Tag Archives: prawns

Rice and Squid Brazilian style

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This was such a good day for us in Rio. My friend Susan had told me about this group of musicians a few times before. Her and her husband Beto Felicio are great music lovers and have quite a few musician friends. Choro na Feira are a fabulous group of very experienced musicians and we were clearly not the only ones glued to their performance. And what a great idea. You go down to the market for some fresh products and get to hang around drinking some beer and eating some street snacks.

Then we went up to Susan and Beto’s place and took the longest time to prepare this very simple dish (this video thing is not easy you know). When we finally finished, lunch had turned to dinner and we had this invitation to joint Susan’s neighbour Solange Fonseca, who makes beautiful decorative pieces using recycled materials (check our her site www.bangalobrasil.com.br). This was so typical or Rio: someone we never met before, inviting you for dinner with their family. Ok, so we had a big bowl of rice and squid and golden dendê prawns, but how nice of them.

We are immensely grateful to all of them.

I’ll publish a proper recipe later, but there are no strict quantities. It will work whatever you decided to add.

Sound track by Choro na Feira, featuring, “Saudades do Muri”, written by Franklin da Flauta, performed by Choro na Feira. For more info visit their site www.choronafeira.com.

Bobó de Camarão – An Afro-Brazilian recipe

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Bobó is the name given to any dish thickened with mashed cassava. It’s actually quite common in west Africa where Yam is used instead of cassava. This and many other dishes made their way to Brazil in the hundreds of slave ships which transported Brazil’s main workforce during its colonization days.

Bobó de Camarão is now a firm fixture in any Typical Brazilian restaurant. It’s delicious and simple dish to prepare, the only tricky ingredient to find being cassava. But you can revert to Yam if necessary. Brazilian cooking varies up and down our vast country, so there are different versions of the dish. I now for instance that in Bahia, no tomatoes are used in the recipe. This is the recipe I learned while I lived in Rio.

For this video, I was delighted to have the participation of Gianna Toni, co-publisher of the JungleDrums magazine, whose energy and sense of humour made the recipe even more special.

The recipe:
* 8 large prawns
* 12 smaller prawns
* 4 tomatos -peeled and chopped
* 1 large onion, chopped
* 2 or 3 cloves of garlic
* 1 kg of cassava, boiled and chopped.
* 2 cups of coconut milk
* 4 cusp of shrimp stock (use the heads and skins from your prawns!)
* 2 table spoons of Palm Oil (Dendê) paste
* 1 cup of double cream
* fresh coriander
* salt and pepper