This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking them, we will be compensated, but there is no additional cost to you. All opinions expressed are our own. Thank you for your support. Hello! Alicia back again with more Ecuadorian recipes to share. If you're new here I'll explain. Each month this year, my family is choosing a different country from our heritage. Once a week we make a traditional meal from that country and then I share it with you here on the blog. In January we did Germany, February is Ecuador, and March will be Ireland. Unfortunately, my little family was stricken with the flu in February and although we made our Ecuadorian meals, I was unable to share them on the blog. So this week is Ecuadorian week where I am sharing all our recipes. Monday I shared my favorite Ecuadorian breakfast soup, Encebollado. Today I have two recipes that look similar but have distinctly different flavors: Sango de Camarón and Encocado de Camarón. Camarón means shrimp, so these are both dishes that feature shrimp! Both dishes start with refrito. Refrito is a combination of sauteed red onion, bell peppers, garlic, and spices. To make the refrito you will need Achiote or saffron. Sango de Camarón If you look at the ingredients for Sango you might raise an eyebrow; plantain, peanut butter, shrimp. But trust me this is so delicious! Especially with the addition of lime juice at the end. Sango starts with the refrito. Then grated plantain is added with a dab of peanut butter. In the end your cooked shrimp is mixed in with the plantain mixture. Squeeze lime juice on it, mix it with your rice, eat and enjoy. I think this is my second favorite Ecuadorian dish. That's how good it is. It's not spicy at all, but very flavorful! Some tips for making Sango:
Encocado de Camarón Encocado de Camarón is a very simple dish with a lot of flavor. After the refrito is cooked coconut milk is added with the shrimp and cilantro. It's SOOOOOO good! All the flavors are really subtle but compliment each other excellently. It's commonly eaten with rice and in Esmereldas (a city in Ecuador) it's also common to eat with a boiled green plantain. I thought it sounded strange but it was actually good to eat with the encocado. Some tips for Encocado de Camarón
I think you'll really like these meals. I love them. Let me know if you try them out and what you think. Check back in next week when we'll be starting our month of Irish meals!
And if you don't want to wait for next month Dating Divas has a pack for an Irish Date Night. It's on sale right now so check it out. You get recipes, games and other fun activities for the night with your significant other.
1 Comment
I was compensated for this post. This post also contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. All opinions of the products are my own. Thank you for your support.
If you pay attention at all to what is going on in education today, you have probably heard a lot about STEM. In an effort to make students more competitive in today's world, a lot of emphasis is being placed on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Those are the jobs that will provide the best income today and in the future and those are the areas where jobs will be available.
STEM is a interdisciplinary and applied approach to learning these subjects. In other words, these subjects are taught all mixed together, with hands-on learning. I feel that this is the most sensible and effective approach to teaching and learning. I have found as I look at STEM activities, they actually include things that we have always seen children play, but now we can see that these activities have practical purposes. My daughter, Alicia is a Science Teacher and she also has two very young children of her own. She is already trying to make sure that they are starting out with STEM activities to get their minds working at a young age. Recently, she and her family were visiting us in Phoenix and we took a trip to Dollar Tree where we shopped for STEM activities for my grandchildren's Easter Baskets. Dollar Tree has great products that help kids develop STEM skills. They’re perfect for an Easter basket because although they’re educational, they’re fun! And, BONUS, everything only costs $1.00! We put together two Easter Baskets full of Dollar Tree goodies! One geared toward younger kids (from toddler age). And one for older kids (upper elementary age).
I actually filmed a video of my daughter explaining how our choices fit into the STEM categories. But, before I show you that, let me show you a few of my favorite choices here:
I love these question and answer science books available at Dollar Tree! They come in various subjects and are full of information. Not only are there science books, but also history books. There are a total of 6 different books. My oldest grandson loves non-fiction science books and these are perfect for him. The whole set would be perfect for a classroom and you can't beat the price. If you order them online, they come in a case of 36 books, so that is enough to share among a few classrooms.
Even your Easter Candy can be STEM related with these Jurassic World Dino Eggs filled with candy! My grandson who just turned 3 has been able to name almost all of the different types of dinosaurs for awhile. I am so impressed with him. Now he will be able to name them and eat them!
There are a couple of varieties of these Growing Crystals kits that are so fascinating for the whole family to watch! Science in action! Once again, if you order them online, you get 24 in a case, so an entire classroom could do this project.
Of course, not everything has to be STEM! We loved the Easter Egg shaped baskets and the Chocolate Scented Plush Bunnies available at Dollar Tree as well!
There are so many more choices, so watch the video and Alicia will explain them all to you! At the beginning she will show the basket for younger ages and then the older elementary one comes after that, so stay tuned.
So, there you go! Expand your children's minds, get them excited about fun "toys" and it is all at an affordable price! That is one full Easter Basket! The great thing is that you can either order them online or go to the store and see all of the fun Easter things on Dollar Tree's shelves now! This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking them, we will be compensated, but there is no additional cost to you. All opinions expressed are our own. Thank you for your support. Alicia here! I'm finally back. You probably thought I abandoned the blog and my culinary travels, but in reality we got hit with the flu at my house and then my back went out. Such a time to be alive. But we did actually make an Ecuadorian meal every week this month as promised. And I will be sharing all of them with you this week! In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, each month this year my family is choosing a different country from our heritage and making a traditional meal from that country each week. Then I am sharing our recipes and meals on the blog! Last month was Germany and it was so delicious! Check out my previous posts from January. Ecuadorian Encebollado This month we decided to do Ecuador. My husband is from Ecuador and lucky for me Ecuadorian food is really flavorful and delicious. He's from Guayaquil, which is a coastal city, so that means a lot of seafood. Another plus for me because I love seafood! We have shared some non-seafood Ecuadorian recipes previously on the blog (here, and here), and I will have one more non-seafood recipe this month for you! The dish I'm sharing with you this post is Encebollado. It's one of my favorite dishes. It's a soup that is actually commonly eaten for breakfast or lunch (or brunch) in Ecuador. Whenever I suggest it for dinner my husband is says it's weird to eat for dinner. It is a warm soup though, despite being for breakfast. Tuna, yucca, and onion are the main ingredients in this delicious soup. The strong onion flavor is a great contrast to the subtle flavors of the yucca and tuna, and a great compliment to the lime juice added in right before serving. We usually make this from the can. Every time some one comes from Ecuador or we go, this is my favorite thing to bring back. So currently we have 8 cans of the soup in our pantry. But we have also made it from scratch on occasion. At these times my husband will call home and get the recipe from there. But today we decided to link you to Laylita's recipe. The only difference between her recipe and what we do is that we don't use pickled onions. We just add fresh red onions to the soup and let them soften in the broth (they still have a little crunch though). When you eat encebollado make sure you have plenty of lime. I like a lot of lime juice in mine (at least one whole juicy lime) while my husband enjoys it with a smaller amount.
Traditionally eaten with a crusty bread roll, plantain chips, and a nice cold Coke.
Alicia here taking over Lindsey's Renny's Recipes regularly scheduled post, and posting about a delicious dessert I have made.
This is my last German recipe post as part of my international meal planning posts. It has been so fun trying new foods, and it's made me excited to visit Germany one day. Next month is Ecuador, and although we have posted a few Ecuadorian recipes on here before, these will be dinner recipes that you'll most definitely want to try. So stay tuned next week for that. Black Forest Cake
But back to today's dessert, Schwarzwälderkirschtorte, This means Black Forest Cherry Torte in Germany. Invented in the 1920's by a Josef Keller, this is a decadent cake with dark chocolate, sour cherries, and Kirsch (usually). Kirsch is a kind of cherry brandy, making the cake not suitable for children (usually).
If you've been following our blog awhile you may have noticed that we don't drink alcohol, so you can consider this recipe a ''dry'' Black Forest Cake. A delicious treat the whole family can enjoy. In place of the Kirsch, I used tart cherry juice. It was mixed with apple juice, but I soaked the cherries in the juice, which deepened the cherry flavor. I've linked to the juice I used. This cake was soooooo good. My husband said it is worth the calories to have a piece. I must say that I agree. Plus it's got cherries, so that's fruit and all the antioxidants in the chocolate, I mean, can we really say this cake is all that unhealthy. ;)
If you want to make this cake be sure to plan accordingly. This is an all day, if not an overnight two day kind of cake. I think I took about 4-5 hours of active time working on the cake. So that's not including the cherries soaking for about 6 hours. If you want really deep flavors, allow the cherry juice to soak into the cake overnight before icing it on the outside.
Another issue I ran into was that I added too much liquid to my frosting for the filling. It was still delicious, but it did get a little runny and grainy. So add your cherry juice a little bit at a time in order to not have my same problem. It was good with the ratio I put in the recipe.
My final tip is to use your food processor (if you have one) to shave your chocolate. I tried doing it by hand on my cheese grater and it produced beautiful chocolate swirls, but also was really awkward and took forever. I put the grater blade (big side up) in my food processor, and it wasn't as beautiful but was so much easier and faster. In the center of my cake I used a dark chocolate bar cut into triangles to make an abstract kind of forest. I think it turned out pretty cute.
I loved this cake, I'm already thinking about when I should make it again. It was so good. I know you can't see from the pictures, but the special dark cocoa made the layers almost black. And the flavor was so deep and complex. I think it would be a great Valentine's Day dessert.
|
Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
July 2024
|