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