Vatapá

As tradition built it

Vatapá

Serves 4 to 6. About 45 minutes, including soaking the bread.

Ingredients

• roughly 300g stale bread, crusts removed
• 400ml, plus more for soaking coconut milk
• 100g, or to taste dried shrimp
• a generous handful roasted peanuts
• a generous handful roasted cashews
• a thumb fresh ginger
• 2 to 3 cloves garlic
• 1, chopped onion
• 2 tablespoons, or to taste dendê
• to taste salt
• a little malagueta

Method

1. Soak the stale bread in coconut milk until fully softened.
2. Blend the softened bread smooth with a further 400ml coconut milk, dried shrimp, roasted peanuts, roasted cashews, ginger, garlic, onion and a spoonful of dendê, to a thick, pourable paste.
3. Cook the paste gently in a wide pan, stirred often to stop it catching, for fifteen to twenty minutes, until it has thickened to the consistency of a loose porridge and turned a deep gold.
4. Season with salt and a little malagueta.
5. Serve spooned over rice or use as an acarajé filling.

What a modern chef changes

Fresh-toasted nuts and a chinois pass for a silkier paste

Rung 4

Method

1. Toast the peanuts and cashews fresh in a dedicated spice grinder immediately before blending rather than from a jar, a real, checkable difference in aromatic oils that a nut left sitting since roasting has already begun to lose.
2. Pass the finished paste through a chinois for a genuinely silkier, grit-free result than the traditional blend-and-stir method gives, since bread and whole roasted nuts, however well blended, leave a coarser texture behind than a modern kitchen's tools can remove.
3. Finish with a spoonful of raw dendê stirred in off the heat, Rung 4, the same principle applied here as everywhere else in this chapter.