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  • There is nowhere better to be right now than Brazil, with the World Cup and the Olympics coming up!

  • So we're going to show you some amazing street food in the form of coxinhas and salsa.

  • These amazing brazilian street food snacks need a filling,

  • a pastry, breadcrumbs and then frying. Ah ha. Plus we're going to serve it with a salsa.

  • We'll start with the filling though. Now, I've got two chicken breasts.

  • Yes. I bought a whole chicken, I took the carcass and I made a chicken stock.

  • Out of a carrot, an onion, some bay leaves, some peppercorns. Then strain the stock and reduced it

  • right down. And that's what I've got in here. So you got rid of the thighs?

  • Well I used them for something else. But the whole dish is based around thighs?

  • Coxinhas, if you translate it, it means "little thigh" because it looks like thighs.

  • But we're making our own thighs instead?

  • We're making our own thighs out of breast meat, but that's kind of where this dish started.

  • This is our chicken stock and they need to just gently simmer and poach.

  • Next up, the pastry. Now this is a very unique pastry that I hadn't heard of before

  • this dish.

  • Okay. Because what you have in 250 ml of chicken stock.

  • Quite a strong, concentrated chicken stock, a generous pinch of salt

  • and then 250 grams of flour. You stir that until you end up with a smooth

  • pastry.

  • Eventually, it comes together into one dough.

  • So these things kind of remind me mind of... well the Italians have

  • arancini balls. Yep. The english, we have scotch eggs.

  • So anything that is breaded and fried. Yeah. Little snacks.

  • Some of the best street food around. Albeit it's quite hard work,

  • you'll come together with something you can mould later on. Is that done?

  • Errr... yeah. Pretty much. When I first made this I wasn't entirely sure what I was aiming for

  • and I thought it might be a little bit wrong.

  • You do now? But you're looking for a really stiff thing

  • that eventually you can kind of take when it's cold enough you can mould into a pastry

  • that you can then put a filing into it. When you say it's cold enough?

  • Well not yet! I forget you haven't got normal fingers.

  • No. We'll leave that to cool down for a little bit and come back to it shortly.

  • But we can carry on with all all the rest of our filling, which is

  • plenty of... Did you just try and eat that? I did. It's definitely raw flour!

  • So corianader. Get rid of some of the stalks if you can chop all of that up

  • that'd be great and here I've got cream cheese. This is just regular, full-fat cream

  • cheese

  • squeeze in the lime and then add your chopped coriander. Salt and pepper

  • into the cheese and when I got here is some

  • chicken breast that we poached off earlier. Exactly the same as this, just 15 minutes further on.

  • More for later. And cooled down so that we can do this with it.

  • Which is just rip it up. And you kind of want all chicken

  • and that will then mix into our cream cheese. So our cream cheese with the lime

  • and the cilantro (or coriander). The cream cheese and the lime help to make our

  • chicken breast, which is already succulent because we poached it,

  • really succulent as we try to replicate thigh meat. Is that traditional?

  • I think so. From what I've read you can add loads of other stuff to it.

  • We had one in a restaurant the other day with smoked paprika. We did.

  • Was that traditional? Who knows. What would you put in yours? So next up, we can begin to shape them

  • with our pastry. So grab yourself some of this and

  • 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

  • ahead of me. That's true enough.

  • Now this is the bit where you have to turn it into its very traditional

  • style and shape. Yes, so they resemble... a teardrop?

  • ...well they are tear drop shaped. But they resemble chicken thighs. Oh, okay.

  • Well I've heard a different story then. What's your story? Well my story came from the community.

  • Okay. They said they're in the shape of a teardrop

  • because it's the way it makes you feel. It makes you want to cry it's so good.

  • Oh good. Tears of joy. I hope so.

  • So once you've rolled it out as thin as you possibly can, place

  • sort of a teaspoon into the middle. And then you want to fold it up and around that,

  • and the important thing

  • is don't let the filling touch the outside. Because that's when later on when you

  • fry it, it'll explode if any is leaking. And then, this is fiddly

  • but basically bring your edges up, a bit like

  • if it was Chinese cuisine it'd look a bit like a wonton

  • or something like that, or a dumpling. Then this is similar,

  • but a brazilian version. As soon as you finish shaping them, you can then take them

  • dunk them into beaten egg and then breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs stick

  • and then they'll be ready for our fryer.

  • So they've gone into the fryer and need three or four minutes

  • at 160 degrees celsius. So what's next? Salsa.

  • Of course, a classic Brazilian... dance. No, that's samba isn't it?

  • But basically it's a very very simple salsa to dip with our coxinhas.

  • Which is amazing street food. What are you chuckling at? Just made me giggle that did.

  • So tomatoes, on the vine. Do you do the Samba? Mmmmmmmm...

  • What's the difference between salsa and samba. Well I used to do evening classes... but it went very wrong!

  • Less about the samba, more about the salsa as we've got peppers, tomatoes.

  • I'm only going to go with half of this onion, as raw onion is quite strong.

  • 1 clove of garlic, a generous pinch of salt and pepper,

  • a pinch of sugar which really just helps the tomatoes

  • and... I'm nearly crying from those. You getting emotional?

  • And a good handful of fresh cilantro, a little bit of

  • vinegar, a little bit of oil. Sounds like there's a lot going into this but the work is really easy

  • because the machine does it all.

  • Clamp it on and blend it up, about 30 seconds is all you need because you want it quite chunky.

  • Transfer that into our bowl. Our coxinhas can come out of the fryer now.

  • Now, if you haven't heard of this before, you would have heard of football.

  • Football in Brazil is the biggest thing out. Come on, it's bigger than food!

  • One of their biggest exports after sugar cane... or Samba.

  • Ha. Best footballer of all time?

  • Errrr... Pelé? Is he the only Brazilian you know?

  • Go on, give me another one. Errrr... probably. That's it. That Ronaldo bloke?

  • Ben-aldo. Basildinio. That's it. I'm out!

  • Right, enough about football, have you tried that salsa? No. So simple,

  • take seconds, unbelievable. That sugar makes so much difference! It just lifts the whole thing.

  • And look at these... crispy and beautifully

  • golden. There we go, our take on little thighs, or chicken coxinhas.

  • If you'd have done anything slightly differently, please let us know by commenting down below. Sorted!

  • Finger food at its best! All of that amazing filling inside. Oh yeah!

  • And that salsa is unbelievable Just so simple as well.

  • Brazil... thank you! You have produced some of the most incredible things

  • in the world and this is definitely second best after Ronaldo. Who?

There is nowhere better to be right now than Brazil, with the World Cup and the Olympics coming up!

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