Recipe – Rissóis (pescatarian)

As a child I always looked forward to large family gatherings and smaller reunions for mainly one thing - the food. And especially one favourite small hot dough pocket – a rissól – that we Portuguese love to prepare for larger groups. They’re great to serve as appetisers or as a main component of your meal. Either way, they’ll hit the spot!

Put aside an hour on the weekend and try out making your own (about 15 small delicious rissóis for yourself and maybe some company). They’re incredibly versatile: you can switch up the filling however you’d like, no rules apply! My favourite kind are shrimp rissóis and they’re quite traditional, so I’ll share them with you today.

Needed utensils:

Two pots and one pan

Tablespoon and fork

Measuring cup and scale

Drinking glass

Two soup bowls

Ingredients:

1. For the dough

250 ml of water

25 g of unsalted butter

1 tbsp of olive oil

Salt (to taste)

250 g of all-purpose flour

2. For the filling

400 g of shrimp (whatever size you’d like) Salt

60 g of unsalted butter

1 yellow onion

40 g of all-purpose flour

The shrimp stock (from boiling the shrimp)

The juice from half a lemon

1 tbsp of tomato paste

Salt, pepper and coriander to your liking

3. Finishing touches

Eggs (start with one and get more if needed)

Breadcrumbs for coating

1. Preparations:

- Prepare the dough

- Combine the ingredients for the dough in a single pot over medium heat.

- Bring the mixture to a boil.

- When boiling, add the flour and lower the heat to minimum and continue stirring until you get a ball of dough that is quite sticky (it will not be perfectly smooth, which is totally okay!).

- Take the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it for a few minutes until it’s smooth.

- Put the dough aside.

2. Prepare the filling

- Boil the shrimps in salted water for about 3 to 4 minutes and deshell them. If you’ve got larger shrimps, cut them into small pieces (about 1 cm cubes at the largest). Put the pot aside but keep the shrimp stock (the water) for now.

(You can also omit boiling your own shrimp but then need to substitute the shrimp stock with bouillon stock.)

- Mix the onion with the butter and brown for about 4 minutes, or until translucent.

- Add the flour and mix well.

- Gradually add the shrimp stock until you obtain a creamy texture of the roux (no pun intended). - Make the filling as large as you’d like by adding the stock.

- Adjust the taste by adding the lemon juice, tomato paste and spices to your own liking.

3. Create a rissol

- Once the dough has cooled down, roll the dough out over a floured surface. Don’t make it too thin because it has to hold the filling.

- Start by spooning some of the filling (about 1 small tbsp) onto the rolled-out dough. Start by placing them around the edges of the rolled-out dough and spacing them out a little bit to facilitate cutting them out.

- Now fold over the dough from the edges onto the places filling droplets and slightly press around the filling (it should be the shape of a half circle).

- Take your glass and place its opening over the half circle and apply pressure to cut the dough. This will automatically also seal your rissol.

- Take the cut-out rissol and place it aside (make sure not to put them all over each other since they tend to stick together and rip apart when trying to disconnect them).

4. Finishing touches

- Beat one egg (for now) into a soup plate.

- Place a heap of breadcrumbs onto a soup bowl as well.

- This is a really messy procedure if you dip your hand in both plates so either try doing it with a fork to lift the rissol or use one hand for each bowl.

- Take the individual rissóis and place them first in the egg and then into the breadcrumbs.

Place the coated rissois onto a plate to freeze (or cook immediately). Since they’re still really sticky, you should freeze them, not touching, on a larger plate, then pop off the frozen goodies and keep them in a bag. You can keep them frozen forever!

5. Frying

- Rissóis have to be enjoyed fried, there is just no other way to do it!

- Put a pan on medium heat and heat the oil.

- Put your rissol into it and fry until golden brown.

- Enjoy!

By Cristina Sobral