Cavaquinha ( brazilian lobster ) in white carrot mash

Today, I've cooked a wonderfull cavaquinha, also known as brazilian lobster.
It came very well with the white carrot and coconut slices.
Also, to add some crispness I've done a white corn and Dendê oil farofa, which is the white corn flour toasted in a pan with a kind of oil.
There is no recipe at all.
Sauteé the cavaquinha, cooked the white carrots with azafran and mashed with butter, fresh coconut stripes on top and voilá.

Dinner at Noma - Winter 2011

This post is entirely dedicate to the best dinner I have ever had in my life. It was at the restaurant Noma, in Copenhagen, Denmark and is considered the best restaurant of the World.
And from what I have seen, both working there, and eating, it really is one of the best restaurants in the globe. The food is absotutely great, probably the closest to perfection I will ever find in my whole life. The service is polite, without being too over you. And the atmosphere, with the simple tables and chairs, let you know that the important thing is the great food, not nice decoration or beautiful places.
To start of, 11, yes eleven , bite size starters, with the most different tastes, textures and so on.
So here goes the starters:


Moss and cep


Blue Mussels


Cookies and Cheese


Leek and Parsley


Potato and chicken liver


Pickled and smoked quail egg


Radish soil and grass


Toast and herbs, smoked cod roe and vinegar


Cod liver

Now you must be counting, and yes we are missing 2 starters, the Malt flatbread and juniper and the Pork Skin with black currant. Sorry, we couldnt wait 10 seconds for pictures so we ate them before.
Everything was bite size, mostly finger food. Perfect starters. Couldnt say anything bad about any of those. The mix of textures, tastes, everything was magical. The highlights here goes for the Cod liver, the Pork belly and the Smoked Quail Egg.

Then, we move on to the actual dinner. A 12 course menu, of those 3 desserts, telling about the Scandinavian cuisine and using all the Nordic ingredients at the best.


Apple and Jerusalem artichoke, Garden Sorrel and coriander.
This cute dish was basically a passing dish, mouth washing. Acidic flavors, very juicy, to clean your mouth from the starters, to get you ready for the real deal.


Sea Urchin and Cream Cucumber and elderflower.
It was a very interesting dish, I would say. The sea urchin tasted great with the cucumber 'sorbet' and the elderflowers, a cold dish, full of flavor. The only downside was, to my mother, the texture of the sea urchin. For me, it was overall a great dish.


Bio dynamic grains and watercress Dried scallops and beach nuts.
For me, one of the stars of the night. The dried scallops are so crispy, and full of flavor. Its brilliant. I loved every single thing about this dish. Also, the idea of bringing a new texture to an old flavor is something that i really love.


Chestnut and Löjrom (Bleak Roe or Kalix Caviar)
Probably, if not for sure, the dish that I liked the most. Raw chestnuts, in a white butter sauce, with Kalix Caviar. It sounds quite hard to imagine all that together. But when you get to taste, it is certainly a dish that I wont forget anytime soon. The sweet of the chestnuts, the brilliant white butter sauce, and the salty of the Kalix caviar, made this dish one of the best things I have ever tried in my entire life. Full of flavor, textures, its really hard to describe what felt to eat this at Noma


Onion and lemon thyme and goose berry juice.
One of the most simple dishes in Noma, if not the simpler. It is basically roasted onions in clarified butter, with lemon thyme and goose berry juice. And it is absolutely amazing that with those ingredients, the dish is so nice, really good. The melting onions, the really acidic lemon thyme and the sweet and sour goose berry juice. Dishes like this show that the chef is brilliant. It takes a lot of knowledge and skills to come up with something so brilliant with so few and simple ingredients.

Unfortunately I had a problem with my camera and some of the pictures are not good, pretty much dark and you can not see anything. Which is really disappointing, but I will try to explain the missing dishes the best I can.
The following dish was Pike perch and Cabbage.The roasted cabbage stuffed with the pike, was one of the best of the night as well. The fish was cooked to perfection and went really well with basil. Also, some stems of dandelion, cooked in clarified butter, really helped the pike to gives out all the potential. A brilliant dish, a true shame I dont have the pictures.

The next dish, which I dont have pictures as well was the Celeriac and truffles.
A simple, but great dish. Basically roasted celeriac with Swedish truffle sauce


Pickled vegetables and bone marrow.
This is mainly a 'passing dish' to clean the palate to the main course. But it is a truly brilliant pickles dish. 7 types of vegetables, including shallots, carrots, beetroot and celeriac. And on top of that, a brilliant hay smoked bone marrow. To finish, a lovely presentation of the dish. What else can you want from food? Great taste, lovely looking.

The main course.
Unfortunately, no pictures. A shame. A real masterpiece. Wild duck and beets, beech and malt. Perfect cooked wild duck chest, soft beets and apples, both roasted, and lovely slices of beetroot. Malt on top of all that. The combination of the sweetnes of the beets, with the malt, and the soft and tasty duck chest, made this dish something really close to perfection. A wonderfull dish, worth all the time you have to wait to go to Noma. Mind blowing. Hard to find words to describe.

Now, its desserts time.


Gammel Dansk
Meaning old dansk, this is the name of a very famous Danish liquor. Very herbal taste. The white part is made of frozen yogurt. The green sauce tastes a lot like Jaggermeister, with the very sour of the frozen yogurt.


Pear Tree.
In my opinion, this was the downside of the evening. The dish was a roasted pear with herbs and a Pine parfait. The pear was absolutely lovely, but the pine parfait had a too herbal taste that i couldn't enjoy.


Potato and plum
A brilliant dessert. Mashed potatoes, with a plum jam and plum seeds cream. The combination of the plum jam and the potatoes is great. To finish that, the lovely cream of plum seeds, with the taste of cherries ( yes plum seeds taste and smell like cherries) made me really love this dessert. By far the best of them. Once again, only 2 ingredients, but taken to another level. Who would imagine that potatoes and plum would go so well together.



Little sweet treats. Potato chips in dark chocolate and fennel seeds and Cookie and yogurt under a chocolate cover. Also, a bone marrow caramel , which i do not have pictures.

Thats all guys. Sorry about the missing pictures, and aswell the quality of the pictures. I have a policy to not take pictures with flash lights in restaurants, because I find that very rude toward the other guests.
This was the best dinner I had in my entire life. I really appreciate that my parents gave me the opportunity to be with them this night. Thank you very much Carlos and Catia. Love you guys.
Thanks for reading, sorry for such a long post, but it was a long dinner ( nearly 4 hours total). Hope you enjoyed reading my comments and the pictures.

Smørrebrød at Kanal Cafeen

Following my dad's suggestion, I took this afternoon to taste something from the danish culture, the famous Smørrebrød.
The Smørrebrød is basically a open faced sandwich, with 1 slice of bread and thousands of different toppings.
After researching for a while on the internet, found a couple of websites suggesting places to go, nice local restaurants and stuff like that.
I chose the Kanal Cafeen which was the closest to my hotel. Wonderful choice. Got there, the place was full, and also fully booked for lunch. Luckily I got a place. The menu had easily over 20 options of Smørrebrød. Really hard to chose as all of them seemed very interesting.
After a couple minutes of thinking, I decided to go to something I found very interesting and never tasted before.
It was the Lamb Belly rolled with spices and cured in the rye bread. The lamb was great and really similar to the Italian Porchetta I would say.
Well enough talking, I also took 2 pictures, hope you guys enjoy.

Noma - Week 2 and 3

The days are going so fast. And its already week 3, and 1 more to go only.
Luckily this week I got to see more the dishes, plate them up, and feel the sensation of how is to work in the best restaurant of the world.
I mean, everything here is done with so much care, with so much work put in, which makes me have no doubts on why this is the best restaurant of the world.
Not only work, but what else makes this restaurant unique is a thing called " Saturday Night Projects" where the stagiers and chefs make a dish and everyone gives a try and tell opinions, likes and dislikes. It`s a true learning night. You get to see food from everywhere in the world, different techniques, ingredients, colours, tastes, presentations.




The dishes are wonderful. Unfortunately I dont remember what they really are, since that day i wasnt feeling very great, though I stayed to see all the brilliant work from my work friends.

Noma Stage - Week 1

I`m not here to post any recipes or anything like that today. Im just here to make a diary of my experiences as a stagier at Noma.
The 1st week gone so fast, it`s even hard to describe all that happened.
The restaurant enviroment is so friendly and it is surely a really nice place to be. I`m learning so much, and seeing so many new stuff that really makes me like every single second I spend there.
For the first 5 days I`ve been here, i got to see all the production part of the kitchen, helping with the mise-en-place and doing some dishing up.
Despit the really long hours, I`m having such a great fun, always talking about cooking and techniques either with the chefs or the other stagiers.
Tomorrow, a new week of work will start. Hopefull I will get to see and do different stuff.

Brazilian independence day meal

Yesterday, 7th of september was brazilian independence day, so I decided to do a little cooking to my family. The meal was prety simple, nothing really hard to cook. Just plain ingredients, fresh and good tasting.
For starters we had sautee scallops with garlic and basil butter.




Then we moved to the main course. A wonderful lobster tail, with Casarecce pasta in rosé champagne and onions sauce.
I baked the lobster in medium heat oven, just added salt, pepper, parsley and olive oil. Nothing else.
Hope you guys like the pictures. If you have any suggestions to what I should be cooking next weekend, please do.


Thanks for visiting my blog.

Deep fried egg yolk

Hello my friends. After a real long time I'm back to posting here what I've been doing the past few months. Unfortunately my awfull memmory makes me forget almost everytime to take pictures of what I've cooked.
Even tho, I still got a couple recipes with pictures up on my computer and I will upload them in upcoming days.
This photos are of a breaded and deep fried egg yolk. As you can see, the yolk is fried, with a crust on the outside, and still creamy inside, and tastes absolutely great.


If you guys get curious about the recipe, leave some comments so I post a how-to-do this on the next post.
THanks for reading.
Pedro R.

Busy times

After a long while, im back here to post a little bit of what im currently doing with my life.
At this very moment im at Lasarte Oria ( Spain ) working in the Martin Berasategui's restaurant. It's considered one of the 50 best restaurants in the world, and has 3 Michellin Stars.
I've been here for around a month and have learnt alot about cooking. Unfortunately, due to personal problems, i cant stay here any longer, but it was a great experience a huge step on my career.
Hopefully i will use the new techniques I've learnt here to you guys.
Thanks for visiting my blog, hope you enjoyy.

Paella Valenciana

Hello everybody out there.
Last weekend I bought rabbit and was wondering what to do with it.
Well, too many options came in to my head, but none were as interesting as the Paella.
It is quite a simple recipe, very traditional, but i really like the taste.


(sorry image is not that good)

Ingredients you will need:
750g of chicken legs
1 medium-sized rabbit
5 grated tomatoes ( yes you can grate tomatoes leaving the skin behind)
20g of chopped garlic
500g of Spanish rice ( i don't know how you guys call it out there so i'm sorry )
165 grs. wide green bean
1 level teaspoon of saffron
1 level teaspoon of sweet red paprika
And enough water to cook the rice ( i'm not sure exactely, but should be 2 times the rice, abit more maybe)
Olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan.
Salt and pepper

Method:
Heat and paella ( or anything kinda alike ) pan with olive oil. Add all the chicken and the rabbit. Keep moving the pieces of chicken and rabbit around untill they are nearly fully cooked. Make a gap in the middle of the pan. Add the garlic, then paprika. Cook for about 20 seconds, then add the beans, then the tomatoes.
Add all the water, the saffron and leave it cooking for about 20 minutes.
To finish, add all the rice and cook untill its soft.
Turn off the heat and leave it resting for 10 minutes.
Then serve.
Thats it, it shouldn't take more than 1h 30 min to 2 hours.
Hope you guys liked, and try this at home :)

Updating.

Well, after leaving the blog alone for a couple of weeks, I'm here today to tell more about a culinary course I've done 2 weeks ago in argentina.
The course was focused, basically, on Sous Vide ( Vacuum ) cooking and Modern Cuisine.
Both were very usefull to me, teaching me techniques I haven't got much in contact before.
In a professional kitchen, where food has to be done in large scale, equipments such as Roners and a Vacuum chamber ( or machine ) are really helpfull. In my opinion, fish and vegetables get cooked to perfection without much trouble using them. But, everything has a bad side, in my opinion, beef, duck and other stuff don't get as good as they do when you old style cook them.

This is the roner, it basically keep the water in a exact temperature, without great cahnges, perfect for stuff that needs to be cooked for a long time, or requires an certain temperature.


This is the chamber to remove the air, you basically put the food in special bags and this chamber will remove all the air, maximizing the taste and the smell of the food.


Well, to avoid gigantic posts, later on I will post more about the so called modern cuisine.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed.

Orange Risotto and shrimp sautée

Been quite busy lately, so i have less time to cook and post.
But hopefully i will be back on here fully in a couple of weeks.

Well, this recipe came out better than i thought and the orange risotto is quite good, specially because I did it for the first time ever, so i didnt have time to adjust and modify it to make even better.



Well, here we go to the recipe then.

100g of arborio rice.
Juice of 2 oranges.
Zest of those 2 oranges.
50g of onions.
50 ml of olive oil.
Around 600 ml of vegetable stock (homemade preferably)
Salt and pepper as you like

Well, this Orange Risotto is basically the same as every risotto, but instead of using wine, we use the orange juice. So first of all, with around 20ml of olive oil, sautee the onions, and then the rice. Leave for about 5 minutes. Add all the orange juice and keep mixing untill it gets dry. Add the salt and pepper.
Add the stock every once in a while and keep mixing.
When its cooked to your taste, add the rest of the olive oil and mix, so it gets more creamy and tastes better.
For the shrimps, just sautee it as you like.

Salt Cod a la portugese style.

Well, this dish is a really traditional dish in portugal ( of course i had to chance some bits ) and I've learnt how to do it with my grandma, she is portuguese but moved to Brazil like 50 years ago.
Once again, this dish is pretty simple and it tastes absolutely nice.
I used Salt Cod, but if you want, you can do it with fresh cod. The result will be very simmilar.
If you using Salt Cod, you will have to put it in a bowl with water 24 hours before cooking it, to get rid of the excessive salt. Don't forget to change the water every 3 or 4 hours.
Now lets move in to the recipe.



What you need: ( to serve 5 )
1kg of salt cod
200g of chalots
300g of potatoes
200g of cherry tomatoes cut in half.
150g of aspargus
75ml of olive oil
50g of sugar

Method:
well, the salt cod gets cooked in 5 minutes, so that will be last.
First of all, cook the potatoes till they are nearly done ( i like to keep its skin, tastes nicer in my opinion). Then for the chalots, you have to boil water with sugar. Once the water is boiling add the chalots and leave there to cook for around 5 - 10 minutes. This will make them feel less acid and taste smoothier. Then, cook the aspargus in boiling water for around 5 min ( depends how big they are ). Once everything is cooked, put everything in a oven pan, with the potatoes on the bottom, then the cod, then the challots, then cherry tomatoes and aspargus on top. Put the olive oil on top of the apargus, in order to it fall everywhere, specially on the cod . Pre-heat the oven at around 160 degrees. Put the oven pan in for around 15 minutes, or till the cod is done.
There you go. Portuguese cod easy and simple.

Cherry Tomato Risotto

Well, i must admit. Risotto is what i like to cook the most. And this Tomato cherry risotto i mentioned in my first post, the Lamb Carre.
Risotto is a traditional italian food, therefore there are many steps that you have to follow in order to have a decent quality risotto.



First thing is the 'brodo', that means stock. It demands a homemade stock. My standard stock is 2L of water. 1 onion choped in 2 pieces. 2 carrots in pieces and any herbs you like.
Boil the water with those ingredients for 30 min and there is a good quality stock.

What you need for the risotto: ( serves 4 )

300g of risotto rice (arborio)
1/2 onion chopped into small pieces
100g of butter
50g of parmesan cheese
1L of stock
100g of cherry tomatoes cut in half.
50ml of white wine

Method:
Melt half of the butter. Add the onions and the rice. Saute it for about 5 minutes.
Add all the wine at once, and mix well. Keep mixing untill the wine evaporate completely. Now keep adding the stock every once in a while. It should take around 15 minutes to the rice gets cooked, but it still should remain a little bit hard inside. Turn off the heat. Add the cherry tomatos and mix well. Add the rest of the butter and mix it well. Add the parmesan cheese and mix it well.
There you go.

Truffled Spaghetti and Shrimp.

Well, after a long while I'm back on posting.
This recipe is very quick and simple, and has a wonderful taste.
It takes 20 minutes the most, and the final result is delicious.



To serve 4:

to the pasta
300g of spaghetti
10g of truffle paste
50g of butter

Cook the pasta as you like. Melt the butter and leave to cool down.
Add the truffle paste and mix well. Mix the pasta + the truffles with butter.

I recommend 2 big size shrimp/person. You basically have to remove it's skin? or crust, i dont know the name, but its the hard bit outside.
Then sautee it. Salt and pepper as you like.

Thats it, you should take max 20 min to cook this recipe.

"Rabada"

After a busy while, im back to the blog. These last 2 weeks of my culinary course took all my time, but now im back on posting.
This recipe can be considered traditionally from brasil, and also is very popular in my country.The brazilian name of this dish is "Rabada". The meat looks like the italian "ossobuco" but it's from the tail of the cow. The meat is very high in fat, wich make it taste even better.



What you gonna need:
1kg of cow tail cut in around 8centimeters
200g of chopped tomatoes
300g of chopped onions
200g of chopped carrots
salt and pepper as you like.

How to do:
Remove the excessive fat of the meat. Then in a hot frying pan, cook the pieces of meat untill its in a nicely browny-gold colour. Then add all the ingredients in a pressure cooker, add water to cover all the ingredients, and cook for about 1h30 minutes.
You can either serve with the juice the meat was cooked, or you can make a "pirao" wichs consists in add corn flour or manioc flour in to that juice, and cook for about 10min.
Also, serving with watercress is a good option.

Tambaqui Ribs in blueberry sauce with grilled banana and Brazil Nuts

Tambaqui is tipically a rainforest fish. This fish is very different from the usual fish because you can find much more fat in his meat than most of the fish.
Here is a picture of it


Another special thing in this fish is that his spines are harder and thicker than normal, and it does look like pork ribs, wich is very interesting. This fish can also be found by the name of Pacu. Tambaqui can get up to 1 metre length, and up to 30 kilograms.



What you gonna need:
500 grams of Tambaqui ribs.
For the sauce
100 grams of fresh blueberries
10 ml of vinegar
15 grams of sugar
For the side
2 bananas
50 grams brazil nuts

Salt and pepper as you like.

Well, basically, these ribs are sautee. So all you need to do is add salt and pepper as you wish, and sautee the ribs slowly, so all the fat melts down n gets mixed inbetween the ribs.
The sauce is simple aswell. Add all the ingredients, maybe you will need some water. Leave it cooking untill all the berries melt in to the sauce.
The bananas are just plain grilled, no salt, no pepper.
Chop the nuts in small pieces, and then put them on heat, so they get cripy.

Half Breaded Shrimp with Olive Oil 'farofa'

Well, today i decided to cook some shrimps, since it been while i havent had sea food. Also, i had some japanese bread crumbs, so it was a must to use it.


What you gonna need:
4 Big sized Shrimp
20 ml milk
40 grams of bread crumbs
Salt and pepper as you like
50 ml olive oil
for the 'farofa'
50 grams of manioc flour
15 ml olive oil

Well, to start you need to mix the milk and the bread crumbs. Mind the milk, do not put more than needed, because it cant be runny at all. add salt and pepper as you like.Put that mix of milk and breadcrumbs in one side of the shrimps; Hot a fryin pan, and since its not fully breaded, we dont need to deep fry the shrimp. Start fryin the shrimp with the breaded side down, this its nicely brown, then cook the other side.
Well, the side is called 'farofa' is really traditional in brasil. It maybe quite hard to find manioc flour outside Brazil, but you basically need to heat up olive oil, add the manioc flour. Add salt, and mix it well.Leave it to cook for a couple minutes, mindint the temperature, it can't be too high or the flour get burnt. Simple and good.

Some good working experience

Well, today I wont post any recipe, but i will tell you all about what a special week in my (short) carreer.
In November/08 in Brazil, there was a big culinary event, where chefs from mainly Spain and France came to Brazil to expose their cooking, and also try to find something new in this country.
Luckily, i got designated to welcome, and help them with whatever they need, which made me very anxious and excited. Then i had the opportunity to work with today's considered best chef, Ferran Adria. It was a awesome experience. Ferran did his famous n worldwide known Espumas, showing everyone his secrets, and the best ways to do it.
Well, i must admit that after that day, i got even more in to his molecular cuisine, and his visit inspired me in so many ways that i consider a key point for the stuff i cook nowadays.
Here are pictures with some of the people I've worked with in that event.


Ferran Adria



Claude Troisgros,



Martin Berasategui and Juan Mari Arzak