I read a recipe like this in a one-pot book. Every recipe was delightful in that book. This one stayed with me. I have added my own twists to whatever I remembered and the outcome is gorgeous. The traditional Moqueca de Camarão, a Briazilian prawn stew is cooked in coconut oil. It is a typical dish of Bahia, through all of Brazil enjoys this stew. Brazilian cuisine is a cauldron of mixed influences by Spanish, French, Italian, Afrikan, Chinese, German and Portuguese immigrant population and their own indigenous food evolution and history. While salt and spice is inherent in their food, no dish is overtly salt or spicy.
My food word for this recipe would be nuanced.
When you go out shopping look for;
Medium sized prawns
Coconut milk
Potatoes
Carrots
Baby spinach
Fresh tomatoes
Spring onions
Salted butter
Brown sugar
Salt
Pepper
Curry powder
Fish sauce
The recipe would be;
For half a kilo of prawns, you will need one carrot and one potato. Peel and grate both the vegetables. Heat a tbsp oil and sauté the grated vegetables for a minute or two. While you are doing this, roughly chop a tomato and add it to the wok. Toss and allow it to simmer for eight minutes. Now add four hundred ml coconut milk, gently fold it all in, season with salt, pepper, curry powder, sugar and fish sauce. I would use two to three tsp curry powder and two tbsp fish sauce. Be careful of your salt usage because fish sauce also lends saltiness. Use fresh pepper from a mill.
In a pan melt a bit of butter and lightly fry the prawns. They should turn to golden pink on both sides. Set them aside. Separate the greens from the bulbs of the spring onions. Cut the greens into rings. Dice the white bulbs. In the same pan laced with prawn butter toss the spring onions and lightly sauté them. Once this is done, toss the whole pan contents and the prawns into the simmering wok.
Now take a bunch of fresh spinach and roughly hand-cut them and throw them in. Check the seasoning. Simmer for a quick couple of minutes more. Have the stew warm.
