Week 5 – Brazilian Cuisine
This Week’s Dishes:
Acarajé with Vatapá
Recipe
Highlights from Cooking Classes at Indwell
Tuesday Class
Thursday Class
YouTube Cooking Tutorials!
Ingredients:
One quarters (¼) Onion finely diced
Two (2) Cups of bean flour
Two (2) cups water
One (1) Tablespoon of salt each
Two (2) Teaspoon of garlic powder
Two Hundred (200) ml of cooking oil (for frying)
One (1) Tablespoon Old bay
Half (½) Cup Mock Shrimp
Two hundred (200) gr. breadcrumbs
One (1) Coconut milk can
One (1) Red bell pepper
One (1) Onion
Three (3) Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Two (2) Garlic cloves
One hundred (100) gr. roasted and salted cashews
Thirty (30) gr. ginger
Half (½) Teaspoon white pepper (ground)
One (1) Teaspoon cumin (ground)
One (1) Jalapeño peppers
One (1) Lemon juice
One (1) Tablespoon parsley (chopped)
Instructions:
Slowly mix the water into the bean flour in a bowl. After it is a thick mass cover with a cloth and let it rest for 30 minutes.
Whisk the dough for 8 minutes until it's creamy and a lil bit more airy.
Add the salt, garlic powder and diced onion. Mix well.
Heat up the oil in a tall pan. Leave it on medium heat.
Do a test trial with a small bit of the dough to check the oil temperature. If it is floating and frying properly you are good to go.
Add spoon sized dough scoops to the pot. Constantly flip the fritters to make sure all sides are fried evenly. The dumplings should look dark brown after 5-8 minutes.
Add old bay, water, salt, pepper, and plant-based shrimp to a bowl and let it sit for 30 minutes
Drain the Shrimp and save the liquid for later.
Mix the breadcrumbs with the coconut milk and make a dough. Add the salt and mix it again, set it aside.
In a pan with a medium heat up some oil. Add the chopped onions and sauté for 2 minutes. After that add the chopped bell pepper and saute for another 5 minutes. Set aside.
Chop the garlic, cashews, ginger, Jalapeño and parsley. Keep breaking every down until the cashews are ground. Add the white pepper and the lemon juice mix well. Add the breadcrumb dough and the saute vegetables. Mix well. If too thick add some water from the shrimp. (This step can be facilitated with a blender).
Serve it warm or room temperature.
Of course, many dishes found across the world have been adapted multiple times over, whether that be as a result of regional differences in the preparation of a dish, a fusion of cuisines, or an adaptation as they are introduced into a new culture. However, some dishes like acarajé, for example, have an intriguing history to them. The origins of acarajé go way back, having been first established in West African region. In southwest Nigeria, the Yoruba word for this dish is àkàrà, and it is essentially a fritter made from black eye peas that is fried in palm oil. Àkàrà holds a major role in Yoruba culture, and is prepared in honour of those who have “come of age” at age 70 and above and pass away, being distributed to every household close to the deceased. Women of warriors would also prepare the dish to be distributed to villagers as a symbol of victory in war. But when the slave trade was prominent in the Americas, the àkàrà was brought over to Brazil by people enslaved from the West African coast. It was in Bahia, a Brazilian state, that acarajé was born as an adaptation of àkàrà. It was commonly served with vatapá, a Brazilian iteration of the Yourba dish vata'pa, a creamy coconut milk and breadcrumb paste with shrimp. It was sold as a way to raise the funds to buy the freedom of enslaved family members and as a form of income. In post-slavery Brazil, acarajé is now sold as a popular street food and can even be found sold in places like Rio de Janeiro. Usually, street vendors are women who wear white cotton dresses and headscarves/caps and are colliqually called baianas, so they’re easy to spot if you’re ever in the region. Interestingly enough, besides being a delicious street food, acarajé is also a ritual food used in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé, so it’s quite the multi-faceted dish.
For our class, we’ll be making vatapá with acarajé de azeite-doce which in Portugese means “acarajé fried in an oil other than palm oil” since it can be hard to source palm oil from vendors in downtown London. This is one of those dishes that looks quite small and doesn’t seem like it would be that filling, but because of how dense and rich in nutrients it is, it serves as a very hearty meal!
But you know what it worked! The acaraje that Lucca fried was well cooked, held its shape, and tasted great! It held up really well when you sliced it in two to add the vatapa, and ah the it was as good as ever! And that plant-based shrimp marinated in old bay seasoning was incredible! As a combination acaraje with vatapa is divine and I can see why it’s as popular as it is in Brazil! Truly outstanding scenes here in the kitchen at First St. Andrews!
Tuesday’s class was a quite the fun one I found, but it was a bit more on the quiet side. The music wasn’t nearly as loud as it usually was and the conversation wasn’t as lively. But there was a reason for it: this time around we were trying a new recipe for the acaraje which used bean flour instead of black eyed peas. Honestly, the first time Lucca made acaraje, it didn’t turn out so great because we tried preparing it without a blender and the acaraje fritters were just not bonding well together. (There’s a stage in the fritter-making process that allows the polysaccharides (sugars) in the acaraje to stick together and hold the shape of the dough together, but you need a fine paste or dough consistency to achieve that, which you couldn’t get without a blender.) That’s when I did a little bit of research and discovered that surely enough you could use bean flour! I suggested it to Lucca, the change was made to the recipe, and Lucca spent more time focusing on making sure it turned out properly during the class, which is why the class was a little more quiet than usual.
Now in contrast to Tuesday’s class, Thursday was a lot more exciting! Lucca found his groove with making the recipe and I know the tenants really enjoyed this one! I think that at least for one of the tenants, they thought it one-uped the koshary, and I can definitely see why! And after the class, I was talking to that very same tenant and they were worried that they ask too many questions and I had to be straightforward and say that “asking lots of questions is a good thing” when you’re learning something new. The best teachers are the most receptive and understanding and are patient when teaching you. The student should ask whatever questions they need to in order to understand and apply the concepts taught and the teacher needs to create a welcoming space to field those questions. I think Lucca does that pretty well and I would say he’s shaping up to be a great mentor to those wanting to learn how to cook!
The Brazilian form of akara, Acarajé.
The original form of this week’s dish, àkàrà.