I have to admit I went into this trip for cooking around the world mainly knowing about Brazilian food from going to Fogo de Chao’s, which means my impression of Brazilian food is it involves lots of meat, yummy bread, and delicious cheese. So I did some research and found a few ideas I thought would work for my family. It was a fun bit of geography lessons for me.
First the main dish: Churrasquinhos
(loosely based on the recipe above)
about 2 pounds of steak
2 tablespoons olive oil
a generous sprinkling of basil citrus rub (Superman got a little enthusiastic)
half of a minced onion
3 cloves garlic minced
salt and pepper
1. Chop your onion into quarters, and then mince it. I used a food chopper, and we chopped that thing into itty bitty pieces and then scraped the juice and those miniscule pieces into a ziploc bag.
1b. Cut up your steak into 1 inch cubes.
2. Get a spoonful of garlic and add it to the ziploc bag.
3. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to your bag.
4. Add your citrus rub seasonings to the marinade.
5. Shake that bag of marinade so fast the camera can’t see what you’re doing. Let marinade for an hour.
6. If you’re not suddenly short on time, make it into shish-ka-bobs and grill it. We however got home late for dinner, so we pan fried it with a little bit of oil on high.
SIDE DISHES: homemade potato chips and pao de queijo
A popular side dish in Brazil is homemade potato chips, so we made some.
Superman helped me peel and cut the potato into chip sized pieces, then we cooked them in a deep fryer. If you don’t have one, pour some olive oil into a pan and that will cook them as well. When they’re done to your level of crispiness take it out and sprinkle with salt.
And this would be where my natural bent went wrong……… Sometimes you do need to follow the recipe, and I …… didn’t.
1 cup milk
1/4 cup oil or butter
salt
Yuca (cassova) flour 1 pound (and that would be where I went wrong)
3 eggs
1 cup parmesan cheese (I mixed in machego with it, waste of some good cheese it was)
1. Add the milk and oil together, stir as it comes to a boil. Make sure to make funny faces as you add in the oil, that adds to the charm.
2. Slowly stir in the flour after removing from heat. Again cheesy faces are a big help to this.
3. Add in the eggs. Once the eggs are fully added in, then add the cheese. At this point it might be easier to mix with your hands.
4. Make little balls of the dough and bake in the oven 15-20 minutes at 375.
5. Carefully watch your oven to see what is happening. Eventually get bored and wander off to torment your sister. Take it out of the oven and put in basket to serve when golden.
Dish up and enjoy!
The meat and the chips got two enthusiastic thumbs up. There was nothing left and the boys were not so subtly hinting they wanted more. Because of my flour mistake the bread wasn’t as enthusiastically eaten.
That meat sounds amazing.
Oh my goodness was it ever. I’m not usually a fan of marinades, and Jeff doesn’t usually like anything with citrus, but there was NOTHING left. None, zero, zip. It was SOOOOOOOO good!
That sounds delicious enough for me to try it out. We love marinades.
I love to cook and have never made homemade potato chips!!!! This is on my list to try with my kids:).
They’re a lot of fun, and fairly easy to do.
Wow you guys went all out this month! Looks like you had fun too and the food looks yummy. Thanks for participating again this month 🙂
Hey, just found your page.
Lots of interesting ideas and info…
I’m Brazilian and pão de queijo it’s big in Brazil.
You have to try again using the cassava flour, promise you’ll enjoy it.
I’ve had it at restaurants and LOVED it. I’ve since tried it again with something similar to cassava flour and it worked much better, but I need to refine our technique.