Brazilian · Starter
Acarajé
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with real fire that builds and stays, richness that coats and comforts, melting away silken.
Ingredients
- 300 g dried black-eyed peas (feijão fradinho), soaked 8 hours
- 120 g onion, grated
- 8 g fine salt
- 1 litre dendê (unrefined red palm oil) for frying
- 60 g whole dried shrimp
- 150 g vatapá (bread, cashew and coconut milk purée)
- 150 g ripe tomato, diced
- 80 g onion, sliced fine
- 2 pimenta malagueta chillies, chopped
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Deep fryingSoaking dried goods back to life
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts · shellfish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the soaked peas hard between your palms under water until the skins float off; the peas should look bare and pale yellow with no grey flecks.
- Grind the drained peas with the grated onion and salt to a thick paste with no whole pieces left in it.
- Beat the paste with a wooden spoon until it lightens in colour and a test spoonful floats in cold water, about 5 minutes of hard work. 5 min
- Heat the dendê to 170C (340F), slide in oval spoonfuls and fry until the crust is set and deep orange and the fritter rolls over on its own, about 4 minutes. 4 min
- Split each fritter while hot, spread with vatapá and top with dried shrimp, tomato, sliced onion and malagueta.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes
- Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
- Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
- Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
- The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
- Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.
Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.
Deep frying 96 recipes
- The oil was at temperature before anything went in, measured rather than guessed, and the vessel is no more than two-thirds full.
- Everything went in dry. Surfaces are patted down and any coating is not dripping, because water hitting hot oil erupts and is the one accident this technique actually has.
- The oil recovers between batches. It is back at temperature before the next load goes in rather than falling further with each one.
- A steady vigorous bubbling that slows as it finishes: the bubbles are the food’s own water leaving, so a piece that has gone quiet has stopped drying out and is done.
- Seasoned or finished in the first seconds out of the oil, while the surface is still hot and will hold what lands on it. Anything applied to a cooled crust sits on top and falls off.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once and the oil temperature collapsed. The crust forms slowly while the food sits in warm fat absorbing it rather than shedding steam, and it comes out heavy and greasy instead of crisp, which no amount of draining afterwards will fix.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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