Mac & Cheese w/Bechamel Cheese Sauce

This is a bit of work, but once you learn how to do it this way, it is by far the best mac & cheese method.

Ingredients:
- cooked pasta (elbow noodles work well)
- 1 + 1/4 cup grated cheese (experiment! Melody likes a Mexican cheese blend)
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1/4 cup flour
- 2 cups whole milk
- bread crumbs (Panko is great)
- seasoning (salt, pepper, nutmeg is awesome! Anything else you like)

Bechamel is a French white sauce, and if you learn how to make it, it is also a great way to make Fettuccine Alfredo and many other things. A bechamel is made from yet another French technique call a roux.

Here is the hierarchy:
> Mac & Cheese
>>> Bechamel
>>>>>> Roux

This all goes very fast, so first you need to do your "mise en place", which is French for "get all your f'ing ingredients ready before starting to cook".

Mise en place:

So, we make the roux first. A roux is browned butter and flour.

Then Bechamel is then made by adding milk to the roux.

Then the Mac & Cheese sauce is made by adding cheese to the bechamel.

There are a couple important things to make roux and bechamel:

1. The ratio is important - for the roux, you use 1 part butter and 1 part flour. For the bechamel, you use 8 parts milk to 1 part roux.

2. The roux is made first by melting butter and stirring in flour. This actually has to cook together 1-3 minutes, and just brown slightly. You are actually cooking the flour in butter. If you don't cook the flour, it will taste like raw flour (imagine eating a spoon of flour... not good).

3. You need a whisk, and you need to stir constantly over the right heat. The heat is pretty low, but still high enough to get things bubbling gently.

4. Important!! Season your bechamel - put in a little salt as your cooking it, and taste often. It is difficult to season this after the fact. You can add other spices, like nutmeg, pepper, paprika, it is great to experiment. But salt is pretty important or it just tastes pasty.

If you do those things right, you will have an excellent bechamel.

Once you have made bechamel, you can melt cheese into it - right away!! Don't wait. The result is the best mac & cheese sauce possible.

The ratios stay constant, and in our case to make enough bechamel cheese sauce to cover 1 box of macaroni, you need:

1/4 butter
1/4 cup flour (1:1 flour/butter makes roux)
2 cups milk (8:1 milk to roux)
1 1/4 cup cheese

Watch this video - great explanation of bechamel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aeCJGmEXqE

Mix your COOKED pasta with your finished bechamel. It's good to do this in a large bowl to get everything even.

Put in a baking dish, and sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs.

Bake in a 350 degree oven about 20 minutes - wait for the top to brown, and maybe a little bubbly cheese. Everything is cooked already, so you are mostly browning things and making the cheese sticky.

Feijoada

Brazilian style Feijoada can be made from canned black beans. First step is to drain the beans because the syrup that usually comes in the cans won't work.

The ingredients are pretty simple:
- 1/2 Yellow onion
- Green onion
- Garlic
- 2 cans Black Beans
- About 1/2 large Knorr chicken broth cube
- European style sliced bacon

Mise en Place

Dice the yellow onion. Cut the white end of green onion in 1/2 inch long pieces. Cut the green stems of the green onion into small round pieces for a garnish.

If you have time to roast the garlic, that will be best. Otherwise, diced garlic is ok. Worst case, dried garlic powder. Just a little.

Drain the beans and rinse.



The type of bacon is important, most of the flavor comes from the bacon. European style smoked bacon is about the best - it looks like thick slices of ham. It is already cooked, it just needs to be sliced into small squares or rectangles.

Procedure

Sweat the onions and garlic, add the bacon and cook a few minutes. Add the beans and cook to mix flavors.

Boil 1 cup water, dissolve the 1/2 Knorr cube, and pour this on the beans. Simmer about 20 minutes to mix the flavors and thicken slightly.



Done! Serve with Farofa

Salmon Baked Tortillas

(pictures coming soon)

Ingredients:
- Salmon, preferably with no skin
- Large flour tortillas

For a salsa:
- Cherry tomatoes
- oil
- fresh cilantro
- Balsamic vinegar

Optional sides:
- Avocado
- Sour cream

Browning the salmon:

The first step is to brown the salmon in a little oil. Cut the salmon into pieces that will fit inside a tortilla - it is easier to cut them before cooking.  Season the salmon first on both sides with salt and pepper to taste.

Use a non-stick pan, and heat a couple tablespoons of oil very hot.  Vegetable oil is best (corn, vegetable, safflower, etc., just not olive oil). Brown the salmon on both sides for a short time - about 1-2 minutes is enough. It should still be pink and raw in the center, and a little brown on the outside.

If the salmon has skin, there's not much you can do about it - you can brown the skin side a little. An option is to use salmon steaks (as opposed to filets), which have less skin on each piece.

Baking the tortilla:

Preheat the oven to 350.

Place each salmon fillets on a flour tortilla and fold gently. If you have a big enough flour tortilla, you can fold them like a burrito so that no moisture will escape while baking. If you want some fresh herbs, you can add cilantro on the salmon before folding.

Place the folded tortilla on a baking sheet (cover with aluminum foil to make it easier to clean!) and bake for about 20 minutes. IF you want the tortilla to be brown on the outside, you can brush some butter on it. It's not necessary though.

That's it, they are ready to eat in 20 mins.

To make a salsa:

Chop cherry tomatoes in half once. Toss in a bowl with a little oil and balsamic vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Chop some fresh cilantro and toss on top.

Avocados & sour cream: you can dice the avocado and add to the salsa, OR you can just serve the avocado on the side. Sour cream makes a nice topping for the finished tortillas.

Why this recipe works:

This idea came from salmon baked in parchment, which is a typical fancy restaurant dish. The idea is that baking salmon in parchment keeps it moist. It is very common to brown meat or fish and then finish in an oven - this is the same principal. The tortilla keeps the salmon very soft and moist.

Some notes:

It's hard to find Salmon without skin, but if you do that's great. It is possible to cut the skin off with a VERY sharp knife, but it's probably not worth the hassle.

Oil: I recommend not using olive oil in this dish mostly because of the flavor. This is just my opinion. If want to try olive oil, go ahead and if you like it, that's fine.

Home Made Lemonade

Fresh lemonade is made from fresh squeezed lemons and simple syrup. It's important to use simple syrup and not just sugar. This is for a few reasons, one is that it just tastes better, but more importantly, simple syrup is boiled and is sterile. The lemonade will stay fresh longer.

You need:

- 1 cup lemon juice (about 5 lemons)
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 1/2 cups water (for simple sugar)
- 6 cups water (for the lemonade)

First make a simple syrup. Simple syrup is made by boiling roughly equal parts water and white sugar. For this recipe, I used 1 1/2 cups of water and 1 cup of white sugar. Bring it to boil in a saucepan. It is done as soon as it boils. Let it cool, of course.

Squeeze the juice, about 5 lemons makes about 1 cup of lemon juice.

Now mix 1 cup of the simple syrup and 1 cup of lemon juice in a pitcher. This is now concentrated lemonade. It can be stored for a few days in the refrigerator or better yet frozen.

Take this base of juice and syrup and mix with about 6 cups of fresh water, or more or less to taste. Now you have fresh homemade lemonade!

Baby Back Ribs

Ingredients for the rub:
- 8 parts light brown sugar
- 1 parts kosher salt
- 1 part chili powder
- 1 part spice mix: black pepper, dried garlic, bay leaf, dried ancho chili, herb de provance, cayenne pepper, all ground in a mortar and pestle.

For two large racks of baby back ribs, 1/8 cup works out for the parts, e.g., 1 c brown sugar, 1/8c salt, 1/8c chili powder, 1/8c spice mix.




Ingredients for the bbq sauce:
- 1 cup white wine
- 1 tblsp white vinegar
- 2 tblsp worcestershire sauce
- 1tblsp honey
- 2 cloves crushed garlic
* Microwave this mixture for 1 minute to melt the honey

Make a kind of "boat" for the ribs with heavy duty foil. Shiny side out!

Lay them in and rub on both sides liberally with the rub. Meat side up (convex side up).

Close well, and let site AT LEAST 2 hours.

After the ribs marinate in the rub for at least 2 hours, open one end of the aluminum foil boat and pour in the bbq sauce. Bake in an over at 225 degrees for 2 1/2 hours. How do you know they're done? Grab a bone and try to turn it, if it breaks free easily, it is done!

Drain the bbq sauce into a clear dish and let the fat settle to the top for about 20 minutes. Skim off the fat and put the drippings in a sauce pan and reduce to a thick paste. Brush on the ribs, and then broil the ribs just a few minutes to caramelize the bbq sauce. 

Brush the bbq sauce on the ribs and broil a couple minutes - careful it will burn quickly.

Done!

If you want to see the origin for this recipe, it is from an Alton Brown video. Here he explains the entire technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ2nL7VGOFs

Paella

The finished Paella looks awesome!

Probably the biggest challenge to make a good Paella is picking the right ingredients. It's probably one of the harder dishes to shop for. But once you figure out where to get the ingredients, Paella is both easy to make and amazingly delicious.

There are some tricks to picking easy ingredients, but when you find them, they make preparation very quick; for example, pre-sliced mushrooms, canned diced tomatos, and olive & garlic mix are pre prepared ingredients you can buy that shorten the cooking time dramatically. And Saffron. The liquid base is flavored throughout with Saffron.

Basically here are all the ingredients

There are only a few tricks to getting this dish right, but once you have it down, it is actually very easy and can have amazingly savory flavors.

Paella goes really well with any wine - it's not at all finicky. It is good with cabernets, pinot noirs, sangria, and champagne. It is also great with beer and a Caipirinha.

Ingredients:
- linguica, pre-cooked is preferable, about 4 inch piece
- olive oil
- diced tomatos (canned diced tomatoes or fresh)
- about 4-5 chicken thighs with the bone in, skinned
- mushrooms (pre-sliced or whole)
- Paella rice, about 1 1/4 cup
- 1 onion
- a few cloves of garlic chopped coarsely
- olives, garlic, pimento, caper mixture (also called alcaparrado, see notes on this below)
- shellfish; shrimp and/or mussels are nice, about 1/2 lb each
- chicken broth about 2 cups (or beef broth)
- anchovy
- cilantro
- saffron

Notes:
I'll write these notes first, because there are a few tricks to Paella. The right ingredients matter for this dish, and substitutions are not a good idea.
- Paella rice, do not substitute, it is an important ingredient. It is not too hard to find.
- Linguica can tricky. There are a lot of styles. Pre-cooked is preferred, and try to find one that is not too firm, not too soft. The important thing to remember is to buy one that you like, one that tastes fine all alone, and you'll be fine.

- You can find an olive mix in the deli section in jars, or make a mix yourself from the olive bars in a Safeway or Whole Foods. We made this mix ourselves by just going around the Whole Foods olive bar. It turned out awesome because we picked just the ingredients we

We made our own alcaparado from the
Whole Foods olive bar, it was delicious

- You can save a ton of time with canned or bottled ingredients. Diced tomatoes can be found in a can. Mushrooms are easy to find pre-slice now. All these little things can save a lot of time and make this dish more fun and easy.
- Shellfish can be mixed any way you like. Get 2 or 3 that you like. We usually use shrimp and mussels. Clams are fine. So are squid or scallops.
- The main trick in the technique is getting everything done at the same time; the chicken, the rice, the shellfish.
- The only cooking trick is that it is very easy to burn the bottom of the rice, so you have to be careful with the right heat.


Procedure:

Cooking the chicken and linguica

- This recipe goes fast, so it is very important to prep everything first; slice onion and garlic, skin off the chicken, slice linguica, peel shrimp, etc, etc
- Heat the broth to boiling in a separate pan
- In olive oil, brown the chicken thighs and slices of linguica
- After chicken is browned on both sides, toss in onions, garlic and mushrooms, cook a couple minutes
- Toss in paella rice, coat with oil and fat
- Toss in diced tomatoes, olive mixture
- Toss in a few crushed anchovies, you won't actually taste the anchovy, but they will impart a savory flavor to the dish.
- Add in hot broth
- Sprinkle saffron on top, it needs to infuse the broth

Adding the mushrooms and onion

- Turn the heat pretty far down - Cover and simmer 15-20 minutes. This is a tricky heat level, the broth needs to boil, but since you cannot stir the dish at this point, it is easy to burn the rice in the bottom of the pan, so get the heat as low as you can while still boiling gently.

Just added the broth and starting the simmer

- The rice should be near done in 15-20 minutes, put the shellfish in a layer on top, and toss on some cilantro (as much as you like)
- Cover and cook the whole thing another 5 minutes until the mussels open and/or the shrimp are done

Pao de Queijo

Finished Pao de Queijo & Caipirinha's

Ingredients:
-2 cups tapioca flour

-1 cup whole milk
-1/2 cup butter (or margarine)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cups grated Parmesan cheese
- 2 eggs

Put the dough in muffin tins

Pao de Queijo dough

 Procedure:
 1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. In the mean time bring the milk, salt, and butter to a boil in a sauce pan while constantly stirring mixture.
 3. Once boiling remove the mixture of milk, salt and butter from heat.
4. Slowly add tapioca flour, stirring constantly until thoroughly mixed
5. Add the cheese and eggs to mixture
6. Mix until smooth
7. Fill each mini muffin cup all the way up
8. Bake until golden brown, usually about 15 minutes.
You can eat them while hot, they are delicious when fresh! Cooked puffs can be stored, in the fridge as long as it's kept covered and then warmed up on a low setting in a toaster oven.

Baked Rigatoni Pasta

This is a very fast, easy, and especially delicious pasta recipe. We got all the ingredients from Trader Joe's.

The ingredients are meant to all cook in one pan to save clean-up, then there is one baking dish, and that is it. I suppose this could all be done in one large pan like a paella pan, I will try that sometime!

Ingredients:
- Olive oil
- Butter, about 2 tablespoons
- Sliced mushrooms, one bag
- Rigatoni
- Cherry tomatoes, one small basket
- Sausage, about 1lb., (sausage links are fine, cut them open and remove the sausage)
- hard cheese, like reggiano parmasagna, about 1 cup grated fine.
- Marinara sauce (Trader Joe's sauce from a jar is really good and easy for this recipe, or you could make your own of course)
- Garlic
- Herbs (whatever you like, fresh basil is nice), dried herbs are fine (e.g., herb de provance)
- Bread crumbs for topping, 1/4 cup (optional)
- White cooking wine, about 1/4 cup

Chese, tomatoes, and sauce

Procedure:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Boil rigatoni until al dente, make sure it is not overdone, it will cook more when baked later.

This is the part that gets done in one pan:
- Saute garlic in olive oil until light brown and fragrant.

Sautee the mushrooms and sausage

- Add mushrooms and saute with garlic until the mushrooms have a nice light brown color, then add sausage and break up sausage. Cook sausage until done, but not overdone, it should be soft - it will cook more later during baking.
- In the last 5 minutes, add in cherry tomatoes, sliced in half, and cooking wine, and to cook just a few minutes until the tomatoes soften and the wine evaporates.

Combine everything in the baking dish:
- Hopefully the rigatoni is done boiling while you are cooking the sausage - drain the rigatoni and put in a baking dish with the butter, and mix until the butter is melted and the pasta coated.
- Add about 1 cup of Marinara sauce and mix.
- Add in the sausage, mushroom, and tomato mixture and mix well.
- Add in the cheese and mix again.
- This is an optional topping: Mix breadcrumbs with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and herbs - it will be like a paste. Spread it on top and mix a little with the top layer.

Adding cherry tomatoes

- Place the whole thing in the over for about 30 minutes. It will look brown and bubbly when done.

Mix the sausage with the cooked pasta

Ready to go in the oven

Simple Peach Galette

The finished galette

This great looking, and tasting, dessert is also amazingly simple to make. Just a few ingredients, and most of them are pre-made, so it is very simple.

This type of pastry is called a Galette in France. The name is given in general to flat, round, crusty cakes. Well, mine isn't round, but... it's still a galette.

The thing that makes this simple is that the pastry is pre-made, and the peaches come from a can or jar. Just a few other ingredients, and it is done. You can usually find the pastry crust frozen; they can be round, square, and various types. The one I used here is a "puff pastry" meaning it is several layers, and it gets very nice, crusty and crispy when it bakes. A regular pie crust of course would be fine.. and I read a recipe once by the wonderful chef Jacques Pepin, where he actually used a flour tortilla for the crust! How cool is that?



Ingredients:
- Jar of peaches in syrup; save 1/4 cup of the syrup
- Puff pastry - pre-made; usually these are found in a frozen food section
- A few tablespoons of preserves - I used apricot in this recipe
- A few tablespoons of butter
- 1 tablespoon of brown sugar
- 1 oz shot of Cachaca; whiskey or cognac is a great substitute
- parchment paper for baking

The ingredients

Procedure:
- Melt butter, stir in brown sugar, 1/4 syrup from the peaches, and cachaca - simmer this slowly to reduce by about 1/3 or 1/2... watching it to make sure it does not thicken too much or burn; you want the consistancy to be a bit thick so it coats the peaches nicely.
- Lay out the pastry on the parchment paper, and smear on apricot preserves. Fold the edges of the pastry to form a barrier so the juices don't run over the edge. See the picture.
- Arrange the peaches. Also see the picture of the arranged peaches.
- Pour the reduce syrup over the peaches, and sprinkle with a little more brown sugar.
- Bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes; watching it carefully to see it brown nicely. I like to bake on top of parchment paper; this will guarantee that it wont stick on the baking pan and get ruined.
- You can sprinkle some cinnamon on top if desired.

The preserves on the pastry

Arranging the peaches

Impromptu Avocado-Tomatoe Salad

This idea came up from some left over veggies sitting around... It is easy & delicious. We were having steaks, and wanted a cool, refreshing salad to go with.

Ingredients:
- Avocado
- Corn
- Cucumber
- Tomato
- Balsamic Vinegar

Procedure:
- All the veggies should be cut into small pieces to get an attractive mix of ingredients.
- So, dice a couple tomatoes, a cucumber, and an avocado
- For the corn, we had a left over corn-on-the-cob from the day before. I sliced this off the cob, and sauteed over high heat in a little oil. Any kind of oil is fine. Just brown the corn, and let it cool a bit before mixing so it doesn't cook the other veggies.
- Mix everything in a bowl, season however you like (a little salt and pepper for us), and drizzle with a good Balsamic vinegar.

That's all there is to it.

Baked Tomato Pasta

I created this very simple recipe when I moved to California in 1990. As my daughters have grown up, this has always been their favorite family dish. We still make it all the time. The recipe hasn't changed much in the last 22 years.

The secret ingredient is the kind of tomatoes. They need to be a kind of tomato that bakes and caramelizes properly. Roma tomatoes work the best. Sometimes these are also called Italian plum tomatoes. I have tried others, and they require different baking times and temperatures, and sometimes aren't as sweet - so try to find Roma tomatoes.

When the tomatoes are baking, they will taste best if they are cooked just to the point of caramelizing -  they almost look like they are going to burn - then they are perfect. They will taste very sweet.

Ingredients:
- Roma tomatoes, about a dozen
- Parsley
- Garlic
- Olive Oil
- Butter
- Parmigiana cheese
- Fine, long pasta - angel hair or thin linguini

Procedure:
- Slice the tomatoes lengthwise (see picture - Anna is doing a good job on the tomatoes) and place cut side up in a baking dish
- Finely chop about 1/2 cup of parsley, chop several cloves garlic, if you like garlic, 5-6 cloves is pretty good. We usually chop a little extra garlic and save it for garlic bread.
- Season the tomatoes with salt and pepper
- Mix the parsley, a few tablespoons of oil, and garlic together. Spoon about 1/2 of the parsley-garlic-oil mixture over the cut tops of the tomatoes.
- Drizzle the tomatoes and parsley with a little extra olive oil, a few more tablespoons. 
- Bake the tomatoes with the parsley mixture in the oven at 425 degrees F about 60 minutes. Towards the end of the time, watch the tomatoes, they should be very dark, soft and caramelized. Careful, they can burn, you want to bake them right up to the point before they burn.

My Recipe Notebook from 1990!

- While the tomatoes are baking, boil the pasta - it helps to get the past done around the same time as the tomatoes so the pasta is still warm.
- Remove the tomatoes from the oven, toss in a few tablespoons of butter. Mash a couple of the tomatoes, leave a few whole, however you want it is fine.
- Toss the pasta into the tomato dish and mix thoroughly
- Toss over the remaining parsley-garlic mixture, and sprinkle on Parmigiana cheese.
- It's ready to serve!!

Beringela Parmagiana - Eggplant Parmigiana

Beringela is the Portuguese for aubergine. What is aubergine? Well, here in the US it is called eggplant, because in the 18th century some cultivated varieties resembled yellow goose eggs.

The keys to really good eggplant parmigiana are 1) getting the eggplant nice and tender
and then, 2) a tasty sauce.

For the eggplant, bake it first alone on a cookie sheet with a little olive oil until the flesh is pretty soft and browned. There are two tricks here, first, the baking softens and browns the eggplant, and second is that a little olive oil flavors the eqqplant. You've probably noticed before that you can soak eggplant in olive oil and it soaks up a huge amount. So, use that to control the amount of olive oil, and just put in enough to give it a nice flavor but not too much so the dish is too rich. You can do this entirely to your taste.

The sauce used can be the same as my favorite Home Made Pasta Sauce recipe, and you can leave the tomatoes a little chunkier if you want a little more texture. Make a lot of sauce, and then whatever is not used for the eggplant can be saved and used later for a pasta dinner.

Ingredients:
- Eggplants, about 2 medium ones will do
- Use the sauce recipe mentioned above... if you are in a hurry a good jar of sauce will work of course
- hard parmigiana cheese
- breadcrumbs
- oregano (fresh is best)
- Olive oil

Procedure for the eggplant:
- Slice the eggplant into 1cm thick round slices, then slice the rounds in half
- spread out a few tablespoons of olive oil on a cookie sheet and rub both sides of the eggplant in the oil, getting a little on each side. They don't have to be soaked, just covered a bit. Adjust the olive oil to taste - the eggplant will soak this up and you'll be eating it, if you like a lot of olive oil, then use a lot... careful it can get too rich though.
- Bake the eggplant at 375 for about 20-30 minutes until it is dark brown and soft. You can flip it if desired midway.

Assembling & Baking the Eggplant Parmigiana:
- Put a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of a baking dish
- Put a layer of eggplant
- Put a layer of grated parmigiana cheese
- Repeat for at least 3 layers, finish the top with a little sauce and parmigiana cheese
- Toss breadcrumbs in olive oil and some chopped fresh oregano, then spread this on top. If you don't have fresh oregano, use dried oregano sparingly, it can be strong... if you have fresh, use can use alot
- Bake at 375 for 30 minutes, it will be bubbly and brown on top

Variation with mushrooms:

I also like to add cogumelo, which is portuguese for mushroom. The mushrooms I like are Shiitake, because they have a nutty flavor and are very meaty. Any mushrooms would be nice though.

The way to add these is to slice the mushrooms thin and saute them separately until they are cooked pretty well, then layer them along with the sauce and cheese. Very simple addition to this dish that can add another very nice flavor and texture.

Limoncello Batch #17

Limoncello is a variation of Lemoncello with limes instead of lemons. I've tried it a few times and it's a bit more difficult to make because the limes have a more pronounced 'bitterness' and need some work getting the amount of syrup right. If you have a favorite 'family' lemoncello recipe, it probably won't come out perfect first try w/limes. We found the secret in making good limoncello was in making a very concentrated syrup.

Ingredients:
- A dozen limes
- 750ml Everclear
- White sugar
- Distilled water

Procedure:
- Grate the green part of the peel off the limes, careful not to get any white. Use a cheese grater.
- Put the grated lime peels in a jar with the Everclear. This process is called 'macerating' by the way. The limes need to sit in here for a while, let them soak for about a month, gently stirring the jar every few days. Keep it in a cool dark place. The color of the liquid is amazingly beautiful!
- When ready, pour the liquid off through a strainer. You can use coffee filters for this. Usually I strain it through the filters a couple times.
- Boil the sugar in the water. OK, here is the secret amount: 2 cups sugar to 2 cups water. Boil a few minutes and let cool. It will be nice and thick and syrup-y. Let is cool to room temp before using.
- Pour most of the syrup into the lime extract, saving about 1/2 cup. Give it a taste, if it is still bitter, add a little more syrup. The syrup is very concentrated, so you can control the sweetness of your limoncello quite a bit by small amounts of syrup. Just get it how you like it. I suppose you could even make more syrup if you want it sweeter.
- Put this in the freezer, within a day or so it gets nice and thick and ready to drink.
- There is one more step if you are a perfectionist. After a week or so in the freezer, the limoncello will develop some black specs. Traditional Lemoncello (with lemons instead of limes) doesn't do this, and Im not sure why, but of course the only thing it can be is the difference between lemons and limes. So, if you want it to be nice and clear, you can filter it one more time through a coffee filter, and put it back in the freezer.

Some notes:
As you can tell from the name "Batch 17", it took a while to get this recipe right. I learned a lot of tricks. For example, many recipes call for Vodka instead of the more expensive and harder to find Everclear - really the Everclear is much better. Also, the sugar water ratio is very important - I learned that making a very concentrated syrup, with equal amounts of water and sugar, made the lime flavors stand out more because you need much less syrup to get to the proper sweetness.

Gnocchi

Ingredients:
- 3 pounds russet potatoes
- 2 cups flour
- 1 egg

Procedure:
- The most important thing is to get organized, because when the potatoes are done and it's time to mix and cook them, it gets hectic
- Don't peel the potatoes; boil them until done. If they are big, expect 45+ minutes. Test them with a fork, they need to be pretty tender.
- Take the potatoes out of the water and let them cool until they are just cool enough to work with your hands.
- Peel the potatoes, and on a big workspace, mash them with your hands. Mix in 2 cups of flour gently, form a well in the middle and crack the egg in the well.
- Mix the whole thing with your hands. It will be sticky, when well mixed and the stickiness goes away, they are mostly ready.
- The mixture needs to be kneaded, but not too much. 2 or 3 minutes is ok.
- This is where you need to be extra organized; boil a big pot of water, and fill another big pot with an ice bath.
- Put one batch at a time into the boiling water and boil until they float. This only takes a minute or two. One batch is maybe a dozen gnocchi.
- Take the done, floating gnocchi out and put into the ice bath.
- Repeat until all are done.

The gnocchi are now ready to reheat and eat. A nice way to reheat them is in a pan w/olive oil or butter.

Clams & Gorgonzola

I learned this dish from a great local bistro, Cafe Torre.

Very simple to make, and great flavors from the Gorgonzola cheese.

Ingredients:
- butter
- olive oil
- wine (we used white, see note below*)
- Small clams
- garlic
- tomato
- fresh herbs; basil and/or oregano

Cooking:
- dice the garlic and the tomato
- heat olive oil and butter in a pan (about a tablespoon each is enough)
- simmer the garlic until a little brown and the pan is nice and hot, but not too hot to burn the butter
- toss in the clams, if the pan is hot enough, they will sizzle and open in a couple minutes
- this is a good time to season with salt and pepper
- toss in the diced tomato
- the juice from the clams should keep the pan moist and steamy, let them open in their own juices, then add the wine a little later. How much wine? About a half cup, there should be 1/4 to 1/2 inch in the bottom of the pan
- taste and season w/salt if needed
- the clams will eventually open in a few minutes, they are done any time they are open. You can let them cook a little longer, but not too long or they will get rubbery
- take the clams off the heat and serve in a nice bowl or even right in the pan
- just before serving, crumble some gorgonzola over top. How much? Not too much, a couple tablespoons will do, it is a very strong cheese. You can always add more if you like the strong flavor.
- It is nice to toss some fresh herbs over top; basil or oregano would be nice

* A note about the wine. The flavor of the dish will be strongly affected by the flavor of the wine. Don't use a cheap or old and stale wine, the one I used was just "ok", a better wine will be better. The seasoning and gorgonzola masked the flavors, so in the end it was pretty tasty. However, after this I am embarking on a quest to find a good inexpensive white wine for this dish.

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

Crab Cakes

This was an impromptu crab cake recipe that started when I spied a giant can of crab legs at Trader Joe's. It is very easy, and it turned out awesome.

Ingredients:
- canned crab legs
- bread crumbs
- 2 or 3 eggs
- cilantro
- green onion
- cooking oil, like canola
- olive oil
- flour
- a few limes

Cooking:
- Rinse the crab, drizzle with lime or lemon to reduce the fishyness and smell
- Mix the crab legs with egg, bread crumbs, chopped cilantro, chopped green onion, a little olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. We used a few tablespoons of coarsely chopped cilantro and green onion. The trick is to get the right consistency and seasoning. For a large can of crab meat, we used 2 eggs and about 1/4 cup bread crumbs and about a tablespoon of olive oil. The mixture should hold it's shape when formed and be a little sticky.
- Form the crab cakes into shapes and set aside until you prepare the coating. I made cigar-like shapes. Any shape will probably work, but don't make them more than 3/4" thick or the crab won't cook all the way through.
- Mix more bread crumbs with some seasoned flour and spread it out on a flat plate. Only a little tiny bit of flour, like about 1 tablespoon for 1/2 cup of bread crumbs. You will only need enough bread crumbs and flour to coat the crab cakes.
- Beat another egg, dip the crab cakes lightly in the egg and coat with the flour and bread crumbs.
- Fry in shallow, about 1/2", cooking oil turning on each side until brown and a bit crispy. The crab is already cooked, so no need to overdo it. In the time that it takes to brown, the insides get nice and firm and very hot.