How to Make Brazilian Dishes like Moqueca and Pao de Queijo

today on America's Test Kitchen Becky makes Julia a Brazilian classic shrimp and fish stew Jack challenges Bridget to a tasting of pecorino romano and Giulia and Bridget reveal the secrets to making the best Brazilian cheese bread it's all coming up right here on America's Test Kitchen [Music] every region with a coastline has its own version of seafood stew think of bouillon base or cioppino or even gumbo and most of these students are but not in Brazil the famous Brazilian seafood stew called moqueca has a base of tomatoes and coconut milk kind of like a Thai curry and in addition to all the seafood it usually includes lots of vegetables and a bright citrusy sauce and today Becky's gonna show us how it's done that's right moqueca is so fast and so easy to prepare and aside from the fish and the condiments you might already have most of the ingredients on hand super impressive for a weeknight it's really good for entertaining all around great dish man all right let's do it so let's start with the fish now in Brazil you've used whatever's fresh the catch of the day you can use any combination of seafood we're gonna keep it simple we're using a pound of skinless Cod easy to find super easy and also a pound of large shrimp there's 26 to 30 in a pound so we're gonna cut the fish it's about 3/4 to 1 inch thick and we're gonna cut it into 1 and 1/2 inch chunks all right so this piece actually comes from the top of the cod filet it's known as the captain's cut oh I didn't know that yeah so it's a nice evenly thick fillet it cuts up into nice even pieces very nice ok so one and a half inch chunks here nice big stew sized pieces yeah these are gonna simmer in liquid they might break apart a tiny bit which is fine so you want substantial pieces so if you can't find Cod you can use haddock really any firm white fish would be fine here so there's our fish okay so now we're adding a pound of peeled and deveined shrimp I noticed she took the tails off I did this is a stew sometimes it's nice to leave the tails on if you're doing more like a finger food type of thing but because we're eating this with a spoon I took the tails off that makes sense and now I'm adding 3 cloves of garlic oh hello minced up now in Brazil they typically marinate the fish in lime juice we try that and we found that it made the fish a tiny bit dry a little bit stringy almost like ceviche yes because it's the lime starts to denature the proteins in the fish it starts to cook a little right so we're gonna leave that out we'll add the lime juice later okay we're just adding 1/2 teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of pepper we'll get this a little stir and now the salt and the pepper and the garlic will season the fish really nice flavor okay so now the fish is done let's move on to make the base of the stoop okeydoke so I have one 14.5 ounce can of whole tomatoes here just a little bit it's gonna add some brightness okay Kate gives you a surprising amount of flavor with just a few ingredients a lot of liquid must come out of that fish yes it does and that's gonna flavor the stew as well and it's gonna loosen up the broth too so that was the can of tomatoes with their juices one onion chopped up and a quarter cup of fresh cilantro also chopped this looks like you're making salsa I know actually I want this to be the texture of a pureed salsa okay I'm gonna let this rip for about 30 seconds all right that looks good it doesn't need to be perfectly smooth like I said just like a pureed salsa so I'll let that sit for a second it smells good and we'll move on over here I'm gonna get some medium-high heat I have two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil it's just about starting to shimmer here yeah so I have one green pepper one red bell pepper I've seeded stem them and chop them into half-inch pieces and I'm putting in a 1/2 teaspoon of salt this is gonna make the stew nice and colorful and give it a little bit of flavor so we'll cook these over medium-high heat just until they start to soften a little bit that'll take five to seven minutes okay been about seven minutes and you can see the peppers have started to soften a little bit but there's no holding their shape you can smell em I know I love these aromatics let's put in our tomato onion mixture here and would you mind turning the heat down to medium for me you got it thank you and let's add another half teaspoon salt so I'm gonna cook this for three to five minutes I don't want the pot to get totally dry but I do want it to reduce down a little bit it's been about five minutes you can see the tomato mixture has really cooked down there yeah that's quite thick it is quite thick not totally dry but it really did reduce down the flavors concentrated a little bit so now I have one 14 ounce can of coconut milk hmm this will make the stew nice and creamy and rich it will balance out the acidity from the tomatoes so I'm gonna crank the heat up to high you want to bring this to a full rolling boil okay so our stew is at a rolling boil here it's bubbling all the way across the surface so let's add our seafood into the Dutch oven and now I'm adding the lime juice that I talked about before two tablespoons have a nice tart flavor so I'm gently going to stir in the fish and now I'm gonna do something crazy I'm gonna turn off put the lid on and slide this off the heat now the liquid the coconut milk was at 212 degrees it was boiling really rapidly the fish was basically at 40 degrees fridge temperature now we're gonna let this sit for 15 minutes as it sits those temperatures will equalize the fish will come to about 140 the shrimp will - and that's that's the temperature we like our seafood at yeah and it protects the seafood from overcooking foolproof way to cook your fish so while our seafood is finishing up we're going to make a nice hot sauce that the traditional accompaniment to is do lovely so good in Brazil they use something called a Malaga pepper it's a spicy chili pepper hard to find here yes very hard to find so we're gonna be using pickled hot cherry peppers instead these are pretty easy to find you can find them near the pickles near the roasted red peppers in the supermarket so for these you don't need to take the stems off we're gonna put this in the food processor they're tender they're gonna get all chopped up so for those and then I have half an onion chopped up quarter cup extra virgin olive oil and 1/8 of a teaspoon of sugar just a teeny bit to balance out those pickled peppers so let's put this in the processor there we go okay 30 seconds alright let's take a peek that looks pretty good to me take a whiff of that whoo that's spicy this stuff is so good I would make a double batch cuz we lay eggs on rice Lou gonna want this on your fridge all right let's get that in a bowl the onion and the pickle peppers so simple so good I'm just gonna add a little touch of salt stir that in that is done our seafoods just about done so we'll tidy up and then we'll come back and eat all right the time has come all right can I take the lid off you can whoo 15 minutes okay I'm just gonna doctor this up a teeny bit before we eat I'm gonna add another 1/2 cup of chopped fresh cilantro and I'm gonna add 2 tablespoons of the pepper sauce that we made just to give it a little kick so that's where that bright citrusy punch comes from that's right along with the lime that we added right at the last minute so I just want to gently stir I wouldn't be careful I don't want to break up all that beautiful cod it is beautiful I could see you serving this for company yeah and it's low stress for the cook-off heat you really can't overdo it your friends will be me I'm about to amaze you right so we have some white rice already in the bowls it's really nice to serve this with rice oh that looks so good looks delicious that's for you would you like some more of that well based on your recommendation I am gonna put a little dollop on the top yeah I recommend it yeah the fish is so perfectly cooked it's nice and tender you're not gonna find rubbery shrimp mmm so mm-hmm it's rich but it's bright and it's hard to have something that tastes rich and bright at the same time yes it's so satisfying but it's on the lighter side still oh I just ate a little bit of that relish mmm fish is perfectly cooked it's so fresh tasting yeah Becky this is delicious well done thank you so to make moqueca cut a piece of cod down into one and a half inch pieces and toss with one pound of peeled and deveined large shrimp some garlic salt and pepper make a quick salsa in the food processor with a small can of peeled tomatoes an onion and some cilantro after sauteing a red and green bell pepper in a large pot add the salsa and cook for just a few minutes until thickened stir in the coconut milk and bring to a boil then add the seafood and some lime juice cover and remove the pot from the heat for 15 minutes finish with a hot cherry pepper relish and beer eating lil kicker from America's Test Kitchen to your kitchen a wonderful new recipe for Brazilian shrimp and fish stew I'm definitely making this oh I know [Music] the Legionnaires of ancient Rome fought hard they ate well they bought and milled their own grain to make bread and their rations included lentils figs and according to the poet Virgil 27 grams it's just under an ounce of pecorino romano that's pretty good but I need a lot more in my fridge I love the stuff so Jack's here he's gonna tell us which pecorino won the tasting yeah I've got a lot more than 27 grams this is really a taste test about imported pecorino romano okay and domestic Romano so pecorino romano originally was made in Rome hence the Romano but it's also made with sheep's milk and word for sheep in Italian is Pecora the domestic cheese's came up with the name Romano to indicate the lineage but they're made with cows milk ah so that's a very different cheese if you think about sheep's milk cheeses Roquefort manchego they have funk funk they're fruity they're funky the fats in sheep milk are just a lot different in terms of their flavor when they make cheese's than the cow's milk Romano cheeses are really quite different than pecorino romano which is I think one of the things that you're gonna see here and I actually have two pecorino romano from Italy and two domestic Romano's domestic cheese's are good they're just different and they don't have the crystalline texture that we kind of expect a pecorino romano is typically aged eight or nine months also just doesn't have the game enos yeah so did you know that a third of all the Italian cheeses that we import are actually pecorino romano really yeah pecorino romano doesn't get to love your parmesan is the king it's always a bridesmaid yeah and we use it a lot in the kitchen when we want more flavor when we've got a dish that requires cheese with more personality than Parmesan so in addition to the way that you're tasting the cheese's here we also made the most classic recipe you can make with pecorino romano which is the Roman dish cacio e pepe it's a pasta that basically just has three ingredients pasta pecorino romano and lots of black pepper the tasting was very similar whether it was playing or with the pasta we liked all the cheeses but we felt like the pecorino romano is tasted quite different than Romano's the domestic cheese's in addition to being with cows milk they add an enzyme that tries to break down the dairy fat to create some different flavors so there have some interesting notes to them but again they're not the same as what you get from sheep's milk cheese which has all that gay meanness I will say that even though pecorino romano has the word Romano in it most of the cheese's are not made in sardinia the hills of sardinia covered with sheep making cheese for us here in the united states so any impressions of the four cheese's things you're noticing that are different things you're liking things that you're less drawn to definitely less drawn to that in terms of pecorino it's not what I would think of it as a pecorino romano i had taste a little one-story which is a real word I promise you and if anything to make another word so this one is my favorite I've already made that decision that's going home with me okay this I'm not crazy about this one either this one's my favorite alright you want to see I do so you have chosen the runner-up the Locatelli now we'd liked all the pecorino romano all of the Italian cheeses were recommended the tasting panel liked them Locatelli is a brand name some people think look till he's actually cheese it's not it's just a brand name it's very salty it's very salty this one I would say is the game yes yes it is it is funkiest and it was to me the most well see something yeah of all of them what you down to the end all right there so this is actually a winner which is a Boar's Head pecorino romano it is a little bit tamer let's say then the one that you chose you went for a big fun I went for a big fun that's like medium fun it was tamer for me yeah this one actually didn't mind but I'm surprised this is the Stella this is one of the domestic Romano's they were all recommended with reservations so there are fine cheeses they're just different surprised that you like that why not maybe it's I have bought that before so maybe it is tong memory their palate memory this one I just did not like it this is Sartori again it's another domestic Romano cheese these two were right next to each other in the rankings they were fine cheese's they just they didn't have the funk of the one that you chose that is the real pecorino romano well there you go if you want to buy the winner it's Bors had pecorino-romano and it retails for $6.99 for seven ounces [Music] this first bowl contains vinegar the second bowl contains oil and this third one contains oil and vinegar that I emulsified together with an immersion blender now I've dyed them all red so that we can see them better check out what happens when I dip a garlic clove into each now the vinegar is very thin and you can see that it actually barely clings to it only in small drops mostly comes right off the garlic the oil is a little bit thicker so it clings better but still mostly slides right off the emulsion on the other hand clings beautifully it's really thick and it sticks perfectly to the garlic now the reason that the emulsion is thicker is that the droplets of oil are dispersed throughout the vinegar and that interferes with this ability to flow so if pouring vinegar is like the Tour de France and pouring oil is a fleet of racecars pouring a vinaigrette is like both of them using the same Road at the same time they get in each other's way and the whole thing slows way down the more oil we add the thicker the emotion becomes this mayonnaise is about 16 parts oil to one part vinegar as you can see it's much thicker than our vinaigrette which is three parts oil to one part vinegar so for a rich buttery coating on spring vegetables a vinaigrette that grabs every bite of your salad or a thick clingy mayo it pays to take the time and effort to emulsify a core ingredient in brazilian cuisine is manioc and here it is now this is a tuber it's also known as yuca or cassava and it can be ground down into a coarse or fine meal now here in the States we know it as tapioca and we use it in two applications usually there's a fine powder if the starch use it to thicken cobblers or we have these larger pearls you might know this from tapioca pudding or even bubble tea but Julie is going to show us how to use tapioca in a new to us recipe called Pao de queijo and that is a Brazilian cheese bread mm-hmm it is I love cheese bread anywhere it comes from we love cheese bread yeah and the great thing about this is that it's made with entirely with tapioca there's no flour in it and so it has a very different texture a very chewy texture that's a little bit lighter than flour perfect now we're gonna use a very specific method to make this dough it's the PATA choux method and that's when you heat up the liquids and you add hot liquids to the flour that traps some steam and moisture that helps it puff up in the oven so we're gonna heat up our liquids to get started I'm gonna add first off the milk two thirds of a cup plus 2 tablespoons of milk to this we're gonna add 1/2 a cup of vegetable oil and last but not least a little bit of butter for flavor if that's one and a half tablespoons of unsalted butter I'm just gonna heat this up over high heat until the butters melted and that has come to a boil okay meanwhile we're gonna take a look at our dry mixture so this is about 3 cups of tapioca starch but I highly suggest you weigh it because the starch is a lot like cornstarch it's hard to pack into it so you can get some very different amounts so way it should be 12 ounces all right to this I'm going to add 2 teaspoons of kosher salt and just a quarter teaspoon of baking powder now we are going to rely on the steam to really give it its lift but that baking powder is just really a little bit of insurance gotcha all right so I'm just gonna mix this for a couple seconds on low using the paddle just to mix those ingredients together and let's take a look at our Oh perfect you can see this has come to a boil and while it's still very hot and while the mixer is still on low I'm gonna add it right to the mixer all right we're gonna let the mixer go for about two three minutes and let all that tapioca starch hydrate okay all right so all that starch is hydrated and it's time to have the eggs we have two large eggs and now we're just gonna keep it on low and keep mixing it until it's nice and shiny it begins to stick to the bowl kind of like frosting and that takes about eight minutes all right you can see the transformation that that tapioca starch made as it was whipped and allowed to incorporate air and hydrate it really does look like frosting doesn't it yes all right so now the best part the cheese so classically they used a cheese called aged mean us in these Brazilian rolls really hard to find around here but it has a very similar flavor to Parmesan which we're gonna add but we're also gonna add a little bit of pecorino cuz that little sheepy tang is beautiful in it so with three and a half ounces of each finely grated parmesan and pecorino romano hmm all right so we're just gonna turn this mixer back on low and let that cheese get incorporated let's just eat about 30 to 60 seconds all right that is good to go smells cheesy mm-hmm so as you can see this dough is very sticky and believe it or not this is a drier dough than many of the recipes we found a lot of the recipes were almost more like a batter than a dough but it made the insides of the rolls just really gooey I wanted it to be a bit prettier so we're using a little bit of a drier dough but there's no way we could shape this into rolls now it's just too sticky so what we're gonna do is we're gonna put it in the refrigerator and let it rest in chill for about two hours and that way we'll be able to form rolls really easily so here I'm just gonna compact the dough into the bottom of the bowl cover it with plastic wrap and into the fridge for two hours it goes all right right so this dough is nicely chilled and ready to be shaped into roll it's very far me it is isn't it and it's sort of unusual for a bread dough to be this firm when you're ready to roll it out but that is the key to gluten-free baking everything is backwards so it's hard to tell when things are done and it's hard to tell windows ready to go we're gonna put this in a cold oven right so we're gonna make eight rolls out of this so I'm just gonna score the dough in the bowl with a bowl scraper into eight sections here and the reason you're not dumping it out on the count is because you could if you wanted to but it's just very sticky gotcha I'd rather not get the counter dirty if you didn't have to write plus you might be tempted to add flour to it that's right what you want to do is get your hands just a little wet that helps the dough from sticking he's making me false sit that's it just making round little balls here that will turn in two rows okay it's that simple really yeah right all right here's water absolutely thank you some dough out here I'm kind of here for you to see the texture of this dough cuz it's just so unlike other dough's that we usually bake with what is that like it's kind of like a sugar cookie dough it's kind of what it feels like to me some it's what it looks like as well a giant sugar cookie mm-hmm all right there you go thank you assembly line going on like this so a lot of times a lot of recipes made these rolls a lot smaller hmm we like them big because we wanted to serve them on a sandwich or with a meal it's so malleable I mean it's not springy or anything like a wheat flour dough and it's got the sticky substance on the outside and I imagine it's gonna bake up into really really visible texture all right now before we put these in the oven we're gonna brush them with an egg glaze that'll get them nice and brown and sort of that crackle top that is iconic so here I have a large egg to this I'm gonna add a teaspoon of water and a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt just to give it a little seasoning all right we're gonna brush these on the rolls now you're right about this doping stiffer than a lot of recipes it's more like a batter I've even seen these scooped into muffin tins ah yep there's that last roll looking good looking good almost looks like you lacquered them with butter mm-hmm and they're so perfectly round I love that beautiful so this wasn't a mistake that there are two baking sheets here these rolls have a tendency to burn on the bottom so an easy way to prevent that is just to insulate it with a second sheet underneath that way the top and the inside can bake at the same rate as the bottom that's great so we're gonna put these into a hot oven no right now that oven is at 450 degrees to heat up but when we put these in we're gonna lower that oven to 375 we just want that initial blast of heat so we can get that steam going okay and then they're gonna bake for about 40 minutes of course halfway through we're gonna spin them around can you smell it I could smell them a mile away beautiful aren't they perfect little round rolls with that crackle top all right so these are pretty hot right now obviously so we're not gonna eat them right away but we're not gonna let them cool for too long just five minutes okay cuz you definitely want to eat them while they're warm hmm five minutes is up thank goodness pick your roll any rule I'm gonna go right there boom mmm I like this one so they're still warm they're not as blatantly hot as they were oh wow right I love that little bit of stretch no oh yeah this for breakfast would be beautiful which is how they're come lean but I just think they're good any time of day the crust is where it's at absolutely amazing it's cheesy has this really toasty cheese flavor but also that crisp texture it's just incredible well it's the cheese flavor it's the crackle top and it's that chewy texture that I love Thank You Julia thank you and you're gonna want to make this quick cheesy bread at home mix tapioca starch and baking powder with a hot mixture of milk butter and oil add eggs parmesan and pecorino then refrigerate roll it into balls and bake until crunchy hot and steamy inside so from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen it easy not to mention cheesy with paljah Keysha or Brazilian cheese bread and you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and select episodes on our website americastestkitchen.com I knew you'd love these because they're cheese balls they're cheese balls in another form there you go thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 76,617

Rating: 4.9413614 out of 5

Keywords: brazilian food, pao de queijo, moqueca, cook's illustrated, america's test kitchen, americas test kitchen, bread, fish stew

Id: 0yCVJNelOcI

Length: 23min 7sec (1387 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 17 2020