CookingDiva

I love colorful food! What would be of life without color? Never forget to add a little bit of color to your food, combining vegetables or fruit with different colors is an easy way. A contrast of colors and shapes of your plates also brings out the spark, life and most important: makes it FUN!

Today we are sharing with you this super easy, colorful and delicious dish: Papaya Salsita. It is made with fresh ripe papaya, onion and spices. It is a wonderful appetizer, served on toast with cream cheese! as shown in the picture.

Another idea is to dress up the grilled chicken breast with this fantastic sauce. There are many many possibilities

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup chopped, ripe papaya
• 1/4 cup onion, minced
• 1/8 teaspoon fresh garlic, minced
• 1/8 teaspoon grownd cumin (optional)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• the juice of 1 lime
• 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• hot sauce to taste (optional)

Directions: Combine all the ingredients and store in fridge for 15-30 minutes before serving.

Serve on toasted French bread with cream cheese.

Buen Provecho!

Chef M/

Tags: papaya, recipe, cookingdiva, salsa, panama, chef

This recipe has the key to prepare a colorful and scrumptious crab salad with mango salsa. It is great served with toasts as an appetizer or light lunch on a bed of crunchy greens.
Buen provecho!
Chef M

For the crab salad: combine well all of the following ingredients and store in the fridge until ready to serve. For best flavor eat within one day.

• 1 lb. crab meat
• 1-1/2 cups ripe mango puree, or chopped small
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
• 1/4 cup red onion, minced
• 1/2 cup of a combination of red, green and yellow bell peppers, chopped small
• 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon lime juice, fresh
• 1/8 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
• a dash of hot sauce, optional  (or to taste)

For the mango salsa: combine the following ingredients and let stand in the fridge 15-30 minutes before serving to allow flavors to develop. To serve: top the crab salad with mango salsa and enjoy!

• 1 ripe mango, peeled and chopped
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 4 tablespoons fresh orange juice
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1/4- 1/2 teaspoon serrano or jalapeno peeper, minced

Very important note: When handling hot peppers, PLEASE wear gloves or use a fork and knife. Because...I have heard so many horror stories: you forget you touched them and then you touch your eyes, or just imagine if you use contact lenses and you forget you touched habanero peppers...Oh my...I promise you`ll remember it for the rest of your life.

This is my non-entry for the Paper Chef February 2005, second recipe…contest. Specially designed for Owen. No point on asking for the -bonus points- because I am 1 day late---but anyways, I prepared this for lunch today, using the 4 extra ingredients: tamarind, chorizo, stale bread and broccoli. Hope you like it!

Yuca , cassava or mandioca (Manihot esculenta, Crantz) is a root originary from Brasil and Paraguay. It is an annual tuber crop grown widely in tropical and sub-tropical areas. It thrives in sandy loam soil low organic matter and can tolerate low rainfall and high temperatures. It is therefore a cash crop cultivated by smallholder farmers within the existin farming systems in many countries.

Ingredients for Croquettes:

1/2 lb (8 oz) yuca, peeled, cut in chunks and boiled for 15 mins

4 oz chorizo (I am using Panamanian chorizo from Las Tablas)

2 oz broccoli, cut, steamed and drained

Stale bread, grinded and seasoned with dry herbs

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Once yuca is cooked, drain and pulse in the food processor until dough is uniform.
2. Chorizo comes heavily seasoned most of the time, so there is no need to add spices to the filling this time. But, if you want to be sure…go ahead, taste and adjust seasonings to your liking
3. Take two tablespoons of yuca dough aprox., make a ball and then flatten it to a disk. Put one layer of chorizo and one layer of broccoli in the middle and top with a second flattened disk of yuca dough. Seal the edges. Wet your fingers and rub the surface of the croquette with your hands to make it even and seal edges. It has to be smoth and beautiful.
4. Roll over some bread crumbs (ground stale bread seasoned with herbs)
5. At this point you have to choices: you can deep fry, or oven fry the croquette.
6. Oven fry directions: after spraying them with some canola oil …I`ll oven fry these beauties for 15 minutes (350º pre-heated oven)
7. While they are baking, prepare the sauce:

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil, then add

1/4 cup red onion, chopped (or shallots),

1 tablespoon sugar

sautee until caramelized.

Then add 3 tablespoons tamarind concentrate

1/4 cup orange juice, and simmer for 3 minutes, or until it`s reduced to 1/2.

Adjust seasonings, and serve with croquettes!

Enjoy!

Chef M

Tags: yuca, cassava, cookingdiva, chef, panama, recipe