Cucumber Avocado Lime Salad

Wow, this took like 2 seconds to make.

(Note: try some sugar on the cucumber to bring out the flavor! A tip from Julie & Jacques)

Ingredients:
- Avocado
- Cucumber
- Lime
- Cilantro
- Salt, pepper, crushed red pepper
- Rice vinegar
- Olive oil

Procedure:
- Peel cucumber, cut in half lengthwise, and scrape the seeds out with a spoon.
- Dice avocado
- Toss these together with a little lime juice, rice vinegar, and olive oil
- Sprinkle with salt black pepper and a little crushed red pepper, and top with Cilantro.

Done!

Coxinha de Galinha

A very popular Brazilian recipe, Coxinha de Galinha can be found anywhere from food stands on the beaches to fancy restaurants in the city.
It is a bit of work to make this, but the result is pretty tasty and unique.
This is one of Anna's favorites!

Ingredients:
- Chicken breasts
- Green onion
- Yellow onion
- Garlic, a couple cloves
- Flour
- Tomato paste
- Bread crumbs
- Knorr broth cubes
- Cilantro
- Condiments, salt, pepper, whatever you like
- Oil for frying

Procedure:
- Boil the chicken breast to cook for about 20 minutes in a pot of water with a a few Knorr cubes, some salt and pepper. SAVE THE LIQUID!!
- When the chicken is cool, pull it apart - you can do this in a food processor.

- Dice the onion and some garlic
- Brown some minced garlic in a little oil, then toss in a diced onion and ground chicken, tomato paste, and season to taste. While the chicken is cooking in the onion, add a little of the chicken stock you hopefully remembered to save. The point is to not let it get too dry. It is not soup either, just a mushy-sticky consistency is fine.
- When the chicken and onion and tomato paste is cooked briefly and combined nicely, take it off the heat, add chopped cilantro (a lot), and chopped green onion. Note: Use the green part of the green onion, not the white part.

Now for the dough. This is the tricky part. Crack open a beer, take a deep breath. The dough we are making is like a pie dough. Pie doughs are flour, liquid (usually water), and fat. About 6:3:1. In this case the liquid is the chicken broth, and the fat is the fat from boiling the chicken. So if you didn't save the broth, you have to use lard or butter.
- Put 3 cups of the chicken broth that you saved in a large pan and bring to boil. If you don't have 3 cups of broth, no problem, use some water to make up the difference. If it looks thin, you can use Knorr cubes and butter. It should be like savory, fatty chicken broth. Let it cool until it is hot, but you can touch it. You have to move quickly at this temperature, it is important.
- Have 6 cups of flour ready.
- This is much easier with a mixer, but it doable by and. Take the broth and QUICKLY pour the flour in and start stirring like mad. It gets gooey really quick, keep stirring. It might need a little more flour, and you want to stir it just until it comes clean from the pan. You need to stir (knead) for a few minutes at least.
- When you have a giant gooey blob of dough formed, leave it to cool for a while. You can then knead it a little more until it is smooth. Put it on a big cutting board dusted with flour.

You now have the chicken (inside) and dough (outside) of the Coxinha. Time to put it together. Everything is pretty much cooked already, so the next part is fying the coxinha to fuse together and brown, not to cook the insides, so don't overdo it or they will be dry.
- Take a ball of dough and flatten
- put a tablespoon of chicken in the middle, and wrap into a kind of egg shape
- dip in egg
- roll in bread crumbs
- fry in hot oil until brown

Apple Crisp

I have been working on this recipe forever, and it is really fantastic and still easy enough to get done quickly!


Ingredients for the apples:
- about 7-8 Granny Smith apples
- 1/2c white sugar - this is already about half of most recipes, adjust to taste
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 1/2 shot cachaca
- about 1/2 lime for juice
- 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
- little bit of water

Ingredients for the topping:
- 1c dark brown sugar - the darker the better
- 1/2c butter - cold! Don't let it melt or soften
- 1c oats
- 1c flour
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp baking powder

Procedure:
- peel the apples and cut into pretty thick pieces, then in half
- toss apples with white sugar, then put in baking dish
- mix juice from 1/2 lime, 1/2 shot Cachaca, brown sugar, a little water and 1tblsp flour; drizzle this over the apples
- Put the rest of the ingredients in the food processor; oats, 1/2c cold butter (cut the butter into little slices or cubes to blend easier), 1c flour, 1c dark brown sugar, baking soda & powder
- layer the topping over the apples
- put the whole thing in a 350 degree oven for 40ish minutes

Vatapa

A traditional stew from Brazil. Brazil is a large country, and this recipe arrived in Brazil from Africa. It is common in the Brazilian state of Bahia, all the way in the North. The main African ingredient is Dende, or palm oil, which give this dish a very special and wonderful flavor. If you don't have Dende, which can be hard to find, use olive oil. But you will be missing the main point of the dish.

Ingredients:
- dende oil (palm oil)
- garlic
- an onion
- some green onion
- a few plum tomatoes
- cilantro, lots and lots of cilantro
- lime juice from a few limes
- a couple Chiles, I like Anaheim
- ginger
- chicken thighs, remove the skin
- shrimps, shelled
- toasted cashews
- about 3/4c coconut milk

Procedure:
- chop garlic, and make a paste w/salt
- in a food processor, add chopped onion, green onion, tomatoes, cilantro (leave a few leaves for garnish later), lime juice, chiles, ginger, pepper; process until pretty smooth
- grind half of the cashews, save for later; leave half whole
- heat dende oil in large pan like a dutch oven, dry chicken, season w/salt, and brown in dende oil.
- Pour ground veggies in dutch oven, add coconut milk and ground cashews, and cook for about 3 to 5 minutes until onion soften
- Return chicken to dutch oven, cover, and simmer about 25 minutes
- add shrimp and cook a few minutes until done
- Remove from heat, add whole cashews and cilantro, can drizzle w/dende oil if desired