Mainland Brazil · Volume 42, The Court and the Clay Pot
Torta capixaba
Espírito Santo
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour 15
- Researched
- 6 sources cited
Espírito Santo's Holy Week centrepiece, its wide range of shellfish and fish suited to the Lenten prohibition on red meat. This chapter treats the popular claim of “over four hundred years” of continuous history as evidence of long-standing ingredients and occasion rather than of one continuously attested recipe.
As tradition built it
Serves 6 to 8. About 1 hour, plus 15 minutes' resting.
Ingredients
- 500 g bacalhau, desalted and shredded
- 200 g shrimp, peeled and cleaned
- 400 g fresh pupunha palmito, roughly three stalks
- 2 ripe tomatoes, seeded and diced
- ½ cup pitted green olives, quartered
- 1 onion
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- ½ malagueta chilli, seeded and minced
- 1 lemon, juiced
- ¼ cup olive oil, plus 3 tbsp for the sauté and 1 tbsp for the shellfish
- 1 tbsp urucum
- 3 spring onions, chopped
- ½ bunch coriander, chopped
- 6 eggs, separated
- to taste salt, to taste
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C. Poach the cod in boiling water roughly 10 minutes.
- In the clay pot over low heat, sauté the onion in olive oil with salt, 3 minutes; add the garlic, then tomato, chilli and urucum, 1 minute; then the palm heart with salt, 5 minutes.
- Push everything aside, add a further tablespoon of oil, cook the shrimp with salt, 1 minute, then add the cod and olives, 5 minutes, finishing with the lemon juice.
- Off the heat, stir through the coriander and spring onion and a final drizzle of olive oil.
- Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks, fold in the yolks one at a time, season with salt.
- Level the seafood base in the pot, cover with the whipped egg and bake roughly 30 minutes until puffed and golden.
- Rest 15 minutes under cover before cutting, so the egg fully sets for a clean slice.
What a modern chef changes
Individual portions, and two proteins poached to their own margins
Method
- Bake individual portions in small cazuelas rather than one large pot, for a more even egg set through a shallower depth and a cleaner presentation at the table.
- Poach the shrimp and cod separately, briefly and precisely, before folding them into the base, rather than cooking both directly in the sauté, for tighter control over two proteins that are easily overcooked by different margins.
- Pass the tomato and urucum base through a chinois before the shellfish goes back in, for a smoother foundation than the traditional rustic sauté leaves.