RECIPE - Crab in Coconut Milk (Caranguejo ao Leite de Coco)

In yesterday's post, we discussed Fortaleza's Thursday night ritual of heading out to a beach bar or casual restaurant for a crab feast. Every beach bar along Fortaleza's principal beach, Praia do Futuro, touts their own recipe as the best, but in fact, almost anywhere you go the basic recipe is the same. The recipe is so closely associated with Fortaleza and surrounding beach communities that it's sometimes called Caranguejo Cearense, meaning "Crab from Ceará" the state of which Fortaleza is the capital.

At its simplest, and most traditional, the recipe calls for cooking/steaming the crabs in a broth of rich coconut milk seasoned with garlic, onions, and tomatoes and garnished with lavish amounts of chopped cilantro. During the cooking process, the coconut milk is infused with the juices of the crabs so that when the dish is presented the aromas of the coconut milk and of briny seafood combine into a mouth-watering invitation to pick up the hammer, grab a crab and begin to smash and nosh the night away.

In Fortaleza, this recipe is made with local caranguejo-uçá crabs but can be successfully be made with whatever species of crab is available in your local market - with the possible exception of Alaska king crabs which are better suited to other treatments due to their enormous size.
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RECIPE - Crab in Coconut Milk (Caranguejo ao Leite de Coco)
Serves 4 - 8 depending on size of crabs

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups (500 ml) coconut milk
1 tsp. annatto powder or oil (can substitute sweet paprika)
1 bunch cilantro, large stems removed, finely chopped
8 small crabs, thoroughly washed
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In a large saucepan with a lid, heat the olive oil, then add the garlic, tomatoes and onion and fry until the onion and garlic are softened and the tomato is breaking up. Stir in the coconut milk, the annato or paprika and half of the cilantro. Cook a few more minutes or until the tomato has completely broken up. Bring the liquid to the boiling point.

Add the crabs plus just enough water to cover them. Reduce heat, cover the pan and let the crabs cook/steam for 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

Put the crabs in a deep serving bowl, pour the cooking liquid over, then sprinkle the remaining cilantro over all. Serve immediately, to be eaten by hand.

Hometown Crab - Caranguejo-Uçá

For thousands of local residents Thursday night in Fortaleza, Ceará, Flavors of Brazil's hometown, means only one thing - crab. On Thursday nights, beachside and downtown bars restaurants alike serve up thousands of crabs to hungry diners. On Tuesday almost no one orders crab, nor on Wednesday or Saturday, but on Thursday the first question a waiter will ask you is likely to be "How many?" rather than "What would you like?". You give him a number and off he goes. He sets the table with small wooden chopping boards and wooden hammers, lots of paper napkins, a plastic bowl for empty shells and hot sauce. Then he brings the feast - small crabs steamed/cooked in a rich broth of coconut milk seasoned with onion, tomatoes and cilantro. A crab goes on the chopping board, you rip the legs off, use the hammer to open them, and the feast begins. And to accompany the crabs? Plenty of icy cold beer, or soft drinks. That's all.

Late last year, when we introduced some friends visiting from Canada to the Thursday night crab ritual, they exclaimed in shock when the bowl of crabs arrived at the table - "Yech! Their legs are hairy!!" And true it was. But once we explained that the hair doesn't come off and that in fact if you dip one of the legs into the delicious broth the hair helps to bring the broth to your mouth they began to relax and to enjoy the meal. But it was a definite culture-shock moment, that first sight of the hirsute crustaceans.

Mangrove swamp

The overwhelming majority of crabs served on these Thursday night blowouts is a species called (in Portuguese) caranguejo-uçá. Caranguejo is the Portuguese word for crab - any crab - and  uçá is a Portuguese adaptation of the species' taxonomic name (Ucides cordatus). Uçá crabs are small, about the same size as an adult human hand. The species is one of two known as mangrove crabs, as their unique habitat are muddy mangrove swamps. The animals live on and in the mud, burrowing in when the tide is high and scuttling about when the tide is low. They are very important to the ecology of mangrove swamps, which are plentiful along the northeast and north coasts of Brazil.

crabs on a string

Most of the supply of crabs for Fortaleza's restaurants and bars comes from the area around delta of the Parnaíba river, about 250 kms. away, in the neighboring state of Piauí. In the city of Parnaíba, located near the mouth of the river and within close distance to miles of coastal mangrove swamps, the harvest and merchandising of crabs are the prime local economic activity. Crabs are commonly sold by the string - each string containing four crabs. Each week during crabbing season about 65,000 strings of crabs are sold in Parnaíba. A crab fisher received 25 centavos (R$0.25) for a string, a price which by the time it reaches a restaurant or bar in Fortaleza sells for R$10. In most beach bars and casual restaurants in Fortaleza, each crab sells for about R$4. Ask a crab fisher how easy it is to catch crabs in their muddy habitat and whether he thinks he's being fairly compensated - the answer is like to be a firm NO. And he'd have a point. The retail price in Fortaleza, which is still only about USD$2 per crab, is 60 times what the fisher receives.

For tourists coming to our city it's essential to try the Thursday night crab feast at least once - it's an important part of local gastronomy. Leaving Fortaleza without eating Caranguejo-Uçá is as heinous a gastronomic crime as leaving New Orleans without eating a Po' Boy sandwich, Naples without sampling pizza in the land of its birth or Vancouver not having indulged in wild Pacific sockeye salmon. Don't do it!

RECIPE - Rice with Crabmeat (Arroz de Caranguejo)

Moving right along with Flavors of Brazil's Rice Week...

If one thought about how to categorize the many thousands of Brazilian rice recipes (which one has been doing here at the blog) it seems that they might be grouped into four basic categories. First, there are the recipes for making white rice itself with only a small amount of other ingredients to season the grain, if any. Next would be the side-dish combinations of rice plus vegetables or beans. Third would be the richer, more complex main dishes which combine rice with meat or seafood, often with vegetables as well. And finally, sweet rices dishes and desserts, like the rice pudding featured yesterday on Flavors of Brazil.

Today's recipe for rice with crabmeat is a good example of the third category above - a mixture of rice, picked-over fresh crabmeat and a number of vegetables. It comes from the northeastern Brazilian state of Maranhão and is just one of many recipes from that state that combine rice with the bounty of the sea.

This dish, and its many cousins, are similar to Spanish paellas with their combination of rice, seafood, bell peppers, tomatoes etc., but differ from paella in that the rice is pre-cooked separately and then combined with the other ingredients in the final stages of the preparation. In Spanish paellas the rice and other ingredients are all cooked at the same time over an open flame, resulting in a more risotto-like consistency.

Feel free to play around with recipes like this one - Brazilian cooks do. If you can't get your hands on crabmeat (or can't afford it when you find it) you can substitute all kinds of other seafoods - small shrimps, clams or mussels, rings of squid - all are perfectly acceptable substitutes.

This dish is rich and satisfying without being overwhelmingly so, and with a green salad makes a great light supper or weekend lunch.
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RECIPE - Rice with Crabmeat (Arroz de Caranguejo)
Serves 4

2 cups picked-over fresh crabmeat (can substitute equal quantity canned crab or any other seafood)
3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup finely-chopped onion
1/2 cup finely-diced red or green bell pepper (or a combination)
1/2 cup tomato, peeled, seeded and finely chopped
juice of one lime
salt to taste
4 cups cooked white rice (long-grain is best)
2 Tbsp finely-chopped cilantro
2 Tbsp finely-chopped green onion (green part only)
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Rinse the crabmeat or other seafood well in fresh running water. Drain and reserve.

In a large saucepan heat the oil over medium-high heat, then add the chopped onion, bell pepper and tomato. Cook for a few minutes or until the onion is softened and transparent, the peppers are softened and the tomato begins to break up. Reduce the heat to medium, then add the crabmeat and the lime juice. Cook for another minute or so, or until the crabmeat is heated through. Season for salt.

Reduce the heat to medium-low and stir in the rice, mixing well to combine all the ingredients. Cook, stirring constantly until the rice is hot. Remove from the heat, mix in the chopped cilantro and green onion and serve immediately in a decorative serving bowl or casserole.

Recipe translated and adapted from Cozinha Regional Brasileira by Abril Editora.

RECIPE - Risi e Bisi of Crab (Risi Pisi de Caranguejo)

This dish, which was recently featured at Fortaleza's Prazeres da Mesa Ao Vivo gastronomic trade-show and exposition, is a creation of European-Brazilian chef Bernard Twardy, one of Fortaleza's most successful and highly-regarded chefs. Sr. Twardy was born in Germany and grew up in France, where he was classically trained as a chef.  Many of Brazil's most famous chefs share a European background with Twardy. At some point in their lives these European chefs arrived in Brazil as tourists or immigrants, and for any number of reasons decided to make Brazil their home. As a unofficial group, they combine classical European techniques and dishes with Brazilian ingredients, techniques and dishes to create food that in many ways marries the best of the Old and the New Worlds. I hesitate to call it fusion cuisine, but it is a re-imagining of European gastronomy in a specifically Brazilian context.

Sr. Twardy's recipe for Risi Pisi de Caranguejo is an excellent example of this bi-continental style of cooking. His opening point of reference is the classic Venetian dish risi e bisi (rice and peas) - a risotto-style combination of Arborio rice and fresh green peas. Substituting orzo pasta for the rice and adding locally-caught crab, Brazilians herbs and spices, and livening the dish with coconut milk, he has created something that certainly is not Venetian, but not entirely Brazilian either. Whatever else it is, though, it's absolutely delicious.
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RECIPE - Risi e Bisi of Crab (Risi Pisi de Caranguejo)
Serves 4

1 pound picked-over fresh or thawed crab meat
2 cups (500 ml) coconut milk
3 cups (750 ml) cooked orzo pasta, al dente, cooled to room temperature
2 cups (500 ml) ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced
1/2 cup (250 ml) mixed green and yellow bell peppers, finely diced
1/2 cup (250 ml) strongly-brewed lemon balm infusion
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
1/2 cup (250 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp habanero chile, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small red onion, finely chopped
crab claws to decorate
salt to taste
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Heat half the olive oil in a large sauté pan, add half the garlic and all of the onion, and sweat them for a few minutes. Add the chopped bell peppers and habanero chile and continue to cook the mixture for about three minutes, or until the peppers have softened. Add the tomatoes, the the coconut milk and the lemon balm infusion and cook for about five more minutes, or until the tomatoes have softened, but not dissolved. Remove from heat and reserve.

In a medium saucepan heat the remaining olive oil, then add the remaining garlic. Cook until the garlic is softened, then add the crab meat and mix thoroughly. Remove from heat. Add the reserved tomato mixture, and let stand at room temperature for at least one hour, covered. Combine the crab/tomato mixture with the orzo pasta, and correct seasoning for salt. Mound the mixture into a decorative serving bowl, decorate with a sprinkling of finely chopped cilantro plus crab claws if desired and serve.

Recipe translated and adapted from Prazeres da Mesa magazine - Oct. 2010

Green Crab Iniative - Selo Caranguejo Verde

Last year, Flavors of Brazil wrote about the Thursday-night-ritual crab fest here in Fortaleza, my Brazilian home town. Every Thursday night here in Fortaleza, many thousands of locals and tourists head to outdoor bars and restaurants along the city's seafront and beaches and eat many more thousands of crabs. (Click here for more on Fortaleza's Thursday night crab fest).

Although the crabs become dinner here in Fortaleza, they are not harvested locally. Rather, 95% of the crabs eaten in Fortaleza, according to a recent article in the Jornal do Brasil, come from the neighboring states of Piauí and Maranhão - specifically from the mangrove swamps in the delta of the Parnaíba River, the only river delta in the Americas that terminates in the open ocean. There has recently been a lot of concern about the long-term sustainability of that crab fishery, an important source of income for inhabitants of the region.

Recently an awareness and certification campaign called "Selo Caranguejo Verde" was announced in Fortaleza, thanks to the efforts of Jefferson Legal, a fisheries researcher for EMBRAPA, the Brazilian national agriculture and pisciculture organization, in cooperation with Bernard Twardy, executive chef of the Beach Park Hotel, just outside Fortaleza. This initiative is aimed at raising public awareness of the sustainability issues involved with the crab fishery, and at promoting the sale of sustainable, or "green", crabs in Fortaleza's bars and restaurants.


The iniative has a two-pronged approach. First, making the dining public aware of what makes a crab "green", and second, providing those restaurants that only source sustainable crabs with a seal of certification that they can post on walls, menus and in advertisement. The hope is that the public will begin to favor those restaurants that serve green crabs, which will help ensure the long-term sustainability of the crab fishery.


Sr. Legal developed a protocol and a technique for the capture, handling, storage, and transport of crabs that he says will reduce the mortality rate of the harvest from the current 25-55% to a much more sustainable 5%. After extensive testing, Legal developed a system of stocking and transporting the crabs, without binding their claws, in large plastic containers. In these containers, the crabs are laid between sheets of foam rubber which has been moistened with water from their usual habitat, the mangrove swamps of the river delta. Protected by the foam rubber, and kept moist by the water, the survival rate of crabs improves enormously.

Each year a thousand tons of crabs, about 6 million individual crabs, make their way to market in Fortaleza, and the crab fishery which furnishes them provides the primary source of income to almost 5000 people in Piauí and Maranhão. If the Green Crab Initiative can help to make this fishery sustainable in the long run, it will not only preserve crab stocks and aid the economy in the areas in which the crabs are harvested, it will ensure the continued existence of Fortaleza's Thursday night crab fest.

RECIPE - Dona Flor's Moqueca de Siri-Mole

Dona Flor is one of the most beloved heroines in all of Brazilian literature, and came to life through the pen of Jorge Amado in his 1966 novel, Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands). Amado is probably the best-known contemporary Brazilian author of fiction, and his novels are read around the world. Dona Flor has been translated into over forty languages, and many non-readers know her through the brilliant film of the same name, directed by Bruno Barreto and released in 1976. The beautiful Brazilian actress Sonia Braga became a world-wide star by her sensitive and extremely sensual portrayal of Dona Flor.

In the novel, which is set in Salvador, Bahia in the 1940s, Dona Flor is the owner of a cooking school, called Flavor and Art Culinary School. Though the product of a strict, Catholic middle-class upbringing, she has scandalized her family and friends by marrying a local reprobate gambler and womanizer, Vadinho, with whom she is passionately in love. The novel begins with Vadinho's death, early one drunken morning of Carnaval, which leaves Dona Flor a heartbroken widow in her mid-twenties. Forced to support herself, and to pay off her beloved Vadinho's gambling debts she throws herself into her work at the cooking school.

In the novel, each section is opened by a recipe written by Dona Flor, or by a lesson from one of her cooking classes. The recipe that follows is for Moqueca de Siri-Mole and it combines a very usable recipe for this traditional soft-shelled crab dish from Bahia with Flor's pain-ridden memories of cooking this dish for Vadinho. I have translated the text from Amado's original Portuguese.

To read the recipe, just click on "read more" below.

Siri and Siri-Mole

Brazilians love crustaceans - that is to say Brazilians love to eat crustaceans, though perhaps some Brazilians love crustaceans in and of themselves. Shrimp, langostines, crawfish, lobsters and numerous types of crabs fill restaurant menus and are enjoyed everywhere in Brazil, not just along the coast.

 Some varieties of crustacean are found in great parts of Brazil, but others are quite local (click here to read about the aratu, a species of crab). Along Brazil's northeast coast, one of the most highly valued and sought-after species of crab goes under the name of siri, and in particular Brazilians love to eat it as siri-mole. The siris are a family of crabs (genus Callinectes) which is distinguished by their oar-shaped hind legs, which make them excellent swimmers. In fact, the usual term in English for the siri is "swimming crab". The most well-known swimming crab in the USA is the famous blue crab of the Chesapeake Bay on the mid-Atlantic coast.

Like all crustaceans, the siri must periodically shed its hard shell in order to grow. Human gastronomes have discovered that this little creature is particularly delicious just after it has molted - that is, shed it's shell - and before a new shell has had time to harden. In English, during this vulnerable time these crabs are called "soft-shelled crabs", and in Brazil, "siri-mole" which merely means "soft siri."

In this soft, shell-less state, Brazilians enjoy siri-mole simply fried, cooked in a soup or stew, or most of all, turned into a moqueca de siri-mole - a typical dish from Bahia which employs the iconic Bahian flavoring ingredients coconut milk and dendê oil.

In the next post, I'll provide a very "literary" recipe for moqueca de siri-mole, from one of Brazil's most famous authors.

Saving the Aratu (Part 2) - How the Presidium Works

In my previous post, I detailed the worldwide work of the Slow Food Presidia in protecting and preserving traditional food communities. The following text, translated from the Slow Food Brasil website, shows how one particular food community has been sheltered and strengthened by a Slow Food Presidium, and how the species of animal that is the community's focus, a small crab known as the aratu, has been given a new lease on life.
(Click on "read more" for the story of the Slow Food Aratu Presidium)

Saving the Aratu (Part 1) - A Slow Food Brazil Presidium

Among the many projects of the international Slow Food movement is an international system of groups supporting the preservation of traditional foods, food sources and food communities. These groups are called Presidia (in the singular, Presidium). Interestingly the Portuguese translation for Presidium is Fortaleza, the name of the city in which I live. As defined on the international website of Slow Food, the purpose of the Slow Food presidia is to:

sustain quality production at risk of extinction, protect unique regions and ecosystems, recover traditional processing methods, safeguard native breeds and local plant varieties. The Presidia directly involve producers, offer technical assistance to improve production quality, organize exchanges among different countries, provide new market outlets (both locally and internationally).

These complex projects contribute enormously to the preservation of uniquely local foods, food products and lifestyles. Without the support of a Presidium in creating a sustainable food community and a market in which it can sell its products for a fair price, many traditional foods would have already disappeared and many more would be on the road to extinction.

There are currently 7 Slow Food Presidia in Brazil, and in the next while Flavors of Brazil will be highlighting all of them. As the products involved are very local, and their markets are often restricted, it's unlikely that readers of this blog from outside Brazil will be able to buy the products themselves. But if any of the readers of this blog feel they'd like to support Slow Food internationally or in their own country, it's easily done either at the international Slow Food website, or their own country's Slow Food site.

In the next post, I'll explain exactly how one particular Presidium, that of the aratu, works, and then following, I'll add a traditional recipe for cooking this delicate crustacean.

If It's Thursday, This must be a Crab-fest

In Fortaleza, Thursday night means crabs (Portuguese: caranguejo). The weekend starts officially on Thursday evenings on the city's most popular beach, Praia do Futuro, when throngs of hungry and thirsty locals descend on any one of a number of beachfront bar/restaurants for a caranguejada. This word can be tanslated as a crab-fest, a crab-orgy or a crab-blowout depending on how many crabs one consumes. It's not gourmet food, but it's authentic, local and delicious. (And a bargain - last night two of us shared four crabs. Each one costs R$2.70 - Brazilian reais - which works out to approximately $1.50 USD per crab).

Fortaleza's beach is lined with establishments called barracas. They provide all the services one might need for a day, or evening, at the beach. There's always bar and food service, bathrooms and fresh-water showers, music (often live), and palm-thatched sun shelters on the beach itself. Last night we visited one called America do Sol for our crab tasting. Under a high thatched ceiling, open to the sea-breeze and night air, tables were set up simply for the crab-fest. There were no tableclothes for reasons that soon became obvious - eating crabs Fortaleza-style is a messy business! A group of about ten musicians sat in a circle in the middle of the restaurant playing traditional acoustic samba music. The crowd consisted of young singles, family groups, tourists, couples - a real mix.
 

We quickly ordered four crabs, and a bottle of Brazilian beer. In Brazil, the beer is mostly light lager-style and it's served extremely cold (-3 to -4 degrees Celsius). In normally comes in a large bottle, 600 ml. (20 oz.) in a thermal cooler-container. With crabs, beer is considered a necessity, not merely an option. The crabs came to the table in two plastic containers. One with the crabs themselves, very hot, and in a flavorful broth of crab nectar, coconut milk, onion, chilis and cilantro. The other container had two small pieces of granite, two hammers, and small cups of hot sauce and farinha, the ubitious Brazilian ground manioc accompaniment.

The technique for eating these crabs is simplicity itself. The piece of granite is used to hold the crab. Legs and claws are pulled off and pulled apart, using the hammers when necessary. Each bit is dipped into the broth, then slurped and sucked to extract the meat and the flavor. Some continue on with the body of the crab, but most people limit themselves to the limbs. Two crabs satiate a large appetite, but there are some people who eat three or four.

The coast of Ceará state is lined with beaches and with mangrove swamps, and it`s in the swamps where crabs are harvested. There is no commercial farming of crabs in Ceará, and all the crabs are wild. They, apparently, are not endangered, and thrive, even with a Thursday night crab-fest to supply every week.

Visiting Fortaleza without experiencing a Thursday night crab-fest is unthinkable. Choose from a number of barracas, order crabs and beer, and dig-in!

For a video on the Thursday crab-fest, including some wonderful samba music, click on this post (coming soon).