Many of you know that I recently married the most wonderful Brazilian man.  He was born in Brazil but he has lived in America since he was 3 years old… of course, he still loves Brazilian cuisine (and I can’t say that I blame him!).  So part of my new year’s resolution for my first year of married life is to learn how to cook Brazilian foods!  You can follow my progress over at Brazilian-Food.com.

I learned how to make a delicious Brazilian chocolate truffle called Brigadeiro from a Brazilian friend Yuri when I went to the University of Cambridge.  My husband was definitely impressed that I already know how to make brigadeiro before I met him (and you would never believe how super easy and impressive looking this recipe is)!  Here is a video of how to make Brigadeiro, made by your truly!

My first step in learning how to cook Brazilian Food was to get a wonderful book called Brazil: A Cook’s Tour by Christopher Idone, and to begin cooking away! I have made Brazil’s national lime drink called Caipirinha, Brazilian black beans called Feijoada and really amazing Brazilian cheese rolls or cheese bread bites called Pao de Queijo.

Come with me on my journey of Brazilian cuisine at Brazilian-Food.com!

Filet Mignon is amazingly easy to cook at home… this was my first time attempting to cook it inside (as opposed to on the bbq), and I must say that it came out PERFECT.  Here is my super simple method (thank you Eugene for all of your help and advice!!)

1.  You should cut your filet mignon into 1.5″-2″ thick slices (or you can buy your filet pre-sliced… but how can you resist the Stew Leonards sale for the long hunk of meat?!?!)
2.  Let the filet mignon sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.
3.  Use paper towels to get the filet as dry as possible (this is super important to help form a beautiful golden crust on your steak!).
4.  Season all sides of the steaks with freshly ground sea salt and pepper (you can also use garlic, rosemary, or whatever spices you like).
5.  Heat a skillet with butter or oil over medium heat.
6.  Once the skillet is hot, cook the steak on each side for a couple of minutes (until a nice golden crust is formed… this locks the moisture in and tastes scrumptious).
7.  Pop the steak into an oven at 325 degrees for 20 minutes (for medium-well… or adjust up or down if you like your steak well done, medium, etc.)
8.  Let your filet mignon sit for 5-10 minutes after you take it out of the oven and before you eat it.

Check out this gorgeous piece of steak that I called my dinner!!!

Filet Mignon with Golden Crust

I was strolling through Chinatown with an out-of-town visitor (none other than my fabulous sister) and some friends, when we became starving.  Being that we weren’t in the mood for Chinese food, but were in Chinatown doing the “tourist” thing, we took a slight detour and 5 minutes later we were in the heart of Soho at the door to a Latin Bistro called Ideya.  We glanced over the menu and quickly checked reviews on our iPhones and decided to give it a try.

Upon entering, we were greeted by a super friendly New Yorker (Yes, there is such a thing!) and admired the atmosphere of this oh-so Soho restaurant.  We were handed the Saturday brunch menus (and were assured that everything on the lunch menu and breakfasts menu were also on the brunch menu… afterall, brunch = breakfast + lunch, but it doesn’t hurt to check)!

Yes, it was brunch, but we were in a New York state of mind, so figured we would give Ideya’s mojitos (don q crystal rum, sugar, fresh lime & mint leaves) and Jalapeño Margaritas (jalapeño infused tequila, triple sec, lime juice, mango juice) a try.  It warmed my heart to see caipirinha’s (a typical Brazilian mixed drink) on the menu, my husband is Brazilian after all… which totally makes me an honorary Brazilian!  The drinks were an average price for mixed drinks in New York ($9 – $12)… but they tasted average at best.  Even though the menu claims the mojitos are “the best in nueva york,” I did not find that to be the case… but then again, every restaurant seems to claim that one of their drinks is “the best in new york.”  The mojitos and margaritas were a bit strong, especially since it wasn’t even the afternoon yet!

While we were waiting for our food to be prepared, we were served a little basket of jalapeno cornbread.  It was an interesting consistency (not your usual crumbly cornbread, but a bit more creamy), and the little specks of jalapeno added a nice and subtle kick every few bites but overall lacked in flavor.

For our meal, we ordered a Chicken Empanada, a Ground Beef Empanada ($7 for 2) and a Torta de Pollo ($11 for a Cuban pressed chicken sandwich adorned with pickles, red onions, chipotle mayonnaise and melted swiss cheese).  I have definitely had better and more authentic empanadas, though the ground beef empanada was tasty (and better than the chicken empanada).  The Torta de Pollo was a generous overstuffed sandwich full of grilled chicken and yummy melted swiss cheese (how can anything taste bad when you melt loads of cheese all over it?).  The pickles had a bit of a kick to them, which added an interesting dimension… and the flavors of the chipotle mayo melted into the warm grilled bread.  The salad of mixed greens on the side of the pressed sandwich looked pretty, but the dressing lacked in flavor and was a bit too watery.

The ambiance was so nice inside (it even made us forget how freezing cold it was outside), so we really wanted to love this “new” place we found and I was really hoping to give it a glowing review.  Unfortunately though, the food lacked in flavor and with so many fabulous restaurants in Manhattan, the bar is pretty high… average food with strong drinks just won’t cut it.  I was curious about how Ideya got rated so well over at yelp.com, so when I got home I did some quick searches on Google to see what other people (outside of yelp) had to say about Ideya… and wouldn’t you know that NYCNosh had a very similar experience (as well as their commenter Erika!) What are your favorite Latin American restaurants in New York City?

Ideya Latin Bistro – 349 West Broadway (between Broome and Grand Streets) – Phone Number: 212-625-1441

I am loving all the recipes I can do in my Breadman Bread Machine!  I had some extra onions and shredded cheddar in my fridge, and this focaccia recipe was calling their names.  I have a definite weakness for onions in bread… onion bagels are my favorite… and anything with caramelized onion is a winner in my book.  My sister was over when I made this, and the WOW factor was big on this focaccia, while the most difficult part about this recipe is waiting to take it out of the oven when your room is filled with the deliciousness of Cheesy Caramelized Onion Focaccia!  Here is how I did it:

I poured 3/4 cup lukewarm water and 2 TB olive oil into the bread machine.  I then covered the liquid by pouring in 1 tsp salt (you want to keep the salt away from the yeast that will go on the very top), 1 TB sugar, 2 cups of flour, and then make a little pool in the flour for 1.5 tsp of active dry yeast.  Make sure the yeast does not touch the water.  Turn on your bread machine and set it to the “dough cycle”, which is where your bread machine does all of the kneading and makes you fabulous dough, but you don’t actually bake it in the bread machine.

While the dough is being formed, slice 1 large onion and carmelize it in 1/4 cup butter over medium heat (this will take about 20 minutes do get a nice carmel color).  Add in 3 cloves of minced garlic about 5 minutes before you are done carmelizing the onion.  You do not want to add the garlic too soon, because garlic can burn easily (and then it tastes bitter):

Back to the bread machine, once the dough is finished, form about a 10″ circle out of the dough on a 12″ pizza pan that is greased with butter.  Cover the pizza pan and put it somewhere warm so that it doubles (takes about 30 minutes).

Once the dough has doubled in size, take the handle of a wooden spoon and create indentations every 1″ in the dough.  Put the carmelized onion on top of the foccacia (covering all of the holes) and make sure to get a bit of the onion / garlic butter from the pan on the outer crust of the foccacia.  Put a generous pile of shredded cheddar cheese on top (I actually used the Mexican cheese mix that has monterey jack, medium cheddar, queso quesadilla, and asadero cheese):

Bake the Cheesy Carmelized Onion Foccacia at 400 degrees for about 18 minutes (it should be golden brown) and serve immediately:

This foccacia recipe was super delicious, though it really is best fresh.  We had some the next morning with eggs, and it was still quite good, but not as good as when it was fresh.  If you rewarm it in the microwave, cover the bread with a damp paper towel so that it stays moist.  Next time, I want to try adding some parmesan cheese and perhaps some italian seasoning too.

My Dear Breadman Bread Machine, how I have long neglected you!  If only I had known how delicious your bread can be and how simple it is and the amazing aromas that would fill my house, I surely would have taken you out sooner!  This is my plea to all of my readers, take out that bread machine that your great aunt Lucy got you, and you just might fall in love.  I have had my Breadman Bread Machine for about 2 years.  I used it once when I first got it, thought the bread was ok but nothing stellar (it was just a whole wheat bread) and then I lost interest.  Thanks to my sister’s inspiration and desire for cranberry bread, we made a fabulous loaf of cranberry walnut bread that was wonderful.  It was not a sweet bread, but was perfect with butter or cream cheese.  Next time, I do plan on making it with 2 TB of cinnamon and maybe I’ll add some sugar to make a more dessert / sweet bread.

Put 2 TB of honey, 1 cup of water, 1 TB butter, 3/4 tsp salt and 1 tsp cinnamon into the bottom of your bread machine container.  It is important that the liquid and salt stays separate from the yeast at this stage.  Carefully put 1/3 cup of oats on top of the liquid and pour 2 1/2 cups of flour on top of the oats.  Make a little indentation in the flour and put 1 3/4 tsp yeast there.

Turn your bread machine on to the fruit / nut setting.  It will rise and stir and do lots of fun things before beeping several times.  When it beeps, add in 1 cup of cranberries and a 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts.  A few hours later, your home will smell amazing and you will have a loaf of freshly baked cranberry walnut bread that will have a perfect crust and scrumptious center, like this:

One of my absolute favorite cake cookbooks of all times has got to be Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Cake Bible.  I wish I was related to Rose so that I could cook with her, plus I love the last name Beranbaum!  I made The Cake Bible’s Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte recipe for my husband’s first birthday celebration together (back then he was my boyfriend… wow how time flies!)  I have played around with it a bit since then, added a bunch of different things like liquor (Sabra orange chocolate liquor), raspberry preserves, and this time crushed peppermint as a garnish for the holidays.  Every time it is delicious.  This is my go to chocolate flourless cake (perfect for Pesach / Passover, for people with gluten or wheat allergies, or simply anyone who loves chocolate which is the category I fall under!).

This flourless chocolate cake needs to be baked in a water bath, so locate a pan that fits inside of another oven safe container.  I am usually creative in this area.  When you live in Manhattan and don’t have loads of kitchen cabinets and space, you have to improvise!  My spring form pan (which would be ideal) is a 10″ round pan and won’t fit in any of my other pans.  So I used an 8″ round pan and a large disposable aluminum roasting pan (which can be bent and shaped a bit to fit my 8″ round pan) for the water bath.  Cut a piece of parchment paper or wax paper to the fit into the bottom of your pan and grease it well.  Also, grease the sides of the pan well.  This is very important, especially if you aren’t using a spring form pan, because you will need to unmold it from the pan.

Melt 1 cup of unsalted butter with 1 pound of bittersweet chocolate in a double boiler.  I used Trader Joe’s big block of dark chocolate this time.  Berenbaum loves Lindt Courante and Tobler extra bittersweet.  Sharffen Berger also makes a great dark chocolate.  But the Trader Joe’s chocolate is definitely not bad!  I did not have a double boiler this time… remember, small Manhattan kitchen syndrome!  So I melted the butter and the chopped up chocolate chunks in a bowl that I held over a pot of hot water (stirring every minute or so).  You could also attempt to melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave (stirring every 15 seconds so it won’t burn), but this tends to scare me.

Here the chocolate is beginning to melt.  Once there are just a couple little chunks of chocolate, you can remove it from the heat and continue to stir, the little pieces will melt.

And here is a delicious bowl of melted chocolate.  You can add liquor or raspberry preserves at this point.  I added a few drops of peppermint extract for the Christmas / holiday season.

Break 6 large eggs into a separate bowl.  Hold the bowl over simmering water, constantly stirring until the eggs are slightly warm.

Whip the eggs with a wire whisk until soft peaks form and the volume triples.  You can use a hand mixer if you prefer, but then you should beat them over the warm water for about 5 minutes, and then continue to beat the eggs while they cool.

Fold the eggs into the chocolate bowl until just incorporated.  Do not overmix.  Make sure you fold the eggs into the chocolate and not vice-versa, or the texture will not be as nice.

Pour the flourless chocolate batter into your greased round pan.  Place your round pan into a water bath and bake for 5 minutes at 425 degrees.

Remove the cake and water bath from the oven, and cover the pan with a greased piece of aluminum foil.  Bake for 10 more minutes.

The cake will look a bit soft and shiny on top still (like this), but do not worry, it will set as it cools over the next 45 minutes.  After it has cooled off, you should put it into the fridge for a few hours so that it becomes firm and is easier to remove from the pan.  If you have trouble removing it from the pan after it has been in the fridge, then hold the pan over hot water for a minute or so, so that the sides will soften a bit.

The top of the cake can be decorated as little (just a light dusting of powdered sugar) or as elaborately (with raspberries, chocolate curls, or crushed peppermint sticks) as you like.  To go with the holiday theme and peppermint flavor, I decided to crush some peppermints and sprinkle them on top.  I took a few peppermints and put them in a bag:

Then, my fabulous sister smashed them with a hammer over a piece of cardboard (to protect the floor)!

The peppermint pieces were then sprinkled on top and voila… the most delicious peppermint chocolate flourless cake!:

I brought this on dessert platter with my Butter Bars to a Christmas party, and even people who do not like desserts or sweets went crazy for them!  They were the first desserts to go

I am usually a huge fan of Costco and their products.  One of my friends told me that their canned tuna, Genova Tonno Tuna, is imported from Italy and much better than regular canned tuna.  I heard at a culinary course at the 92nd Street Y (the Y in Manhattan) that Flott and Callipo, two brands of tuna both imported from Italy, are amazing and completely different than your Starkist or other standard canned tuna.  I always wanted to try it out, so I thought I’d give Costco’s Italian imported tuna a try.  I must say that I am not terribly impressed.  It just seemed like a more expensive can of regular tuna.  The smell was equally fishy, the taste was essentially the same, and honestly I like albacore tuna better.  I still want to get my hands on a can of Flott tuna and Callipo tuna, but until that point, I will stick to the “standard” canned tuna.

Here is a photo of what Costco’s Genova Tonno Tuna looks like… granted you can’t see how it tastes from my photo, but you can see that it looks like every other can of tuna:

I normally make chicken salad using leftover chicken that I cooked for dinner the night before.  However, Costco was recently sampling their canned chicken, something I would never in a million years have considered, but I was totally impressed.  Costco’s canned chicken is 100% white meat with no fillers or fat or gunk… it really is good quality chicken in a can… I love Costco!  This chicken salad served on a slice of this toasted Cranberry Walnut Bread is like heaven!

For my chicken salad, I used 2 cans of Costco’s canned chicken broken up with a fork:

I then added about 1 cup of light mayonnaise, 2 handfuls of cranberry, a couple of stalks of chopped celery, onion powder, salt and pepper.  My sister caught a photo of me doing my chicken salad happy dance:

I let my chicken salad sit in the fridge for at least a few  hours so that the flavors melt together… delicious!

My delicious butter bars are like a giant, thick, butter or sugar cookie that is soft and gooey on the inside.  My recipe is a variation on a recipe I read in Anne Byrn’s The Cake Mix Doctor.  Anne Byrn (or The Cake Mix Doctor) calls her recipe Gooey Butter Cake.  I tried it her way, but I didn’t love the crust at the bottom or the ratio of top to bottom… but I loved the flavors and concept.  So I reworked the recipe and voila, here are how to make my butter bars (one of my most sought after treats!):

In a large microwavable bowl, melt a stick of butter.  Mix in a box of yellow cake mix and one egg.  Make sure to let the mixture cool a little before you add the egg… you don’t want to end up with scrambled eggs! The bottom or “crust” layer should look like this:

Press this “crust” layer into the bottom of a well greased 9×13 pan.  In the same large microwavable bowl (save yourself the extra dishes and just use the same bowl!), melt another stick of butter in the microwave.  Stir in 1 cup of confectioners sugar.  Add 1 block (8 ounces) of cream cheese that has been cut up into small chunks (and preferably that is at room temperature).  Beat until the cream cheese is soft and the mixture is combined.  Add 2 eggs and 2 tsp of vanilla.  Mix again.  Add 2 3/4 cups of confectioners sugar gradually, while mixing (I used a hand mixer, but you can use a stand mixer or do it by hand if your arm won’t get tired!).  Pour this mixture on top of your “crust” layer in the well greased 9 x 13 pan.

Bake for 50-60 minutes at 350 degrees (or until a cake tester comes out clean).  The butter bars will look like this out of the oven:

Let the cake cool completely before cutting (otherwise it will be very difficult to get it out of the pan), although it will still taste great… I have to admit that a few times I just could not wait for it to cool off (besides, I love to eat these bars warm!)…  This picture really doesn’t do my Butter Bars justice, but this is what they looked like when I cut them into bars and served them on a platter with my flourless chocolate cake (recipe soon to follow!):

Well a few days ago my husband was craving the cupcakes, but I didn’t have too much time to carefully make a full batch of cupcakes.  So I figured I would experiment with doing the same concept but as a 8″ square cake.  It turned out FABULOUS and was even simpler since you don’t have to carefully make the layers on all of the cupcakes.  However, we both agreed, that as far as cuteness factor goes, the cupcake version is oh so adorable!  Here is what the cake version came out looking like (YUM!):