Cooking at home: Brazilian 'coxinhas'

So, just like the little balls of cheese I recently told you about, another typical Brazilian treat for children's birthdays are something they call 'coxinhas', which are some more little fried goodies that look like the cheese balls, but have a different filling. You'll see they are just as quick and easy to make, and there are no strange ingredients.

Ingredients

Ingredients for making the dough

• 1 small glass of water
• 2 small glasses of milk
• 2 chicken stock cubes
• 1/2 cup of cooked and mashed potatoes
• 1 large spoonful of butter
• 2 1/2 cups of flour
• Some more butter for spreading

Ingredients for the batter/bread crumb

• Bread crumbs
• 2 beaten eggs
• Olive oil

Ingredients for the filling

• 1. 5kg of chicken
• 3 spoonfuls of cream cottage cheese
• 2 spoonfuls of oil
• 1 small onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Any spices you wish to add

Method

1. First of all prepare the filling: put the oil, garlic and onion (finely chopped) in the pan and then sauté it with a pinch of salt.
2. Now add the chicken (again finely chopped) after seasoning it with a bit of salt and pepper and any other spices you wish to add, like oregano, but all of this depends on what you like.
3. Sauté everything together for about 5 minutes and then take it off the heat.
4. Afterwards, add the cottage cheese and mix it all together, thoroughly.
5. Once it's cooled, start making the balls, just as you did for the little cheese balls I mentioned earlier.
6. To make the coxinhas, add the water, milk, stock cube, potato and butter into a ban and leave it to start boiling.
7. When it begins to boil, add the flour bit by bit and don't stop stirring so that it doesn't become lumpy and is loose in the pan.
8. When it's like this, put some butter on a flat surface and leave it to cool.
9. When it's cool, take the dough and put a small ball of filling you made earlier in the middle and start to form it.
10. You can also put an olive in the middle, but again it depends on personal preference, I don't put one in.
11. Once you've formed all of them, baste them with the egg and cover them with the bread crumb, then fry them in hot oil in a frying pan.
12. When they are golden, put them on a plate with a bunch of serviettes or kitchen roll beneath to absorb all the excess oil so they don't taste all oily.

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