Amazonia · Volume 22, Tucupi, Jambu and the River's Own Kitchen
Maniçoba
Belém, Pará, Brazil
Illustration
- Time
- 168 hours
As tradition built it
Maniçoba
At least 168 hours cooking (120 to 144 hours with pre-cooked maniva), timed to begin roughly two weeks before Círio Sunday.
Ingredients
- 1kg, pre-cooked maniva (ground manioc leaf), a minimum seven-day cook, five to six days with commercially pre-cooked maniva
- 1 large, chopped onion
- 4 cloves garlic
- 300g charque
- 300g bacon
- 300g calabresa sausage
- 300g salted pork foot
- 300g pork ear
Method
- Cook the ground manioc leaf (maniva) for a minimum of seven days, five to six with commercially pre-cooked maniva, timed to begin roughly two weeks before Círio Sunday, to clear its cyanogenic toxicity.
- Sauté onion and garlic as a base, in the Portuguese sofrito style.
- Add a wide range of cured pork, sausage and smoked meats, and simmer them through the leaf over the full week.
- Adjust seasoning only near the end.
Notes
The sofrito base and the cured meats are identified, in Sidiana Macêdo's research, as the Portuguese-era addition to an originally roasted-meat, indigenous dish. The resemblance to feijoada is coincidental rather than evidence of African heritage, since cassava reached Africa only through European colonisation; Macêdo is followed here rather than the popular 'Amazonian feijoada' framing.
What a modern chef changes
Separately cooked meats, a reduced leaf glaze
Method
- Do not shorten the seven-day detoxifying cook of the leaf itself; instead, cook the cured meats separately, sous vide, each to its own correct doneness.
- Fold the meats into the finished, fully detoxified leaf only in the final hour, so no single component is either undercooked or turned to rag by a week in one pot.
- Dehydrate a portion of the leaf's own cooking liquor down to a concentrated glaze in a wide pan, finished over the plated dish for a depth the week-long simmer builds slowly but rarely concentrates this far.
- Pass the finished stew's liquid through a chinois before serving, for a cleaner presentation than the traditional, deliberately rustic pot ever aimed for.