Sunday, December 18, 2016

Cooking in Brazil

Ola,

It's been a crazy year with lots of big changes.

I recently moved to Brazil.

And started cooking a lot.

The ingredients are a bit different here, however more or less similar.

I've taken a stronger stance against packaged foods. Hence have started making more foods from scratch.

I've been making cakes almost every day. I know sugar isn't the best, however it seems that people here are enjoying it, and have been requesting them :) So, any chance to make vegan sweets for people who otherwise aren't vegan, I think is a good thing.

Some of the foods I have made this week are:

Lasagna -- home made whole wheat pasta -- found a recipe here http://minimalistbaker.com/homemade-vegan-pasta/, for the ones I made, I only used whole wheat.
Tofu Ricotta -- http://allrecipes.com/recipe/229285/tofu-ricotta/ I used the juice of one whole lime, plus some agave for sweetness and a few cloves of garlic.
Lentils -- I cooked lentils in the bare amount of water so they remained al dente, and added some smoked paprika along with this middle east seasoning mix that I have from India, which has cumin , coriander and a few other spices.
10 tomatoes -- I boiled these tomatoes down, plus 1-2 tbsp of basil, 2 tsp oregano, 1 tsp salt, a little bit of agave, and juice of half of a lemon, plus I added a vegetable here called chuchu, otherwise known as chayote in English. I hadn't seen this vegetable before coming here, also a zucchini could be substituted.
brazilian pumpkin (a small regular pumpkin could be substituted) pumpkins here are a blackish color and the quality of them when they are baked is unbelievable, they are creamy and super tasty.
I cut into 1 " pieces and baked for 30 minutes

I wanted to make a sunflower cheese for the top, however I ran out of time and I was starving.

After cooking the pasta, I layered pumpkin, lentils, tofu and then the tomato sauce, followed by more pasta, pumpkin, tofu and another layer of tomato sauce. I would have liked to put some cashew or sunflower cheese on top, but ran out of time.

The recipe I would have gone for would have been.

1/2 cup ground cashews or sunflower seeds, 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of veggie broth, 1-2 tbsp of tapioca starch, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp lemon juice-- I probably would have played with the flavorings.. but this is roughly what I would have tried to do. And then topped the lasagna.

I baked the lasagna for 20 minutes at something like 250 celcius.

Some things that I miss quite a bit here, okay one thing that I miss a lot is nutritional yeast. They have their own version of nutritional yeast here, it tastes like beer. It's okay, however I really miss the kind that is easily found in the states.

Would be nice to know how to get it here :)

I also made 'tacos'

Chili powder is not available here, but I learned essentially it's paprika, cumin, oregano, and garlic powder maybe some cayenne pepper.. however tastes are fairly mild, people here generally don't eat much spice as I've noticed, at least not the people I've been generally spending time with here in the south.

I used kidney beans, 6 tomatoes, 1 zucchini, the seasonings listed above and lime juice, I would have added cilantro but wasn't available at the store.

I also made a sunflower seed sour cream.
I soaked about 3/4 cup of sunflower seeds, and then blended them with lime juice, garlic powder and some salt. I also chopped up some onion and tomato for a pico de gallo, added some salt, and lime juice.

I tried to make my own tortillas but unfortunately they were a failure, they tasted fine, but they were more like crackers? I used only whole wheat,  maybe they needed a more refined flour to have worked properly? I'm not sure.

Will post cake recipes soon :) 

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Bread

My sister in law made dinner for our family last weekend. My husband and I had just finished a four day mostly juice fast.  Our day looked something like this:

Breakfast:
Lemon water
Green tea
Pineapple kale juice
(1/2 pineapple, 6 kale leaves, 10 romaine leaves, 1" ginger)

Lunch:
Cilantro apple cabbage juice
(1/4 cabbage, half bunch cilantro, 2 apples, 10 romaine leaves)

Snack:
Watercress carrot juice
(1/2 bunch watercress, 10 romaine leaves, 5 carrots, 1/2 bunch parsley, 1/2 lemon)

Dinner:
Large salad
romaine lettuce, basil leaves, cilantro, fennel bulb thinly sliced, grapefruit, lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper

Anyway by day 4 I was pretty hungry for more substance.

My sister in law made this amazing bean pasta which I need to get the recipe for.
She also made bread with a red pepper spread, and a beautiful cabbage salad.

Unfortunately I don't have these recipes, but it was pure joy to eat!

I decided to make bread too after this.

Making bread does take some time, but oh is it sooo worth it!
I doubled this recipe...

Sandwich bread:
2 1/4 tsp dry active yeast
1/4 cup warm water
2 tbsp sugar
1 cup water
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tbsp oil

Let the active yeast, sugar and the warm water sit for 10 minutes. Then add the rest of the water, salt and oil.  One cup at a time add the flour.  Knead with your hands until it's elastic. Then put into a bowl and let rise for 1 hour. After 1 hour knead the air out of it, and let rise again for 15 minutes.
Oil a tray to put the bread onto, and put some oil on the outside of the bread.  Preheat the oven to 375 F.  Bake the bread for 25 minutes. Cool the bread on a rack for 10-15 minutes.

This bread possibly was a terrible idea, because now it's hard to want to eat anything else!

lol.

Bread plus vegan butter (earthbalance) plus daiya block mozzarella cheese. Is amazing. I never used to like vegan cheese, and then I never used to like any vegan cheese that wasn't thoroughly melted. But
either my taste buds have changed or this cheese is plain amazing.

Bread. butter. cheese. it is so good. lol.
oh also, I've enjoyed it with yellow mustard too, I know that's probably gonna be way too weird for some people, but I guess I just really love mustard.

For breakfast lately I've been having raw granola -- Go Raw: Raisin Crunch, Sprouted Granola
with this almond horchata, that is also pretty amazing.

Anyway, lazy food days that's for sure.

:)