Brazilian · Main
Bobó de Camarão
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, aromatics blooming from the first bite, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 800 g mandioca mansa (aipim or macaxeira), peeled, in 5 cm lengths
- 600 g raw prawns, shelled
- 400 ml coconut milk
- 150 g onion, finely diced
- 3 garlic cloves, crushed
- 250 g tomato, diced
- 120 g red pepper, diced
- 60 ml dendê (unrefined red palm oil)
- 30 ml olive oil
- 15 g coriander, chopped
- 20 g spring onion, sliced
- 1 lime
- salt
The skills inside
Sweating aromatics: soft, never brownedSalted water & the float testMashing & puréeing
Allergen screen
Found: 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
- Simmer the cassava in salted water until a knife slides through with no resistance and the pieces begin to split, 20 to 25 minutes; lift out and pull the woody cord from the centre of each piece. 25 min
- Blend the hot cassava with 200 ml of the coconut milk to a purée thick enough to fall from the spoon in a sheet.
- Sweat onion, garlic, pepper and tomato in the olive oil until the tomato has collapsed and no raw garlic smell is left.
- Stir in the purée and the remaining coconut milk, loosen with cassava cooking water to a soft dropping consistency, then add the prawns and cook only until they turn opaque and curl into a loose C.
- Off the heat, stir in the dendê, coriander, spring onion and lime juice, and serve at once.
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.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
Salted water & the float test 188 recipes
- The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
- There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
- Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
- Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
- Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.
Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño
- Also Right
- Champagne
- From the Taps
- Pilsner or witbier
- Zero-Proof
- White grape & tonic
Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.
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