Tarin's Beef Enchilada's and Pao de Quejio

Since I'm on vacation this week I decided to go ahead and cook my recipes the week before. Which actually turned out perfect. Here in the Denver mission we often get missionaries who are waiting on visas before they go international and for the last transfer we've had an Elder here who has been anxiously waiting to move on down to Brazil which is great since that is also where Doug went on his mission. Unfortunately his visa didn't come through yet so he's here for another 6 weeks :( To help cheer him up we surprised him with a Brazilian dinner and it was a hit! We did the enchiladas, rice, black beans, pao de quejio, and Brazilian lemonade.

So enchilada's aren't really Brazilian, but I used them anyway. They were good, they cooked up really nicely. The biggest problem was that they were WAY too spicy. I mean I love spice, but these were almost too much. (Also another big difference between Mexican and Brazilian food--Brazilians use almost no spice in their dishes.) Luckily we had the rice and black beans to help calm down the spicy bites.

Next was the pao de quejio and if you've ever had these before at a restaurant like Tucanos or Rodizio, you know that they are the best part of the meal. Well these were hands down 100% spot on. I even used a normal muffin tin and after cooking them for 15 minutes they were done perfectly--so if you use the smaller pan you might want to cut down the cooking time. The recipe made 9 or 10 large ones. We will definitely be making these again!