RECIPE - Alagoas-style Lobster Tail with Amaranth (Casquinha de Lagosta ao Bredo de Alagoas)

Yesterday we posted a very down-home recipe for green amaranth (bredo in Portuguese) in a creamy coconut-milk sauce. Although there's no proof, it's likely that the dish, or something very similar to it, has been cooked in the kitchens of Northeast Brazil for centuries.

Today, we're taking a look at a very contemporary take on that simple but delicious recipe, a creation of chef Odair Silva of the Hotel Radisson in Maceió, the capital of the almost-but-not-quite smallest Brazilian state of Alagoas. It was recently published in an article featuring the cuisine of  Maceió in Brazilian food and wine magazine Prazeres da Mesa.

Chef Silva combines the distinctly downmarket green with luxurious lobster tail, an ingredient as prized, and expensive, in Brazil as it is in other corners of the world. Brazilian lobster is a type of rock lobster, similar to lobsters found in tropical waters around the world. It is different from its cold-water cousin, the clawed, or New England lobster, though either kind of lobster can be used in this dish.
___________________________________________________
RECIPE - Alagoas-style Lobster Tail with Amaranth  (Casquinha de Lagosta ao Bredo de Alagoas)
Serves 2

2 lobster tails
1 bunch green amaranth (can substitute spinach or collard greens)
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 small green bell pepper, seeded and diced
1/4 small red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 green onion, green part only, minced
1/3 cup bechamel sauce
1/3 cup coconut milk
grated parmesan cheese, to taste
salt and pepper to taste
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lobster:
Slice open the lobster tails on the ventral side. Extract the meat and cut into small strips. Reserve the meat in the refrigerator. Bring plenty of water to the boil in a medium sauce pan, add the shells and cook at a slow boil for 30-25 minutes. Drain and when cool, cut away the ventral part of the shells, leaving only the dorsal portion. Reserve.

In a medium frying pan, heat the olive oil, then fry half of the onion plus the garlic until the onion is just softened. Add the chopped green and red peppers, fry for a minute more, then stir in the bechamel sauce. Reduce heat, then add the strips of lobster meat and cook for about 15 minutes. Add parmesan, then salt and pepper to taste. Reserve, keeping warm.

Amaranth:
Wash the leaves, then boil in plenty of salted water for 15 minutes. Drain and reserve. In a frying pan melt the unsalted butter. Fry the remaining onion for a few minutes, then add the cooked amaranth. Cook for a minute or two, then add the coconut milk, reduce heat, and simmer for 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Serving:
Reheat the lobster briefly if required. Divide the lobster between the two shells. Divide the creamed amaranth between two ramekins or small coconut shells. Put one lobster tail and one portion of amaranth on each of two plates. Sprinkle the chopped green onion over all and serve hot.

RECIPE - Rice with Carrot and Cashew Nuts (Arroz com Cenoura e Castanha)

Rice Week races to its conclusion...

Most of the time Brazilians are quite content to eat a portion of plain boiled white rice with their mid-day meal (for Brazilians the idea of eating rice at night is rather strange). But sometimes the rice that accompanies their beans and beef or chicken is tarted up a bit - flavored with chopped or shredded vegetables, fruits or nuts. The idea is a bit like the pilafs and pullaos that are found in the great crescent from India, through Iran and Iraq and on to the Levant - the vegetables and seasoning ingredients are briefly sauteed, then the raw grains of rice are fried for a short time and finally the rice is steam-cooked in broth.

The flavor is richer and more complex than plain rice, and the nutritional profile is improved by the addition of vegetables. Vegetables that are commonly mixed with rice and treated this way are kale, broccoli, onions and, in this recipe from the tiny northeastern state of Alagoas, shredded carrots. And to make the dish even more party-fancy, cashew nuts are tossed in to provide additional crunch and a nice flavor boost.

___________________________________________________
RECIPE - Rice with Carrot and Cashew Nuts (Arroz com Cenoura e Castanha)
Serves 8

5 cups light chicken or vegetable broth (can use water if desired)
2 Tbsp neutral vegetable oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 cup shredded or julienned carrot
2 cups long-grain white rice
1 cup roasted, unsalted cashew nuts
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heat the broth until simmering. Reserve at simmer point.

In a large saucepan with a cover heat the oil over medium-high heat and saute the chopped onion until it's transparent but not browned. Add the rice and the shredded carrot and cook, stirring constantly just until all the rice is coated with oil and the grains are beginning to turn transparent. Stir in the cashew nuts, then add the 5 cups of hot broth.

Let the broth come to a boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover the pan tightly and cook for 10-15 minutes, or until all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender. Remove from heat, leave covered and let stand for 5 minutes.

Put the rice in a decorative serving bowl, fluff with two forks and serve immediately.

RECIPE - Cockles in Coconut Milk (Maçunim ao Coco)

This recipe, from the tiny state of Alagoas in Brazil's Northeast, is made with a typical shellfish from that region, called maçunim in Portuguese, and cockles in English. Here shelled maçunins are cooked in a sauce that uses seasonings common to the region, like cilantro, onion, tomato, green pepper and the red-orange coloring ingredient known as urucum, achiote or annatto.

As I mentioned in the previous post here on Flavors of Brazil, if cockles aren't available in your local market or at the fishmongers, I'd suggest using whatever type of clam is best in your region. The dish would probably also work well with mussels, but the result would be more distant from its origins on the beaches of Alagoas.

_________________________________________________
RECIPE - Cockles in Coconut Milk (Maçunim ao Coco)
Serves 2

2/3 lb (300 gr) precooked cockles, without shells
juice of one lime
salt to taste
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 tsp. cilanto, finely chopped
1 tsp. annatto powder (sweet paprika may be substituted)
1 medium green pepper, finely diced
1 medium tomato, seeded and finely diced
1/2 cup canned or freshly-made coconut milk
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wash the cockles well in several changes of cold water to remove all traces of sand. Season them with the lime juice and salt to taste, and let stand for 15 minutes. In a medium saucepan, heat the oil, then add the cockles, the onion, cilantro, annatto, green pepper and tomato and cook for 10 minutes, until the vegetables are softened and tomato begins to cook down. Add the coconut milk, bring to a boil, then turn heat down to medium low and cook for 10 more minutes, or until the sauce thickens slightly.

Remove from heat, and serve immediately, accompanied by white rice and a green salad.

Recipe translated and adapted from Cozinha Regional Brazileira by Abril Editora

Another Food Mystery Solved - Maçunim

One of the things I find really enjoyable about doing Flavors of Brazil is discovering a new ingredient here in Brazil, and then "tracking it down" - that is, finding out exactly what it is botanically or zoologically, and what's it's name is in English. This is sometimes a more difficult task than one might think. There are various English-Portuguese dictionaries and glossaries, but often the word I'm looking for isn't listed, particularly if the Portuguese word is regional, as is often the case. So then it becomes an internet hunt, using search engines, tags on food sites and blogs, or linguistic search tools.

This weekend, at a simple waterfront restaurant just outside Fortaleza, I ate a seafood dish made from an ingredient that I wasn't familiar with, but which was highly recommended to me by friends. It was called maçunim (pronounced mah-soo-NEEM in Portuguese). The dish consisted of what were obviously bits of meat that had been extracted from an animal that was in the clam/mussel family, having the size, shape and texture of those little creatures. They were cooked in a sauce based on coconut milk, a typical technique from Northeastern Brazil. There were no shells present in the dish, which perhaps could have helped me track down the identity of the maçunim, so my curiosity, if not my appetite, went unsatisfied.

Back home, it took a short while to find out what maçunim is, but I've been able to solve the mystery. There was no Wikipedia listing for it, either in the English or Portuguese versions of that online encyclopedia. There were some recipes in Portuguese, which told me that the animal needed to be removed from the shell after cooking, and there were some photos. I knew through the photos that it was a bi-valve mollusk, as are clams, mussels and oysters. I know the Portuguese words for those three animals, and none of them are called maçunim . Finally, from searching articles on Google, I found an article from 2008 on the site BBC Brasil, an excellent news and information site in Portuguese from "Auntie Beeb."  In an article entitled "O Paraíso Foodie e o Maçunim" author Thomas Pappon wrote about a gastronomic trip he had taken to the Northeastern state of Alagoas, where he discovered a local delicacy called maçunim. Somehow he knew what they were, for in the article he said that this seafood was common England where it was known as "cockles." Bingo! There was the answer I'd been searching for - maçunim are the same little delicacies that Molly Malone sang about all those years ago in Dublin's Fair City. "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!"

Mark down one more victory for Foods of Brazil in it's eternal quest to solve the food mysteries of Brazil. And one more term for the Foods of Brazil's bi-lingual gastronomic glossary.

In the next post on this blog, I'll provide a recipe for maçunim with coconut milk. I have seen cockles available in fish markets in North America and Europe, and I'm sure the dish could also be made with almost any variety of clam.