Exploring Uruguay

Expat & Travel Resource Guide

Recipe of the Week

Recipe of the Week: Crustless Chicken Quiche

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Quiche

Making a crustless chicken quiche is a quick and easy way to use up any extra meat or veggies you have in the fridge. It makes a good breakfast, or goes well with a nice salad for lunch.

Ingredients:

  • 8 eggs
  • 1 cup shredded chicken breast
  • ½ red bell pepper, diced
  • ½ small onion, diced
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 teaspoon jalapeño, minced
  • ¼ teaspoon sea salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
  • ½ teaspoon basil
  • ¼ teaspoon rosemary
  • 1 teaspoon grapeseed oil

Directions:

  1. Pre-heat oven to 180° C (350° F)
  2. Beat eggs in a bowl and set aside
  3. Heat oil in a medium oven-safe frying pan until hot
  4. Add bell pepper, onion, jalapeño and garlic and sauté 3-5 minutes
  5. Add chicken, sea salt, black pepper and rosemary, and sauté an additional 2-3 minutes
  6. Pour eggs into the pan and transfer to the oven
  7. Cook 15-20 minutes or until egg is set

Tips and Modifications:

  1. You can add ½ cup of shredded cheese with the egg before placing in the oven
  2. You can substitute butter or other types of oil for grapeseed oil
  3. If you don’t have an oven-safe frying pan, you can transfer the chicken and vegetables to a casserole dish before adding eggs



Recipe of the Week: Thousand Island Dressing

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This week’s Recipe of the Week for Thousand Island dressing is especially for one of our readers, Urufish. Thanks for following our blog. We hope you enjoy your Thousand Island dressing!

Ingredients:

  • ½ cup mayonnaise
  • 3 tablespoons ketchup
  • 1 tablespoon white vinegar
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • 1 ½ tablespoons sweet pickles, minced
  • 1 teaspoon onion, finely minced
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • Dash black pepper

Directions:

  1. Place all ingredients in a small bowl
  2. Mix until blended
  3. Refrigerate in an airtight container until ready to use

Tips and Modifications:

  1. Makes about 1 ½ cups of Thousand Island dressing
  2. Optionally add 1 teaspoon of minced celery for more crunch
  3. Optionally add 1-2 teaspoons of minced hard-boiled egg
  4. Optionally substitute chili sauce for ketchup

To make a preservative-free Thousand Island dressing, use the from scratch mayonnaise and ketchup recipes found in The Expat Cookbook.



Recipe of the Week: One-Day Sour Dill Pickles and One-Day Sweet Pickles

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A few dishes we make require pickles, and we also like to eat pickles with hamburgers and sandwiches from time to time. We’ve found that there isn’t a good selection of pickles in Uruguay (or pickle relish for that matter).

Since produce is so inexpensive in Uruguay, we decided to make pickles from scratch. But, we didn’t want to go through the canning process and wait weeks or months to enjoy our pickles.

So, these recipes are for “quick” pickles. We’ve included a recipe for sour dill pickles (my favorite) and another recipe for sweet pickles (Brian’s favorite).

And before the jokes start, no, I didn’t make these pickles to eat with ice cream… I may be pregnant, but I’m not crazy ☺

One-Day Sour Dill Pickles

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Ingredients:

  • 1 large cucumber (or 3 small pickling cucumbers)
  • 2 cups white vinegar
  • 1 small bunch fresh dill
  • 3 cloves coarsely chopped garlic
  • 2 tablespoons sea salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
  • ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper

Directions:

  1. Thoroughly wash the exterior of your cucumbers
  2. Slice into uniform, thin rounds
  3. Place your dill, garlic, salt and peppers in a 1-quart canning jar or other container of similar size
  4. Add cucumbers
  5. Add vinegar to cover the pickles
  6. Seal jar or container and refrigerate for 24 hours
  7. Serve

Tips and Modifications:

  1. The skin of these pickles will retain a fresh green color and the flesh of the pickles will be fairly white
  2. These pickles are very tart; to reduce tartness, dilute vinegar with ¼ to ½ cup of water
  3. Sour dill pickles will keep for about 10 days in the refrigerator
  4. Optionally add some sliced pepper and onion with the cucumber in step 4


One-Day Sweet Pickles

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Ingredients:

  • 1 large cucumber (or 3 small pickling cucumbers)
  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 ½ tablespoons salt
  • ¼ teaspoon mustard powder
  • ¼ teaspoon ground turmeric (optional)

Directions:

  1. Thoroughly wash the exterior of your cucumbers
  2. Slice into uniform, thin rounds
  3. Loosely pack in a 1-quart canning jar or other container of similar size
  4. Combine apple cider vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard powder and turmeric in a small saucepan on medium-high heat
  5. Bring to a boil and allow to cook for 5 more minutes
  6. Pour hot liquid over the vegetables in the container
  7. Seal jar or container and refrigerate for 24 hours
  8. Serve

Tips and Modifications:

  1. Sweet pickles will keep in the refrigerator for about 10 days
  2. Optionally add one sliced sweet onion or sweet pepper with the cucumber in step 3
  3. Add some crushed red peppers for a little spice



Recipe of the Week: Empanadas from Scratch

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Empanadas

Ever since we moved to Uruguay, we find ourselves picking up Empanadas frequently. Il Lolo is our favorite, but MLCalentitas seems to be open more frequently, so we often go there.

Empanadas are great, but we are tired of going out for them. We decided we wanted to make Empanadas from scratch. We’re sure glad we did, they came out fantastic. 

Here’s the recipe… we hope you enjoy.

Empanada Dough Ingredients:

  • 3 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • ½ cup cold water
  • 1 egg
  • 1 egg white
  • 1 teaspoon white vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons lard (or vegetable oil)

Empanada Filling Ingredients:

  • 1 cup steak or chicken, pre-cooked and chopped
  • 1 cup red bell pepper, minced
  • 1 cup onion, minced
  • 1 cup Magro cheese, grated
  • (or your favorite fillings)

Other Ingredients:

  • Vegetable oil
  • Extra flour for work surface

Directions:

  1. Beat the water, egg, egg white and white vinegar in a bowl and set aside
  2. Mix the flour and salt in a separate bowl
  3. Cut the lard into the flour mix (use a pastry blender or two butter knives)
  4. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix with a fork until it becomes stiff
  5. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until all the flour is incorporated and the dough is smooth
  6. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour (do not keep longer than 24 hours)

  7. Make several small balls out of your empanada dough
  8. Lightly flour your work surface
  9. Place a ball of dough on your floured work surface
  10. Roll the dough out into a 1/8-inch thick layer
  11. Cut the dough into circles with round cookie cutters or a bowl (we used a 5.5 inch round Tupperware bowl)
  12. Remove the excess dough from the circle
  13. Place filling in the center of the circle
  14. Fold the circle and contents into a semicircle (the dough is stretchy, so don’t worry, it shouldn’t break easily)
  15. Crimp the edges with a fork (If the edges won’t stick together, wet your finger and rub it along the inside edge of the dough and try again)
  16. Continue until all of the dough is used up

  17. Add 1-2 inches of vegetable oil to pan and heat to 180° – 200°  C (360° – 400°  F)
  18. Deep fry the empanadas for 1 to 2 minutes per side (they should be lightly golden)
  19. Drain on paper towels and serve warm

Tips and Modifications:

  1. You can freeze the dough if you want to keep it longer than 24 hours
  2. Makes about 16-18 empanadas
  3. We like dipping our empanadas in hot sauce

Share a comment about your variations and modifications for empanadas.



Recipe of the Week: Spicy Beef with Sweet Chili Sauce

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Ingredients:

Marinade:

  • 1/2 cup of hoisin sauce
  • 1/3 cup of vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon of crushed red peppers

Sweet Red Chili Pepper Sauce:

  • 2 cups red chili pepper hot sauce
  • 4 tablespoons white granulated sugar

Spicy Beef:

  • 2 lbs of thin sliced beef (rib eye) cut into 1-inch pieces
  • 1 teaspoon of ginger minced
  • 1 teaspoon of garlic minced
  • ½ green bell pepper cut in thin strips
  • ½ red bell pepper cut in thin strips
  • 4 cups of red cabbage cut in thin strips
  • 1 cup of green onions cut diagonally
  • 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
  • 1 package rice noodles

Instructions:

  1. Marinate the beef in the marinade for 30 minutes
  2. Mix white granulated sugar with red chili pepper hot sauce and set aside
  3. Cook the rice noodles and keep hot
  4. Heat sesame oil in pan over high heat
  5. Add the cabbage and green onions; stir-fry for 4-5 minutes
  6. Add the ginger and garlic; stir-fry for 1 minute
  7. Add the green and red bell peppers; stir-fry for 3-4 minutes
  8. Add beef and stir-fry for 4-5 minutes
  9. Serve over rice noodles
  10. Garnish with sweet red chili pepper sauce


Tips and Modifications:
For the veggies out there…  Omit beef and double up on the vegetables and oil, and then add the Marinade in the last minute of stir-frying.



Recipe of the Week: Sour Cream and Salsa Chicken

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We love to cook… It’s fun, relaxing and typically very rewarding. Every once in a while something doesn’t come out the way we were expecting, no worries there… because we have several restaurants all within a couple of blocks of us.

Today marks our first Recipe of the Week. Every week we plan to bring you a recipe.

All of our recipes are “from scratch.”

That doesn’t mean necessarily mean they are healthy… What it does mean is, they taste very good.

We made this Sour Cream and Salsa Chicken the other night and it was fantastic.

Ingredients:

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 180° C (350° F)
  2. Place chicken breasts in a lightly greased shallow baking dish
  3. Season with the taco seasoning mix
  4. Pour the salsa over the chicken
  5. Bake for 45 minutes, or until chicken is tender
  6. Remove the chicken from the baking dish, stir sour cream into salsa, then return chicken to baking dish
  7. Serve chicken and sauce over Mexican rice or with warm tortillas
  8. Top with guacamole and shredded cheese

Zoë enjoying the left over sour cream before dinner