This weekend we enjoyed a meal from Portugal. The recipe this time was for a full meal, which meant that our second dessert was on fact enjoyed on Sunday morning instead of Saturday evening with the rest, we were so full.
Dinner was Bitoque, consisting of salad, fries, meat (topped with a fried egg), and rice. It was a lot of food!
The meat was made by marinating the beef in some red pepper paste, salt, and pepper before frying it in the pan. Afterwards we were supposed to leave it in the pan and add butter and dry white wine, but we took it out and reduced the liquids on their own instead like a gravy, missing that we were to leave it in. The meat itself wasn’t bad, but I for one really enjoyed the fried egg that went on top. With the egg a bit runny it added a really nice taste I thought.
The fries were simply potatoes cut into sticks and, though the recipe said deep fried, we chose to bake ours this time. We thought this would be a good decision until we forgot them in the oven in the midst of making everything and they ended up very dark and crispy!
The rice was made by sautéing onions and garlic in olive oil before adding the rice and pepper. After sautéing a couple more minutes boiling water was added and we cooked as usual. The rice was pretty good though not very different from some others we’ve had lately.
The salad was a mix of lettuce, tomatoes, red onion, olive oil, white wine vinegar, black olives, salt and pepper. The salad was very little lettuce and a lot of red onion. I don’t think anyone really enjoyed this, not much of it disappeared. As there was raw red onion that made up most of the dish I didn’t try any, which I was okay with not liking the olives or tomatoes anyways.
https://www.196flavors.com/portugal-bitoque
Our first dessert we ate that night and boy was it good! The Serradura, or sawdust pudding, was very simple to make and will be made time and again. All I did was grind the Maria cookies to a powder which was put in alternate layers with a mix of whipping cream and sweetened condensed milk. This was placed one after another in the dish until it was gone, beginning and ending with the cream.
This was topped with toasted coconut and almond slivers and a touch of cinnamon. I would definitely try other toppings as we make this in the future for, even though really good as is, I’m sure there’s other treasures to unlock.
https://leitesculinaria.com/279815/recipes-serradura-portuguese-sawdust-pudding.html
The second dessert was enjoyed this morning, the Pão de Deus. The buns were made by mixing warm milk, warm water, yeast, eggs, rum, vanilla, lemon zest, flour, sugar, and salt. Once combined, butter was kneaded into the dough and it was dry aside to rise.
After dividing into buns and rising again, we brushed them with a beaten egg and topped them with a mixture of egg, coconut, and sugar. The buns ended up being quite large with a nice toasted coconut crust.
These tasted pretty good though I didn’t taste the rum and one didn’t like the taste of the zest. In the end I don’t know that they will be made much because, although good, they weren’t as good as the Semlor buns and I would make those first.
https://chipabythedozen.com/en/pao-de-deus-portuguese-bread/
Did you knew that Portugal is the oldest European nation, having the same borders since 1136? The Anglo-Portuguese alliance has been in place since 1373 and their flag is meaningful to them- the green being hope, red bloodshed, and shield, victories.
The Portuguese invented tempura and not the Japanese, and peri peri came from there. The largest omelette was made in Portugal, crafted by 55 people and 145,000 eggs.
Women in Portugal live more than six years longer than men and Portuguese is the 6th most spoken language in the world. The largest artificial underwater park is there, The Ocean Revival Park. There are more than 300 days of sunshine annually and finally, the largest wave ever surfed is in Portugal.