Meet Lúcia

It’s always a sincere pleasure to meet people with a passion for food. Not just to taste their signature dishes and listen to their fabulous food stories, but also to just meet our fellow ‘earthlings’. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to this fabulous young lady: meet Lúcia. This young woman shares her colorful personality through food, music and quite genuine hospitality. Seriously, I felt like a happy unicorn when I entered Disneyland…I mean, Lúcia’s apartment. 😉 All jokes aside, it was heartwarming to experience her never-ending hospitality from the moment I stepped in. While a delicious bottle of wine was being poured, I noticed the colorful interior, a lovely table set with tapas goodies and that big bowl of tiger prawns on her kitchen counter. I had entered a genuine Portuguese Tapas feast and boy was I ready for it!

With her Portuguese side of the family moving to the Netherlands in the 70´s, Lúcia was born and raised Dutch. Like any other multi-cultural creature she has always eagerly explored the beautiful traditions, cuisine, warm hospitality and cultural values of her Portuguese roots. Although she’s sharing her favorite Portuguese food with us today, Lúcia has another great passion that I’d like to share with you as well: music! She’s been singing since her late teenage years and only a few days prior to the Dishtales shoot, she released a demo track (click here to listen) that she wrote as a tribute to Portugal’s capital city, Lisbon (or Lisboa as they call it). “With my track release on YouTube and the shoot for Dishtales, this week has been a very emotional week for me. I am reliving my love for Portugal and my beautiful memories are all coming back to me.” she says. To pay tribute to her culinary memories, Lúcia is sharing a Portuguese Tapas recipe: Tiger Prawns in (an alcohol infused, yay! 🙂 ) tomato sauce. Her father taught her this recipe, which he learned from a chef in Portugal and customized a bit. “This dish takes me back to many New Year’s Eve celebrations. My family would gather around for some homemade tapas and this dish was always the centerpiece, a dish we all loved.”

Bom apetite!

Lúcia's Portuguese Tapas Tiger Prawns

BUY:

• Serving 3/4
• 1 kg Tiger prawns
• 4 Cloves of garlic
• 2 Tomatoes
• 200 gr Tomato puree
• 2 Shallots
• 2 Cups white wine (dry)
• 2 Cups port wine (red)
• 1 Cup whiskey
• Tabasco
• Salt & pepper
• Olive oil

DO:

1. Clean the tiger prawns and marinate in crushed garlic, salt, pepper and all liquors (as long as you wish; Lúcia recommends at least 8 hours)
2. Finely chop the shallots and fry in a large (frying) pan with olive oil
3. Add tiger prawns (including the marinating liquids!) and simmer on medium heat for about 10/15 minutes (until prawns turn pink)
4. Add (peeled, chopped, seedless) tomatoes and tomato puree and continue cooking on medium heat for another 5 minutes
5. Add Tabasco (as much as desired) and finish cooking the dish on medium heat for about 2/3 minutes
6. Serve with fresh bread, olives & cheese as a beautiful Portuguese tapas dish to share!

Oh and FYI:

Lúcia's tomato peeling TIP: If you boil some water, pour it over the tomatoes and wash the tomatoes after this with (ice) cold water, it's véry easy to peel the tomatoes by hand. Make sure you remove the seeds for this recipe!

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