“Cuscuz” is a North African dish. It arrived in Brazil from Portugal and has changed significantly, becoming very different from the original dish. There are a lot of regional variations – using fish, poultry, pork and vegetables – served either as appetizers or as a main dish, accompanied with white rice.
The “cuscuz” should be cooked in a “couscous pan” (food steamer), but you can prepare it in a 2 litre ring shaped mold or in smaller pudding molds for individual servings.
Ingredients
• 200 g sweet pepper
• 250 g carrots
• 100 g onions
• 1 garlic clove
• 50 ml olive oil
• 175 g tomato purée
• 80 g pitted black olives
• canned mackerel or sardines, approximately 240 g
• 60 g fresh or frozen peas
• 175 g precooked corn flour
• 175 g toasted manioc flour
• 3 hard-boiled eggs
• chopped parsley
• 2 – 3 mature tomatoes
• salt and black pepper
Preparation method
- Grease the ring shaped mold with corn oil and distribute inside the mold, on the bottom and sides, the tomatoes (cut into about 8 slices), the sliced hard-boiled eggs, the olives, green peas and canned sardine fillets, for decoration.
- Finely chop the sweet peppers, the carrots, onions and garlic and sauté them in oil until well soft.
- Add the tomato purée, olives, sardines with their own oil, green peas and cook for 5 minutes.
- Turn off the heat, add the already blended flours, the chopped parsley and the remaining hard-boiled eggs cubes.
- Adjust salt and black pepper.
- Carefully pour mixture into the mold and press down to compact.
- Cover and cook in a bain-marie for about 45 minutes, until the mixture starts to pull away from the sides.
- Unmold when still hot taking care not to spoil the decoration.
Variation: you can replace sardines with prawns and/or sliced palm heart.
Yield: 6 – 8 servings.
Posted on: 11 November 2011
I’m an architect. I was born in Brazil and my father was Italian.