Cointreau based Caipirinha:

This is my drink...

Sweat, sour, and strong. It’s a little mess to prepare but a nice (ever important) show when you have company...

So how do you prepare my Cointreau based Caipirinha?

Well, you’ll need Cointreau – a premium orange liqueur. Using a cheaper orange liqueur works but there’s nothing like the original.
You’ll also need a lemon, and two spoons of sugar, and of course ice.

Here’s what you do:
Cut the lemon into cubes about 1 by 1 cm and through in a lowball glass. Add the sugar on top.
Using a shot glass, crush the lemon until in makes a bit mess (takes about 30 seconds).

Pour the mess in a shaker, add the ice and a shot of Cointreau.

Shake, shake, shake…

Pour back in the lowball glass.

Add a slice of lemon/orange.

CHEERS!!!

Pickled Red Peppers

Here's a fast pickled red peppers recipe,I hope you'll give it a try. Don't get me wrong, this will leave a mess in your kitchen, but at least it won't last for long.

The pickled red peppers will not last long either, if you know what I mean ;)

First step is to roast the peppers. I've seen this done on a pan, stove, BBQ, and microwave. My favourite method is the stove, I think it leaves less mess to clean up. The BBQ version sounds good too but I haven't tried it yet.

Anyway, whatever your favourite method is make sure you don't over roast the peppers. All you wanna do is soften the peppers and be able to peal the skin off once you're done.

Next step, is; peel the skin off the peppers, and clean them from the seeds and cut each pepper to about 3 or 4 parts.

To prepare the marinate take:
2 cups of cider vinegar
2 cups of water
2 tablespoons of salt
2 tablespoons of sugar
2 teaspoons of black whole pepper
1 teaspoon of English pepper
3 crushed garlic cloves
3 bay leaves

Mix the ingredients in a pot and bring to a boil.
Let cool down.

Put all peppers in an air tight container, and pour the marinate over. Move to the fridge and let sit for a couple of days.

Hope you like it. Let me know what you think...

Smashed Potatoes - Steam Style!

Here’s a quick and easy recipe for everybody’s favourite: Mashed Potatoes! Now before you say all mashed potatoes recipes are quick and easy, let me tell you about a French version I once saw that had at least 19 steps... I know, what ever happened to step 1: boil and step 2: smash!
Anyway, my recipe is not quite as easy as boil and smash but it is easy enough.

The idea of this technique is to steam the potatoes rather than boiling them, this doesn’t allow the potatoes to absorb as much liquid and get watery and you get a chance to add some flavour to the potatoes by flavouring the water in the steamer.

Another added bonus is that you get to dice the potatoes to small pieces (liquid is not absorbed remember...) which reduces the cooking time and makes the smashing much easier.

Here’s the recipe. Give it a try and let me know what you think...

Peal (optional) and dice 5 potatoes.
Bring some water to a boil in your favourite steaming pot.
Here’s the fun part: flavour the water with whatever flavours you’d like to have in the potatoes. I usually add crushed garlic, pizza spice mix, nutmeg, and some chicken stock.
Add the potatoes to the steamer, cover and steam until potatoes are tender (about 15 minutes)
Move potatoes to a bowl, add butter/milk/cream/salt/pepper to your liking.
Smash away to the desired smoothness.