Brazil 2024

This one is promising. I'm sure we haven't perfected it, but there is hope.

For Brazil, we've made coxinha. It's like someone described Spanish croquettes over the phone, and the other person has attempted to make it.

A ball of dough, hugs a tasty filling of chicken, spiced with garlic and paprika before, you guessed it, coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried!

And just to give it a uniqueness, they are pear-shaped - well, they should be.

The filling is Sunday lunch's leftover chicken - the pieces that either: a) I'd pick at mid-way through clearing the kitchen or b) I'd leave for the foxes to fight over from our food waste bin. 

And cream cheese sticks it all together.

Heidi pointed out that the dough is made like a bechamel in the wrong sequence. The flour is added last, which means you then have to cook the flour while stirring playdough. I bent the silicone spoon and picked an old-school wooden spoon instead.

None of us disliked these. But we feel like there should be some refinements to make them a delight.

Butter, stock and milk, before the flour

The filling is quite garlic-heavy

Something beige

Assembly

Another deep-fried healthy snack

There's no making these look glamourous 

I didn't finish off the filling after the girls went to bed, honest.

Recipe

This must be possible to improve. Please don't copy ours, but send us your improvements instead.

Dough ingredients

1 tablespoon butter

500ml whole milk

60ml chicken stock

250g plain flour

Filling ingredients

1 onion finely chopped

5 cloves of garlic (this might be too much for anyone who would otherwise want to sit next to me afterward)

one leg, two wings and all the fiddly bits of leftover chicken, shreaded

100g Philadelphia cream cheese (the rest will be on my morning cinnamon bagel)

1 tsp smoked paprika

some salt

Coating ingredients

2 eggs

100g Panko breadcrumbs

Method

1. In a saucepan, heat the butter, milk and stock to boil. Then add the flour. Stir together while continuing to heat. This takes the big guns and a hardy spoon. Take a guess at when the flour is cooked. Allow to cool because Heidi complains that kneading the dough is too warm for her hands.
2. In another pan, shallow fry the onion lightly along with garlic. Add the chicken. Take off the heat, add cream cheese, paprika and salt. Stir together.
3. Take a piece of dough the size of an egg (that's what we were instructed - but perhaps let's make that a small egg next time), flatten into a circle. add a scoop of filling and wrap it in, leaving a pointed top. Holes are bad. Repeat until you get bored.
4. Double dip in egg, breadcrumbs, egg, breadcrumbs. Deep fry.

Decide the coxinha is nothing special and resort instead to finishing the Biscoff doughnut from Newport Market for a sugar high before bed.