Mesoamerica · Volume 07, Belize, Honduras and the Mosquito Shore
Tapado
Honduras, Guatemala (Livingston); tapou in Belize
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour 55
- Researched
- No outside sources linked
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Tapado
Called tapado in Honduras and Guatemala, tapou in Belize; Belize News Post tapou recipe, serves 6 to 8 · 1 hour 55 minutes
Ingredients
An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.
- 2 fish, plus 2 fish heads for the broth fish, the day's catch
- conch (Belizean version)
- 1 pound, optional shrimp (Belizean version)
- crab (Belizean version)
- 3 green plantains plantain
- 2 lb cassava
- 5 cups coconut milk, for the broth
- 1 cup chopped cilantro, plus a few whole leaves local herbs
Method
- Cook the fish, and in the Belizean version typically also conch, shrimp and crab, together with plantain and cassava in a coconut milk broth.
- Season with local herbs.
What a modern chef changes
A broth built in stages
Rung 03
Method
- Roast any fish bones and shellfish shells briefly before they go into the coconut milk, for real depth beneath the coconut's own sweetness.
- Strain the finished broth through a chinois for clarity rather than the cloudy result an all-in-one pot tends to give.
- Cook the firmer root vegetables, cassava and plantain, separately and briefly in the dehydrator beforehand to concentrate their flavour, then rehydrate them in the finished broth only at the end, so they hold their shape rather than breaking down into the stew the way a long single simmer does.
- Add any shellfish only in the final minutes, following the same brief-cooking logic sopa de caracol's own tradition already insists on, rather than letting it cook through the whole pot.