Moqueca baiana

Ingredients

• White fish — firm fillet, in large pieces1 kg
• Prawns300 g
• Coconut milk400 ml
• Dendê palm oil60 ml
• Onions2
• Tomatoes4
• Bell peppers — mixed colours2
• Garlic6 clove
• Limes3
• Coriander50 g
• Spring onions4
• Rice — to serve400 g
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Rub the fish with salt, pepper, crushed garlic and lime juice and leave it twenty minutes.

   25 min

2. 2

   Slice the onion, tomatoes and peppers into rings of the same thickness.

   12 min

3. 3

   Line the bottom of the clay pot with half the onion, tomato and pepper rings.

   5 min

4. 4

   Lay the fish in a single layer, the prawns and remaining vegetables over it, and season.

   8 min

5. 5

   Pour the coconut milk and dendê oil down the side, without dousing the fish from above.

   4 min

6. 6

   Cover and cook twenty minutes over medium heat, rocking the pot but never stirring.

   22 min

7. 7

   Scatter with coriander and spring onion and serve straight from the pot, with rice and farofa.

   6 min

About the dish

Dendê palm oil gives moqueca its colour and its particular flavour, and nothing replaces it. Olive oil makes a different dish — a capixaba moqueca, from Espírito Santo.

The fish is never browned. It goes in raw on top of the vegetables and cooks in the steam under the lid; searing here breaks the fillets and clouds the sauce.

It cooks in a clay panela and is never stirred with a spoon. The pot is rocked instead: a stirred moqueca turns into fish soup with pieces in it.

Worth knowing

• — Do not exceed the measure of dendê. It is intensely flavoured, and two extra spoons bury both the fish and the coconut.
• — The fish must be firm: monkfish, cod, halibut. A delicate one falls into threads and the moqueca loses its look.
• — Do not lift the lid for the first fifteen minutes. Steam is the only thing cooking the top layer, and what escapes does not come back.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

48 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

34 g

More from Brazil

• Feijoada — Black beans stewed with several cuts of smoked and salted pork, served with orange and greens.
• Pão de queijo — Cheese balls of tapioca starch — a crust outside, a stretchy hollow inside. No wheat and no yeast.
• Coxinha — Deep-fried teardrops of cooked dough with a chicken filling, shaped like a drumstick.