There is nowhere better to be right now than Brazil, with the World Cup and the Olympics coming up!
So we're going to show you some amazing street food in the form of coxinhas and salsa.
These amazing brazilian street food snacks need a filling,
a pastry, breadcrumbs and then frying. Ah ha. Plus we're going to serve it with a salsa.
We'll start with the filling though. Now, I've got two chicken breasts.
Yes. I bought a whole chicken, I took the carcass and I made a chicken stock.
Out of a carrot, an onion, some bay leaves, some peppercorns. Then strain the stock and reduced it
right down. And that's what I've got in here. So you got rid of the thighs?
Well I used them for something else. But the whole dish is based around thighs?
Coxinhas, if you translate it, it means "little thigh" because it looks like thighs.
But we're making our own thighs instead?
We're making our own thighs out of breast meat, but that's kind of where this dish started.
This is our chicken stock and they need to just gently simmer and poach.
Next up, the pastry. Now this is a very unique pastry that I hadn't heard of before
this dish.
Okay. Because what you have in 250 ml of chicken stock.
Quite a strong, concentrated chicken stock, a generous pinch of salt
and then 250 grams of flour. You stir that until you end up with a smooth
pastry.
Eventually, it comes together into one dough.
So these things kind of remind me mind of... well the Italians have
arancini balls. Yep. The english, we have scotch eggs.
So anything that is breaded and fried. Yeah. Little snacks.
Some of the best street food around. Albeit it's quite hard work,
you'll come together with something you can mould later on. Is that done?
Errr... yeah. Pretty much. When I first made this I wasn't entirely sure what I was aiming for
and I thought it might be a little bit wrong.
You do now? But you're looking for a really stiff thing
that eventually you can kind of take when it's cold enough you can mould into a pastry
that you can then put a filing into it. When you say it's cold enough?
Well not yet! I forget you haven't got normal fingers.
No. We'll leave that to cool down for a little bit and come back to it shortly.
But we can carry on with all all the rest of our filling, which is
plenty of... Did you just try and eat that? I did. It's definitely raw flour!
So corianader. Get rid of some of the stalks if you can chop all of that up
that'd be great and here I've got cream cheese. This is just regular, full-fat cream
cheese
squeeze in the lime and then add your chopped coriander. Salt and pepper
into the cheese and when I got here is some
chicken breast that we poached off earlier. Exactly the same as this, just 15 minutes further on.
More for later. And cooled down so that we can do this with it.
Which is just rip it up. And you kind of want all chicken
and that will then mix into our cream cheese. So our cream cheese with the lime
and the cilantro (or coriander). The cream cheese and the lime help to make our
chicken breast, which is already succulent because we poached it,
really succulent as we try to replicate thigh meat. Is that traditional?
I think so. From what I've read you can add loads of other stuff to it.
We had one in a restaurant the other day with smoked paprika. We did.
Was that traditional? Who knows. What would you put in yours? So next up, we can begin to shape them
with our pastry. So grab yourself some of this and
roll it out nice and flat. I'm done, well ahead of you. Yeah, it needs to be a bit thinner than that but you are well
ahead of me. That's true enough.
Now this is the bit where you have to turn it into its very traditional
style and shape. Yes, so they resemble... a teardrop?
...well they are tear drop shaped. But they resemble chicken thighs. Oh, okay.
Well I've heard a different story then. What's your story? Well my story came from the community.
Okay. They said they're in the shape of a teardrop
because it's the way it makes you feel. It makes you want to cry it's so good.
Oh good. Tears of joy. I hope so.
So once you've rolled it out as thin as you possibly can, place
sort of a teaspoon into the middle. And then you want to fold it up and around that,
and the important thing
is don't let the filling touch the outside. Because that's when later on when you
fry it, it'll explode if any is leaking. And then, this is fiddly
but basically bring your edges up, a bit like
if it was Chinese cuisine it'd look a bit like a wonton
or something like that, or a dumpling. Then this is similar,
but a brazilian version. As soon as you finish shaping them, you can then take them
dunk them into beaten egg and then breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs stick
and then they'll be ready for our fryer.
So they've gone into the fryer and need three or four minutes
at 160 degrees celsius. So what's next? Salsa.
Of course, a classic Brazilian... dance. No, that's samba isn't it?
But basically it's a very very simple salsa to dip with our coxinhas.
Which is amazing street food. What are you chuckling at? Just made me giggle that did.
So tomatoes, on the vine. Do you do the Samba? Mmmmmmmm...
What's the difference between salsa and samba. Well I used to do evening classes... but it went very wrong!
Less about the samba, more about the salsa as we've got peppers, tomatoes.
I'm only going to go with half of this onion, as raw onion is quite strong.
1 clove of garlic, a generous pinch of salt and pepper,
a pinch of sugar which really just helps the tomatoes
and... I'm nearly crying from those. You getting emotional?
And a good handful of fresh cilantro, a little bit of
vinegar, a little bit of oil. Sounds like there's a lot going into this but the work is really easy
because the machine does it all.
Clamp it on and blend it up, about 30 seconds is all you need because you want it quite chunky.
Transfer that into our bowl. Our coxinhas can come out of the fryer now.
Now, if you haven't heard of this before, you would have heard of football.
Football in Brazil is the biggest thing out. Come on, it's bigger than food!
One of their biggest exports after sugar cane... or Samba.
Ha. Best footballer of all time?
Errrr... Pelé? Is he the only Brazilian you know?
Go on, give me another one. Errrr... probably. That's it. That Ronaldo bloke?
Ben-aldo. Basildinio. That's it. I'm out!
Right, enough about football, have you tried that salsa? No. So simple,
take seconds, unbelievable. That sugar makes so much difference! It just lifts the whole thing.
And look at these... crispy and beautifully
golden. There we go, our take on little thighs, or chicken coxinhas.
If you'd have done anything slightly differently, please let us know by commenting down below. Sorted!
Finger food at its best! All of that amazing filling inside. Oh yeah!
And that salsa is unbelievable Just so simple as well.
Brazil... thank you! You have produced some of the most incredible things
in the world and this is definitely second best after Ronaldo. Who?