Monday, April 15, 2013

Faina de zapallitos, a recipe from Uruguay





A couple of days ago I showed you a market in Montevideo and introduced the zapallito, a vegetable that looks like a round zucchini. Today I will show you a recipe we made during an Uruguayan cooking class (offered by our Spanish language school La Herradura). Faina is like a flan, but be aware: this is not like the faina that you get in pizzerias here (which is more like an Italian farinata made with chickpea flour - lots of immigrants from Liguria here!). These fainas are different and based on eggs an flour, plus different ingredients for flavor. A part from the faina de zapallitos we also made a faina de queso (cheese) and Arantxa and Max made a salchichon de chocolate (just like the Italian salame di cioccolato).

Faina de zapallitos

500g zapallitos
half onion
2 eggs
3/4 cup oil
1 cup milk
12 tbsp flour
1 tsp baking powder
salt and pepper to taste
butter to grease and breadcrumbs to sprinkle

Chop the zapallitos and onion, then put in the blender with the other ingredients. Blend. Grease with butter a 23 cm flan dish, then sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Add the mixture and bake at medium temperature for about 25 minutes. Check by inserting a toothpick to see if the faina is cooked. Let it cool down before cutting. The colour was beautiful! 


Clockwise from left: Making faina de zapallitos, a zapallito, salchichon de chocolate, fainas de queso (yellow) and de zapallitos (green).

You can also find the recipe for the faina de queso in the school's blog, just click here.


Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©

7 comments:

  1. Aledsandra to zucchinis we call zapallitos italianos and I love absolutely here I have seen the rounds and we call round zapallitos:)
    hugs!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. zapatillos italiano? I'll see if they are here also.

      Delete
  2. Interessante, anche perchè non avevo mai visto il vegetale in questione!

    ReplyDelete
  3. What an interesting vegetable! At first I thought that it was a very green fig from seeing the bottom in the top pic!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Complimenti per il tuo blog, per le tue ricette e per le splendide foto, sono rimasta incantata. Buona giornata. eleonora
    http://eilbasilico.blogspot.it/

    ReplyDelete
  5. piacere di conoscerti...e che ricetta curiosa!

    ReplyDelete
  6. What a beautiful Blog ! Living in Uruguay is our paradise and heaven. I am so happy that you have shared the secrets of local cuisine as well as some of the secrets that Uruguay makes this country so special.

    ReplyDelete

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