I notice there are a couple of recipes I mention that I don’t actually share in the body of the book. The most important one of these is my favorite bizarre heritage dish, “Cavalho Cancado,” translated by my Macanese grandmother as “Tired Horses.” This sounds absolutely awful, and doesn’t exactly look like something you’d see on the cover of Gourmet.
But trust me. People love them. Teenagers, especially, have been known to down dozens at a time.
They are, in theory anyway, canapés for a party—though I was known, in my college years, to make big pieces of them to eat for my dinner. So, again in theory, you put the meat mixture on top of whatever size bits of bread you like. My grandmother always used triangles cut from horrible store bought white bread, and as long as the bread was stale, they tasted terrific. My own college years refinement was to use sourdough bread, which I prided myself on as an improvement, once I’d realized that you HAD to use stale bread or suffer the consequences. I would just dry out what pieces of bread I had in the oven, and then cut them into pretty rounds with a cookie cutter.
Here’s the original, and slightly enigmatic, recipe, as it came down to me, scrawled in my teenage handwriting, from my grandmother:
“Cavalho Cancado” (Tired Horses, but it’s not as romantic)
Ground chuck
1 tblspn. Flour, 1 egg per lb.
3 swirls of shoyu per 2lb.
green onions
1 tsp. of sugar per 2 lb.
1 swirl of vinegar per 2 lb.
325° ½ hour
Here’s the interpretation:
For every pound of ground hamburger, add a tablespoon of flour, an egg, a couple of swirls of soy sauce (I always added more than the recipe), chopped scallions, a ½ teaspoon of sugar, and at least a swirl of red wine vinegar. Mix. (I used my hands. And why not?) Adjust seasoning.
Dry out some bread in a 200° oven, till it’s dried but not brown. Cut into whatever shapes appeal to you. Spread some of the ground meat mixture on each piece, put canapés on cookie sheets. Cook as directed above.
Honestly, if you’re not a vegetarian, you won’t be able to resist these. Or maybe even if you are.
As for my paella recipe, that’ll just have to wait . . .