Monday, September 24, 2012

Secret Recipe Club: Brazilian Pao de Queijo

Secret Recipe Club

I'm so excited this month to share with you all a recipe from Sally's blog: Bewitching Kitchen. Sally is a sweet, sweet (and didn't I mention sweet?!) lady who was born and raised in Brazil and after living in California and even Paris, is settled in Oklahoma! Since taking on the task of Group D's hostess, I've been waiting to get Sally's blog. She always emails me back and always has the kindest words. Not to mention she is funny too :) I really love that on her about me page, she has the same Julia Child quote that I do on my sidebar intro over there on the left! I'm always incredibly impressed by all you career gals who food blog on the side - seriously - Sally is a biochemist and molecular biologist. That is just unbelievably awesome - go science!

Last month I stepped out of my comfort zone a little with preparing a Thai dish. Since Sally has a great number of Brazilian recipes on her blog, I decided I definitely wanted to step out of my comfort zone again and pay a little homage to my assigned blog's heritage. Although I have to mention, I really really wanted to make the Hoegaarden Beer Bread. It's one of my husband's favorite beers. But I didn't have any sourdough starter :( I also almost made the Brigadeiros in addition to the recipe I finally chose: Brazilian Pao de Queijo or little cheese bread.

These are little cheesy popovers. We paired it with Italian food (soup to be exact) for dinner one night. I'm not sure about you all, but popovers scare the living daylights out of me! I know not to open the oven or they will deflate and all kinds of other difficult obstacles/things that can go wrong, but my popovers really didn't turn out as popovers. HOWEVER (big however!), they still were super tasty. They were crunchy but smooth. They tasted like a vegetable roasted Ritz cracker - and I mean, think of how perfect that is with a tomato-y Italian soup?! My husband ate 1 or 4 more after he said he was so stuffed that he couldn't eat anymore. The kids ate them before they even touched their soup. I have to admit I ate them throughout the night until they were just gone :) I did a little research and will be trying these again really soon. I will be ready and a little more confident because even if these popovers "fail" - they are still incredible!

(Print)
What you need:
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup tapioca starch
  • 1/4 cup farmer's cheese (Sally used Mexican, I used Colby Jack)
  • 1 tbsp. Parmigiano-Reggiano
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • Rosemary and kosher salt, for topping
Directions:

Place all ingredients except for topping into a blender.
Blend until well incorporated and smooth.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400*
Pour batter into mini muffin tins, no more than 3/4 tin full.
{I thought I'd be smart and use a squeeze bottle - except that there is cheese 
in there, so that wasn't the best idea. LOL}

Top with rosemary and salt.

Bake for 20 minutes. Let cool and serve!

Recipe from Bewitching Kitchen

11 comments :

Anonymous said...

Sally jumps up and down, up and down, up and down! LOVED to have YOU cooking from my site, WOW!

Great post, you are too kind, if you were to see me at the golf course, the word "sweet" would be the last one you would use to describe me... ;-)

Thank you SO MUCH for the great write up! Happy Reveal Day!

Anonymous said...

Aren't those cheese breads great? I used to make them before I was gluten-free. We'd hoover down the entire batch in one sitting. Total yum.

It was fun to peruse your blog this month. Thanks for including me in Group D.

Unknown said...

My daughter made these a couple of months ago and we LOVED them. I ran out and bought some tapioca starch and then never made them. Thanks for the reminder

Jenni said...

Sally has one of my favorite blogs! Great work picking out a recipe, looks like it turned out fantastic and delicious! :)

Chocolate & Chillies said...

This looks super easy and very tasty! Great SRC pick!

Anonymous said...

These look absolutely delicious! I've never tried making popovers before - perhaps I should as this sounds so tasty!

Amy said...

These sounds amazing! I am so craving a bowl of tomato soup and a bunch of these right now!

Kitchen Ninja said...

SERIOUSLY great SRC pick -- I'm going to try these this weekend. Thanks to you and Sally!

Gloria Baker said...

Love this sounds delicious!

Kirstin said...

Oh wow! Yummy! Great choice!

Anonymous said...

my coworker made these one day and brought them in for us. they are sooooooo good!

nice pick!