kebabs being fried in two huge metal tanks.

Deep-fried skewered beef is homestyle finger food in Brazil found in many snack bars. It is rather unattractive, rustic, and humble, but deadly delicious.

This roasted piglet goes into an auction. The highest bidder usually returns the item to a new auction so the fundraising goes on and on on the same goodie. (2009 photo)

Lip licking, the luscious, scrumptious, crunchy, enormous kebab.


I had gotten my stuffed roasted chicken during the day, intercepting the tray just out of the oven, left at lunchtime, stopped by a nearby restaurant, bought a beer, and headed home to dive into my glutonic tantrum.

Past the binging, I got ready to go again. The event was supposed to start at 7 p.m. to go on until midnight ending with fireworks, but I, like any other good country girl, arrived at 6 p.m., just to be tuned with many of my neighbors ("we got to go early or there is not gonna be a table for us. I wanna sit close to the rabbit cage", so told me, my neighbor). Soon I arrived, took the remaining pictures, and quickly picked up 4 giant skewered beef (with vegetables), 4 bags of potato chips, 3 guarana sodas, sat down, and ate my share, but not everything. I saved one bag of chips for rainy days (that happened to be the next morning but no rain came). I got home before 7:30 p.m., planning to go back to see the people. But never did. I missed the grilled steak (churrasco), roasted pig, roasted lamb, bingo, raffle, rabbit game, and all my neighbors dressed up, women with chemically straightened hair walking awkwardly on high heels and men wearing unusual clean shirts.
The next day, my house helper told me that she arrived at 8 p.m. to find no more food to buy. Luckily, she had ordered her chicken in advance, so she saved her dinner. I felt slightly ashamed for my gluttony, but nevertheless, satisfied with my good decision to grab the food early.

Next year, I am going to be with those smiley guys to learn how to fire and control those giant wood-fired ovens, besides taking the rest of the pictures I missed this year (of other roasted meats, games, and the people). And I will arrive at 6 p.m. to make sure I get my kebabs & potato chips. Of course, the roasted chicken is picked up just before lunch to get myself fueled for the evening event.

Macheesmo...

Macheesmo is a phrase that Nick (the site owner) "came up with that simply means having confidence in the kitchen". I think it is so funny as "machismo" in Portuguese means "men being superior to women", but I am sure he didn´t mean that. Anyway, I follow some of his recipes and have great success with semolina bread and English muffins, the pictures can tell everything.
The semolina bread recipe I just doubled, but everything else I followed as directed. It turned out fabulous, slightly dense in the middle, not so crunchy shell - the taste and texture were superior to any other home-baked bread I´ve done so far. The semolina flour really makes a difference. Note: semolina flour in Brazil resembles that of regular flour, but not so fine, with white opaque color, much drier. My next adventure will be semolina pasta. Has Nick any recipe?
The English muffin recipe I did not let it rise a second time as I also watched the Culinary Institute of America video. But what I thought to be wise is to stick the muffins into the oven to finish up cooking. I have had many underbaked goods in the past, and that is an experience I don´t want to repeat. So the tip was very good. I actually opened one of them without baking, and indeed, it was slightly raw.
While the English muffins were in the oven, I fixed the Hollandaise sauce and boiled fresh eggs I got that morning directly from under the chickens. It was the first time I used a splash of white vinegar to boil eggs and the whites didn´t spread in the pan. Another success! I am so glad. Happier yet when I dug my fork into the Eggs Benedict. I was able to replicate the ones I used to eat at Royal Cafe, in Albany, California.

Full Steam

Full steam, or should I say "full smoke"? I am back baking full power. Not always in my wood-fired oven, sometimes due to time crunch or because sometimes I need a more reliable oven. To tell you the truth, I have not mastered the wood firing system and I can´t trust myself the oven is going to be ready by the time the dough is. That´s why making pizza is so easy - you can keep feeding the fire until the pie is ready to go.
This time I played with new recipes such as sweet potato bun, pesto potato bread, semolina bread, hamburger bun, and the two great findings: focaccia made from overnight poolish (www.breadcetera.com) and English muffin, which it is not strictly baking, but it is bread. The recipe from www.macheesmo.com directed to stick the fried muffin into the oven so to finish cooking. Great tip! It made superb Eggs Benedict. Semolina bread was also from the same guy. I had never been able to make such a nicely dense bread in texture, yet light in taste. This was good with mortadella (better kind of bologna).

Sweet Potato Buns from http://blogmaetocomfome.blogspot.com.br/2013/05/pao-de-batata-doce.html (In Portuguese)

Pesto Potato Bread from don´t know where recipe...

40-Minute Hamburger Buns from http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/40-minute-hamburger-buns

Focaccia from http://www.breadcetera.com/?tag=focaccia

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.

Morning Run

I can´t believe I have been running 3 miles most mornings for months now. I just haven´t had time to post it here - of course, too busy running. Well, it actually takes only 40 minutes every morning. I started slowly walking at a city park until I lost some weight (diet oriented by a dietician - two spoons of rice, palm-size piece of meat, and lots of salad, and things like that. No sugar or fatty meat for 6 weeks. It worked. I shed 10 pounds and even though I went back eating like a plowman, I am still able to keep my optimal weight. Sometimes I think that I could curb more of my appetite for novelty foods and lead a zen-like lifestyle. My pursue of simplicity hasn´t gotten to my stomach yet.
I started on this road in November - Summer in the South Hemisphere. Gentle rolling hills, no many cars, but lots of dogs (four checkpoints done by mutts), including mine that insist on following me. One of these days, one of them got killed by a car. All I said to the driver was "please, haul it from here". I used to run on a dirt road, but my dogs used to harass passersby, especially dangerous for motorcycles or bicycles. I was so distraught that I gave up the whole activity for months until I found the city park, and later, the paved country road near my farm. So I leave the farm by car and park by the road. But my dogs are smart. They discovered my little secret and sometimes they get to the starting point even before me.
My region doesn´t have much natural beauty. But I really enjoy my morning run. I can see (besides the dogs) birds (toucans too), a reservoir, some trees, and at the end of the paved road, a small Catholic church, a bar, and three houses (five people live here). On the back of the church has the most magnificent building of all: four giant wood-fired ovens! All roasted chicken, lamb, and pork are done in this facility for many church annual fairs.

Christmas Bread Panetone

Another quiet Christmas on the farm with my daughter being away. But the days that preceded Christmas, I baked panettone, an Italian round tall bread filled with candied fruits and raisins or with chocolate chips. My first attempt was a disaster. I followed a recipe that required a long rise, two days of work, just to have all the top burned by tucking it into a too hot an oven. I used a wood-fired oven, and I still don´t know what´s the right temperature for each dish. The second panettone was filled with chocolate chip and topped with ganache. They turned out very velvety, moist, and delicious. This time I used a regular gas oven. The third recipe I chose to fill it with dulce de leche (some kind of hard caramel). I made a mistake with the amount of butter and again, it was a failure. The bread didn´t rise properly while baking. But I still could give to my neighbors. But I was decided to make one great panettone, so again, I was mixing the ingredients when my mother had a seizure so I had to put the dough into the fridge to run to the hospital. When I got back home at 1:30 a.m., I didn´t feel like cooking. So I proceeded the next day, turning out a good panettone. The panettones and the two loaves on the photo are from this batch. I gave it to my friends as Christmas gifts. I felt as I had done a great accomplishment. But I was still not happy with sweetbreads and wanted to bake one more panettone, a savory one, filled with some kind of beef jerky, properly de-salted, cooked, shredded, and cooked with onions. This time, it was a success. The recipe asked for dark beer, milk powder, and even kummel, which I didn´t find in the market. So it went without it. Again, I gave one to each of my three farmer friends. Panetone dough is different from all other bread I have made before, as the dough is quite sticky, with high hydration. It is thicker than cake mix and wetter than bread dough. It also takes a lot of butter and egg yolks, a typical holiday bread. Panetone with its orange-butter-vanilla aroma, fruits, chocolate, caramel, the rich dough is a feast in itself. It is a kind of bread we can´t go without. It is a symbol of Christmas which for me exhale beauty, abundance, generosity, and love.

God´s Blessings in Our Lives Slideshow

You can also see at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwHWQTJIaE0

So finally I got to take some pictures of my small town on a January Monday morning. The main avenue is usually very crowded with cars and pedestrians, specially on Saturdays were walking is a hassle, trying to swerve from slower people or even avoid bumping onto others that are standing up, chatting. Not very uncommon too is to find people that walk in groups, stopping all at once to see the shop windows. This particular morning was very calm, but even so, many people cross streets away from crosswalks. It is just part of their habits. I wanted to include scenes that I usually see - men drinking coffee in the morning while chatting to each other, retired men sitting on a park bench, dozens of bicycles speeding down the street, and other particularities that make this town alive. Nature pictures mostly taken on a farm, but some were taken elsewhere, but they all makes part of my life. For instance, I can't raise free range chickens as I lease our chicken coops for a large scale egg business. Foreign birds could bring diseases to thousand of chickens, reason why I gave away my tamed Guinea hens. The little chicks playing with the girls were also given away after a few days. The House - is freshly painted but no longer looks that tidy. Specially the farm kitchen where there is always something going on, such as sinkfull of dishes to be washed or a trail of flour all the way to the wood fired oven. The Food - I made them all - from scratch - except for the farmer's cheese that I buy from a neighbor. I got no cows. What really misses in pictures is the vibrant energy of all the processes. The bread was not made dark like that, but it started from addition of flour, water, yeast, salt, sugar. It had different body, texture, temperature - it was something else, to become what it did. This dynamic process where aroma and taste are released is a priviledge of those who can live near them. I often tell my daughter how lucky (or blessed) she is for having a mom who cooks, for living on a farm, for owning eight dogs, and for all we should be grateful.

October 2, 2011 - Pizza Passion Or Oven Anxiety

I had plans of building a brick oven using red earth as a mortar, just like many other cheap and common igloo-shaped ovens around here. But I remembered that the Baptist Church that runs an orphanage in the next town had an abandoned pre-molded oven. They once told me "it burned the bread". At that time, I thought that the oven was made with concrete. Only later I found out that they used a refractory concrete, which makes the oven perfectly usable. The same day I got the metal wood stove, I ran to the orphanage and asked for the oven. The pastor didn´t know the current price so couldn´t sell it right away. I had a price set on my mind, but for some reason, I had forgotten how much it costs in the store. A couple days later, I showed up and told him the price (R$390 for a brand new similar type). He sold me for R$150 and I offered him $20 extra to have it delivered the next day. I had also put a donation on my first visit. The whole adventure cost me R$210. But it doesn´t end there. The anxiety of trying out the oven (to see if it really burns the bread) and eating a homemade pizza, I had the carpenters who are fixing up my house to set my oven just for that occasion. I had rolled a heavy sewage concrete pipe to my yard and made a hole to hasten their job the following day. So they used red earth and cement as a mortar to glue the pieces together. So, I made pizza not only once, but three times on my improvised oven stand. A few accidents happened, such as the wooden piece I had placed under the oven (without isolating it with bricks) caught on fire, the whole Calabrese sausage onion pizza fell upside down on the dirt and serving some uncooked burned pizza with ashes on top for guests who were in a hurry. I got valuable lessons from it: can´t hurry the oven fire, can´t hurry the oven construction, and don´t walk around with a hot pan of Calabrese pizza. My oven is still on an improvised stand, and I guess, it is going to be a few more days (or weeks) to have it in a permanent place, under a firm brick stand, over a concrete pad. I have also bought a big roll of fiberglass used in refrigerators to place it around the igloo to insulate the heat. We don´t use this material/technique in Brazil, but I have seen on youtube, so I decided to include it on my oven construction. While I can´t use my igloo oven, I keep using my regular gas stove for baking.