Caldo de piranha

As tradition built it

Caldo de piranha

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

The fish

• 3 medium piranhas
• lime
• to taste salt and black pepper
• 6 cloves garlic, crushed
• for frying oil

The broth

• 120ml olive oil
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• 2 tomatoes, skinned and chopped
• pimenta-de-cheiro
• as needed boiling water
• 1 bunch cheiro-verde, chopped

Method

1. Skin the piranhas, cut them in half, and season them with lime, salt, pepper and half the garlic.
2. Fry the pieces only until golden.
3. Heat the olive oil in a large pan and fry the onion and the rest of the garlic until golden.
4. Add the pepper, tomato and pimenta-de-cheiro and a little of the water.
5. When the sauce boils, add the fried fish, stir a little, and add the rest of the water.
6. Lower the heat and cook until the fish is done.
7. Add the cheiro-verde and cover the pan.

Notes

Called locally "o viagra dos rios", the rivers' Viagra; that is a folk claim, not a fact.

The recipe is Grecye Cardoso's, for Agite Manaus. Portal Amazônia's caldo is made from the heads alone, boiled 10 minutes in water flavoured with onion, chicória, garlic, tomato and a little wheat flour, with a pirão of white flour beside it; the broth is drunk without a spoon.

What a modern chef changes

Sous vide fillet, clarified consommé

Method

1. Fillet the piranha rather than cooking it whole.
2. Poach the flesh sous vide separately from the broth to keep it from breaking apart, then flake it back into the finished soup only at the point of serving.
3. Clarify the aromatics-and-tomato broth through a chinois for a genuine consommé clarity the traditional cloudy pot never attempted.
4. Finish with a spoon of farinha toasted fresh in a dry pan rather than stirred in raw, for texture that holds rather than dissolving into grit.