Sopa de Quinua con Queso (Quinoa and Cheese Soup)

July 28, 2008 | Filed Under Guest Bloggers, Quinoa, Queso Fresco, Cereals/Grains, Cheese, Avocados, Fellow Bloggers, Laylita's Recipes, South American Cuisine, Fruits, Soups/Chowders/Gumbos | 26 Comments

Please help me welcome guest blogger, Layla of Laylita’s Recipes. Thank you, Layla, for being here!

Paz

This is my first time as a guest blogger and I’m very happy that it is for Paz, who has been one of the warmest and friendliest people I’ve met since I started my food blog. I wanted to make something that I would make for her if I lived nearby and could bring it over to help her recover, too bad Seattle is kind of far away from NY, so I made a quinoa and cheese soup that is both tasty and healthy. Soup is the answer to all problems, at least that’s the way it seemed when I was growing up in Ecuador: you’re not feeling too well? Eat your soup. You want to get bigger, taller, skinnier, smarter, etc? Eat your soup. You want dessert? Eat your soup. You want to go outside and play? Eat your soup. You would think I would have ended up hating soups, but I actually really enjoy a good bowl of soup, it’s one of those things that I crave when I’m feeling sick and wish my mom lived next door –instead of 4,500 miles away –so that she could make me some homemade soup.

The first step to making a good soup is the refrito, also known as sofrito, which is the base of the soup, it consists of heating oil or butter –or sometimes lard – and adding onions, garlic, tomatoes (peppers, celery and other vegetables can also be added depending on the soup) along with the spices and seasonings you will use for the soup, I almost always add ground cumin and achiote or annatto powder to my refrito, for this quinoa and cheese soup I also added some dry oregano and ground coriander seeds (which are seeds from the cilantro plant that have been dried). This soup has quinoa - which is healthy and all of that good stuff, but what I like about quinoa is the texture, I love the way the little seeds pop in your mouth -, as well as potatoes, cheese and cilantro, which remind a lot of another delicious soup called locro de papas. Whenever I make a soup that has potatoes in it, I like to add the potatoes to the refrito and let them cook for just a few minutes so that they get just a little bit browned and then add the water or broth. I used queso fresco, which is fresh Mexican cheese that you can find in most supermarkets, but you can also use feta cheese instead, feta is a little bit more salty so adjust the salt according to your preference; and like many other Ecuadorian soups I serve this one with some diced avocado and hot sauce on the side.

Paz, thank you for this opportunity and I wish you a speedy recovery.

Sopa de Quinua con Queso (Quinoa and Cheese Soup)

Laylita’s Recipes

Ingredients:

2 tbs olive oil

2 cups diced white onion, about 1 large onion

4 garlic cloves, crushed

1 tomato, peeled, seeded and chopped finely

½ tsp cumin

¼ tsp achiote powder

1 tsp dry oregano

¼ tsp ground coriander

5-6 potatoes, peeled and cut in small chunks

1 cup uncooked quinoa, pre-washed

8 cups water or broth

1 cup milk

2 cups grated or crumbled queso fresco, can use feta cheese

4 tbs finely chopped cilantro or parsley to garnish

Salt and pepper to taste

Sides – avocado and hot sauce

Preparation:

1. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large saucepan, add the onions, garlic, tomato, cumin, achiote, oregano, coriander, salt and pepper, mix well and cook until the onions are soft, about 8 minutes.

2. Add the chopped potatoes, stir them well to coat them with onions and spices and cook them for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Add the water or broth, bring to a boil.

4. Add the uncooked quinoa, reduce the temperature and simmer until the quinoa and potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes.

5. Add the milk and cheese, stir and cook for another 5 minutes.

6. Add the chopped cilantro or parsley, taste and add additional salt/pepper if needed.

7. Serve warm with diced or sliced avocado and hot sauce.

Grilled Salmon with Avocado Salsa

July 14, 2008 | Filed Under South American Cuisine, Fruits, Avocados, Salmon, Laylita's Recipes, Vinaigrettes/Salsas/Sauces, Fellow Bloggers, Seafood | 16 Comments

I love fish, especially salmon. Funny thing: I pronounce salmon, SAL-MON. I notice Americans pronounce it SA-MON. They leave the "L" out. So, when I say SAL-MON, they look at me funny. LOL! I’m not sure where or how I learned to prounonce it that way but that’s the way I do. Anyway, whichever way it’s pronounced, I love this fish and when I saw the recipe for Grilled Salmon with Avocado Salsa (and a photo of the meal — please, please check out Laylita’s enticing photo.), I couldn’t resist making it. Actually, the Avocado Salsa is what got me. I’d never before heard of anything like that to eat with salmon.

The next day after work, I bought the ingredients and set out to prepare it for dinner. Regular readers know by now that I love simple and easy-to-make meals. This is definitely one. Oh, and another enticing factor about this recipe is that it has cilantro. Hello!? Cilantro! Again, regular readers know that cilantro is my all-time favorite fresh herb. Yes!

Laylita’s recipe calls for the cilantro to be finely chopped. Umm… I didn’t really do that and I clearly added more than the 2 Tbs of cilantro. Next time, I’ll try to follow the recipe better.

The salsa was very easy to put together. No problem.

I got out my grill pan and prepared the salmon. My dogs LOVE fish and started getting excited about the aroma wafting from the kitchen.

Layla suggests the side dish of Ecuadorian rice and or Patacones (thick fried green plantains) to go with the Grilled Salmon with Avocado Salsa. A third thing regular readers know about me, by now, is that I HEART plantain. I didn’t have any plantain at home, so I ate my salmon and avocado salsa with rice. That was good enough. It was mouthwatering delicious. I loved my meal. I loved the Avocado salsa, which was new and different to me. It sort of had a tangy taste, which enhanced the grilled salmon that had been marinated in salt, coriander, cumin, paprika, onions and black pepper. Let me tell you, it tasted so good. I normally only use salt and black pepper when preparing my salmon, so these spices were an added treat to use on the salmon.

The next day, I had some leftover salmon and salsa, so I had it again for dinner. This time I’d bought some yellow (ripe) plantain (kelewele — see photo here), which I fried and ate with the fish. Oh, how I enjoyed my dinner even more. I can’t wait to make this dish again. Thank you, Laylita!

In the meantime, I’m scheduled to have surgery this week –Tuesday. The recovery time is a bit long, so I won’t be able to post any food posts for a while. Some awesome food bloggers have agreed to guest blog for me while I’m recuperating. I’m really excited to see what they have planned for us. I thank my guest bloggers in advance for their kindness. You won’t see me on your blogs for a while but I plan on stopping by as soon as I can.

So see you soon on the blogs and don’t forget to come back here next Tuesday to find out about our first guest blogger.

Best,

Paz

GRILLED SALMON WITH AVOCADO SALSA

Laylita’s Recipes

Ingredients (for 4 people):

2lbs salmon, cut into 4 pieces

1 tbs olive oil

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp paprika powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp black pepper

Avocado Salsa

1 avocado, peeled, seeded and sliced

1 small red onion, sliced

3 mild hot peppers, seeded and deveined, diced or sliced

Juice from 2 limes

3 tbs olive oil

2 tbs finely chopped cilantro

Salt to taste

Suggested sides — Rice (rice Ecuadorian style)and patacones (thick fried green plantains)

Preparation:

1. Mix the salt, coriander, cumin, paprika, onion and black pepper together, rub the salmon fillets with olive oil and this seasoning mix, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

2. Pre-heat the grill.

3. Combine the avocado, onion, hot peppers, cilantro, lime juice, olive oil and salt in a bowl and mix well, chill until ready to use.

4. Grill the salmon to desired donesness.

5. Serve the salmon topped with the avocado salsa, and with rice and patacones or thick green plantain chips on the side.

Pollo con Papas a la Florencia/Florencia’s Chicken and Potatoes

June 16, 2008 | Filed Under Argentinean Cuisine, Potatoes, South American Cuisine, From Argentina with Love, Christine Cooks, Poultry, Fellow Bloggers, Cuisines | 13 Comments

I’ve written about how Christine’s Sunday Night Whole Roasted Chicken tastes so good that I’m unable to spare a few minutes to take a photo for the blog. I’ve made the roasted chicken several times since writing about it on the blog, and each time, I want to eat it immediately! No time to stop and take photos. Forget that.

Well, I’ve found another winning roasted chicken recipe that Rebecca of From Argentina with Love shares with her readers — Chicken and Potatoes. When I finished making the Chicken and Potatoes, I mustered all my human strength not to eat the chicken immediately. This time I was able to spare a few seconds to photograph the Chicken and Potatoes. Just barely. This simple Roasted Chicken dish was soooo tasty. As Rebecca described, the potatoes did have an extra tang, which made it extra special. She shares the secret to the delicious potatoes in the recipe below.

So… Now, I have two AWESOME roasted chicken recipes. Yay for me!

Paz *excited*

Pollo con Papas a la Florencia/Florencia’s Chicken and Potatoes

From Argentina with Love

Rebecca’s note:

Florencia made this for me as one of my first meals the first time I met her, and I had never tasted anything like it! Since then, it’s one she knows will be a hit, and she makes it anytime we visit. It’s one of the most satisfying meals I can think of–and the simplest to prepare! The secret is the white wine–it gives the potatoes an extra tang.

one whole chicken, cleaned

coarse salt

pepper

one lemon

olive oil

1 cup dry white wine

5 cloves garlic, peeled but still whole

5 russet potatoes, peeled and sliced into ‘fries’

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Rinse the chicken and remove the packet inside. Put the chicken in a baking pan, and drizzle olive oil over the chicken, rubbing it into the skin. Squeeze the juice of the lemon over the chicken, and stuff the lemon halves into the cavity. Salt and pepper the chicken to taste.

Meanwhile, put the cut potatoes in a bowl and drizzle in olive oil, using your hands to mix them around so that they are lightly coated in oil. Salt liberally.

Put the potatoes around the chicken in the casserole dish. Place the garlic cloves around in the potatoes. Bake for about 40 minutes. After this time, pull the chicken out, and pour the wine over the potatoes. Increase the oven temperature to 450 degrees. Return the chicken to the oven, rotating the pan, for about 30 minutes more, testing for doneness using a meat thermometer, 170 degrees.

Empanadas of the Month! Empanadas Mendocinas (Mendoza-Style Empanadas)

June 8, 2008 | Filed Under Empanada of the Month, South American Cuisine, Argentinean Cuisine, From Argentina with Love, Food Blogging Events, Cuisines | 22 Comments

I’ve always had a challenging time making empanadas. So far, I’ve made them a total of three times. The dough I make from scratch is always thick because I have a problem rolling it out properly. One time, I tried to make a dessert empanada. I had a different kind of problem with the dough. Instead of too thick, it was too sticky. Ugh! My empanadas tasted good but not very good-looking. Since I always seemed to have a challenging time making the empanada shell, I stopped making them, even though I love to eat them.

When Rebecca of From Argentina with Love announced a food blogging event called Empanadas of the Month, which she was hosting, I decided to rise to the challenge again. In this monthly event, Rebecca provides a new empanada recipe for us to make. The first recipe is for a classic Mendoza-style empanada. Rebecca’s husband and friend, Carina, are from Mendoza, Argentina.

According to Rebecca, Mendoza-style empanadas are baked, instead of fried. They are filled with seasoned ground beef, green olives and a slice of egg. Then the empanada is sealed with a special technique called ‘repulgue’, where the edges of the empanada are folded and pressed repeatedly until they create a decorative pattern.

Rebecca provided a video with her friend Carina narrating, in Spanish, how to seal the empanadas using the repulgue technique.

"¡Perfecto!" (Perfect!), "¡Muy bien!" (Very good!), "¡Eso!" (That’s it!), Carina would encourage as Rebecca performed a perfect repulgue style technique on the empanadas. At the end, Carina and the video guy applauded Rebecca for her excellent work.

I would have loved my own cheering empanado-making team with me. With that in mind, I tried to recreate what I saw on the video. I even imagined that Carina encouraged me. "Perfecto, Paz!" "¡Muy bien, Paz!" "¡Eso, Paz!" "Applause!"

*sigh* It didn’t quite work out well. You should have seen me trying to do the repulgue technique. It was quite hilarious, actually. I think the technique I performed was something that could only be called the ‘Paz Pathetic’ technique. I think I’ll have to go to Carina’s kitchen for a personal lesson. In the meantime, I did the best I could.

So, here are my humble empanadas Mendocinas. They didn’t turn out bad at all.

Oh! By the way, I used the ready made, store-bought dough for the empanadas. Interesting note: Rebecca calls them ‘tapas’ but when I went to the store asking for ‘tapas’, everyone gave me a strange look and one store employee flat out told me he didn’t know what I was talking about before turning his back on me. After searching on my own, I found the dough, which was called ‘discos’ (para empanadas)/disks (for empanadas). Ahhh! Interesting! I suppose they have different names for the dough in different places.

The dough tasted fine but I like the idea of making my own, which I think would tasted much better. So, I’ll start practicing how to make it again, one of these days.

All in all, I’m happy about my Mendoza-style empanadas. I’m ready for my applause.

Thanks Rebecca. This was fun.

Paz

Ed. Note: Rebecca has posted a roundup of the works of those who participated. You can find delicious-looking empanadas here.

Receta por Empanadas Medocinas de la familia Oliva-Quiroz

Mendocino Empanadas from the Oliva-Quiroz family

From Argentina with Love

For the filling:

2 lbs. ground beef

1 cup shortening or lard (you can add less or omit this if necessary)

2 lbs. onion

3 Tablespoons smoked paprika

4 teaspoons cumin

green olives, pitted and cut into slices, as many as is necessary

3 hard-boiled eggs, cut into rounds

salt and pepper to taste

crushed red pepper, to taste

For the construction: A glass of water 1 egg, beaten flour for the pan The meat can be made a day in advance. Put the onions, sliced finely in rounds, in a frying pan and salt them. Add the ground beef and cook, then add salt and pepper to taste. Next add the lard and mix well, so that it’s incorporated-the lard, the meat and the onion together. when it’s all cooked, add the crushed red pepper (to taste) and the cumin and mix well. When the mix is ready, let cook and add the paprika and stir well.

The assembly: Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Put the tapas on a flat surface, lightly floured. With a tablespoon, put a little of the meat filling in the center of the dough round. Add a slice of the olive and a piece of the hard boiled egg.

Then moisten the edge on the top half of the round with a little water on your finger. Fold the bottom half of the dough up until the edges meet and seal with your fingers by pressing down. The empanada should have a half-moon shape.

Use the palms of the hands to pack the filling firmly in the center. Next, fold the edges with the Repulgue: using your fingertip, fold one corner of the empanada over, pressing down firmly. Go to the edge again and repeat, pressing firmly each time. Go around the edge of the empanada and you’ll get a spiral pattern.

Beat an egg in a shallow dish and paint the top of each sealed empanada so that when they bake, they have a shiny, golden shell. Spread flour lightly over several cookie sheets, and place the finished empanadas on top. Put the empanadas in to bake for 12 to 15 minutes-they should be sizzling and very golden brown on top. Take out and eat very carefully while hot!

Berenjena Asada/Grilled Eggplant

June 2, 2008 | Filed Under From Argentina with Love, Argentinean Cuisine, South American Cuisine, Eggplant, Foods I Never Liked Before Until I Started to Cook, Vegetables, Fellow Bloggers, Cuisines | 12 Comments

Lately, I’ve been enjoying a relatively new food blog by Rebecca of From Argentina with Love. It’s a lovely blog that gives her experience in Argentina and mouth-watering recipes, and mesmerizing photos.

In one post, she wrote a story about how she and her husband got into an accident with a truck driver. Interestingly enough, later, the truck driver shared his lunch with them — marinated eggplant, which his wife had made for him. Rebecca described it as the best eggplant she’d ever tasted. I very much loved the story and the look and sound of the meal that I decided to make it.

Well, I’m sad to write that my marinated eggplant dish did not turn out well at all. It seemed relatively simple enough to make, but I apparently took some wrong turns on my cooking adventure road. I cooked the eggplant too long and I think I left the fire too high that the poor eggplant practically fell apart. It didn’t look appetizing at all and unfortunately it tasted even worse. I kept it in the fridge for five days before finally acknowledging that it really belonged in the garbage.

Later, Rebecca posted another interesting and easy-sounding eggplant recipe — Berenjena Asada/Grilled Eggplant. I could handle that, I thought to myself. I set out to make it. This time, it was smooth sailing for me. No problems. And my grilled eggplant tasted delicious! Yes!

I’m definitely going to try making the marinated eggplant again. I’m pretty sure that I’ll do a better job the next time around.

Paz

Grilled Eggplant

From Argentina with Love

2 eggplants, washed and cut into 1/2 inch thick rounds

coarse salt

crushed red pepper

oregano

olive oil

Put the eggplant rounds in a roasting pan and sprinkle abundantly with salt. Let them ’sweat’, and then drain them. Drizzle generously with olive oil, and sprinkle with oregano and crushed red pepper. Place on the grill, over indirect heat, until soft in the center — they will appear juicy and have grill marks.