RECIPES UPDATE

I'm woefully behind on blog posts that I plan to make—updates on music and travel and goals and so on—but I figured I'd drop a quick post about recipes I've made recently, or meals that I've particularly enjoyed. There have been some good ones.

Brazilian-inspired meal

We had the missionaries over recently, and they requested Brazilian cuisine (at my urging for them to pick something foreign). Here's what I made. It tasted pretty great.

Alligator Moqueca
Basically a brothy stew. One can of coconut milk, lots of water, diced orange bell peppers and onions and potatoes, a handful of spices (chili powder, cumin, probably some cardamom and paprika, plus lots of salt and pepper), and then a pound of ground alligator. Simmered, then left on medium heat until everything was soft. It turned out well enough, all things considered—I'm pretty sure the meat was from the body, not the tail (which I prefer), and the fact that it was ground made the texture a bit odd. But it tasted good.

Acarajé with vatapá
Acarajé is pretty similar to falafel (see below), but with black eyed peas. It's normally fried with palm oil, but I just used olive oil since it's what I had. You blend up the black eyed peas with some flour and spices (I added cranberry zest), roll it into small balls, and fry it in olive oil until it's like a scone. We covered it with vatapá, which is a blended paste I made with coconut milk, Spanish peanuts, homemade cranberry bread, and some cream. The acarajé was a little mushy, but that was user error. Vatapá would probably be good on cardboard.

Raspberry chocolate cheesecake
Pretty standard recipe, just with chocolate graham crackers for the base and cocoa powder in the cheesecake, topped with raspberries. Made it for Valentine's Day. It was wonderful.

Falafel
I've made these twice now, and they're delicious and super easy. Two cans of chickpeas, a couple tablespoons of flour, a dash of olive oil, and generous shakes of cardamom, cumin, and chili powder, plus whatever else you feel like. Blend it all up (doesn't need to get too smooth; that's a matter of preference). Roll them into balls or discs. Fry them in oil till they're golden brown. Eat with anything or nothing. We did gyros last night, for example, with whole wheat pitas, homemade tzatziki, homemade hummus, grilled lamb, tomatoes, and hot sauce.

I've got some good meals/recipes planned for the coming weeks, so stay tuned. Please.

Oh, also, I should add that I tried kiwano/horned melon (tasty) and fried frog legs (also tasty) in the last couple weeks.