Chow Down to Eurovision 2014 - Portugal

Boa Noite this is Portugal calling!

Please let us all welcome Portugal to their first appearance in the Chow Down to Eurovision. YAAAY!!

I have spared no expensive on their debut in the competition with this dish coming directly from Lisbon, well via Facebook.

I met Manel while he was visiting Melbourne many, many years ago through a mutual friend Anne.

We then all caught up again a few years later for a great New Years Eve party in London with a very excellent chilli if I remember rightly (there may have been 1 or 2 beverages consumed).

Being both wonderful cooks and Manel being from Portugal I knew that this was the brains trust I needed to consult.

Manel suggested pork belly and claims to which I replied that he had me at pork belly!

Hopefully we will get to catch up in person again soon to cook and eat more Portuguese food, naturally in the name of Chow Down to Eurovision research.

Portugal's highest placing since first joining Eurovision in 1964 was in 1996 with O meu coração não tem cor sung by Lúcia Moniz who later went on to the hopelessly romantic bilingual relationship with Colin Firth in Love Actually.

They placed 6th.

Portuguese Pork Belly and Clams
Ingredients

• 1kg pork belly (rasher, less cutting)
• White wine dry (about 400ml, enough to cover pork)
• 1-2 tbsp. hot paprika
• 1 tbsp.  sea salt flakes
• 1 tsp. cracked black pepper
• 3 bay leaves
• 8 cloves garlic
• 4 red capsicum
• 2 red onions
• 3 shallots
• 1 cup vermouth
• 1kg clams, cleaned
• 1/2 bunch coriander

Method

• Remove the rind from the pork belly and reserve
• Cut the pork belly into 2cm pieces
• Rub the pork belly with paprika, salt, pepper
• Place in a container and cover with white wine, about 400mls
• Crush bay leaves onto the pork belly
• Add 4 crushed cloves of garlic
• Cover and let marinate overnight
• Roast the capsicums covered in a tray for about 45 minutes in a 160°C oven
• Remove the skin and seeds and add to a jug
• Add 4 cloves of garlic and a pinch of salt
• Blend until smooth
• Pass through a fine sieve to catch any stray seeds (there is always one!)
• Drain the pork belly and pat dry
• Finely chop the onions and shallots
• In a heavy based oven proof pan heat a good swig of olive oil 3-4 tbsps.
• Add the reserved rind to add additional flavour to the oil
• Fry till crisp but not burnt then discard the rind (let's be honest we know what that means, yum!)
• Add the onion and shallots and sauté to soften
• Add the pork belly to brown it (do in batches to avoid over crowding)
• Add the capsicum puree and stir through
• Bake in a 180°C oven for 30 minutes
• Take the pan from the oven and stir through the vermouth
• Add the clams and cover with a lid or tin foil
• Bake for a further 10-15 minutes till the clams open (discard any non openers)
• Serve topped with chopped coriander and a drizzle of olive oil

You can reduce the number of clams, but mine came in a 1kg bag from the fish monger and I wasn't going to waste any.

This pork is also delicious without adding the vermouth and clams as it is all crispy and sticky.

Some warm ciabatta and I could happily be left alone with this dish

Making a return to Eurovision this year after not participating in 2013, Portugal will be represented by Suzy singing Quero ser tua. 

Boa sorte!

I hate snakes, will all year and forever

There is nothing I hate more in this world than snakes. I'm a tad odd, as I can watch a snake in an open area without a hint of Whitney Houston pitched screaming. But put me in a dark enclosed reptile house and I am running for the hills. The strangest part of my "condition" is that is it a million times worse if it is just an image on TV or in a magazine. I would often have to drive past a furniture store called the Cane Cobra and their sign with a badly drawn not remotely realistic image would freak me out. AB has been nothing but a rock when it comes to this phobia, especially when he had to show me every plastic snake in Toys R Us, there wasn't chasing more just running away. So great is my hatred that AB had a dream about there being a snake in our backyard but didn't tell me for weeks in fear that I would put the house on the market that morning.
I am sounding like a total wimp but I have touched a snake, on my 25th birthday at a reptile park. Yep I was taken (the man who hates snakes) to a reptile park for my birthday, this was only topped by my cake which was topped with more plastic snakes than the set of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
So you can imagine my despair about this Chinese New Year starting the year of the snake, I am concerned it will impact on my Yum Cha experience if I have to be constantly on the look out for snakes. With snakes at the end of the hate spectrum, Yum Cha is worlds apart on the absolutely love immensely end...ahhh my poor brain!

The first thing I always get at Yum Cha is the chickens feet, it's like a code to the staff to not just send the spring rolls to this table. It proves you're hardcore and can handle the tendons, jellyfish and tripe, oh then tendons.
In Eurovision terms it means you're not just after ABBA and Lulu, but bring on the Bulgarian stilt walkers.
My other must have item is sui mai, those steamed morsels of pork and prawn goodness. I'm not proud of it but there is probably nothing I wouldn't do for a sui mai......I mean nothing.
I'm late for Chinese New Year but I have been making a couple of inspired dishes, more a homage than truly authentic, and sometimes the eating has gotten in the way of the photography.

Enjoy the year of the Snake, just keep em far away from me.

Seafood Roll
Ingredients

• 250grams green prawn meat
• 200grams boneless fish fillet (I used Basa)
• 2 chopped spring onions
• 1 teaspoon schezwan pepper
• 1/2 thumb ginger grated
• Salt to taste
• Sesame Oil
• 1 packet rice paper
• extra cornflour

Method

• In a food processor add prawn, fish, spring onions, schezwan pepper, ginger, salt and a couple of drops of sesame oil.
• Pulse to mince the prawns and fish, but not into a puree. Some rough bits add texture.
• Wrap a small amount of the mixture (however big or small your like) in the rice paper.
• Coat the wrapped rolls in a little corn flour
• Fry in hot oil for about 5 mins or until firm and slightly golden. You will know when they are cooked by the colour, so you may need to make a few extras to try just to make sure it is right, bonus!
• A tip I learnt for the rice paper is to not over water them, 2 seconds max in the water and then onto a barely damp tea towel.
• The 2 dipping sauces in the picture are quick and tasty, not really cooking more combining.  To 3 parts kewpie mayonnaise add either 1 part sweet chili sauce or kepis manis.
• Bamboo shoots can also be added for extra texture, either chopped separately or towards the end of the pulsing.
• If you would like me to add some pics of how to roll the rice paper, let me know and I'll make it happen

Especially the beans

In the June edition of Feast magazine there was a Brazilian recipe Feijoada (a shredded pork stew in a cast iron pot) where the picture looked so enticing I wanted to lick the page. The list of ingredients included pig’s tail and salt dried beef and smoked sausage. I’m all for exotic ingredients if I can get them, but it has to be with minimal e.g. zero effort. I’m not one for ordering from the butcher, or green grocer, if it’s on the self I’ll take it, if not we are playing a game of substitution. One day I’ll remake this stew and post my understudy version which was page licking good, anyway one of the main ingredients was black beans.

Having left over black beans I started thinking of what could become of them and of course black bean sauce was the natural option. Slight hiccup, black bean sauce uses fermented black beans not their sober cousin, oh well quick trip to the Asian grocers because I was having black bean sauce come hell or high water. The smell of the fermented beans was amazing, so pungent and salty. I’m sure that the other drivers were a pit perplexed as I sat sniffing the bag at the traffic lights. There are numerous recipes for black bean sauce on the internet so just combined the best bits of all of them to suit my taste.

Black bean sauce

·         250g fermented black beans (soaked in water for 20 mins)

·         5 cloves garlic finely diced

·         5cm knob ginger grated

·         2 red chillies finely chopped

·         2 tbsp. spoon soy sauce

·         2 tbsp. Chinese cooking wine

·         1 cup vegetable oil

Method

·         Drain beans and slightly mash

·         Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and heat on medium.

·         I cooked it for about 10 minutes till all the flavours were combined.

·         The oil will split from the sauce but that can be drained off when using sauce.

I used the sauce to cook some seafood in and also marinated some chicken and had that with broccoli noodles. With some of the un-fermented black beans I had soaked I added these to the rice on the seafood stir fry which added nicely to the texture. The stir fry was very fancy with spring onion cake and a marbled egg, perhaps i an watching too much Master Chef.