Vatapa A Great Brazilian Sauce

Brazilian vatapa sauce, recipe below

This week I’ve been doing a series of stories on sauces and food history in Africa and the African diaspora, today I have a recipe from Brazil. James Wetherell traveled to Bahia, Brazil around 1860. Historically Bahia had the greatest concentration of enslaved Africans imported into Brazil before the abolition of slavery there in 1888. The demographics of this black belt like region insured that the regions cuisine had a strong African imprint, this is the case with one looks at sauces too. Wetherell’s travel account describes a sauce I want to talk about today called vatapa. It’s made with plants indigenous to Africa including peanuts, coconut, and palm oil. The recipe calls for shrimp but vegans can use a shrimp substitute. Vatapa served over aromatic brown basmati rice would be stupendous

Brazilian vatapa recipe

Ingredients

2 tbsp. peanut butter

1 lb. cooked shrimp

8 oz. loaf of French or Italian bread

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups of coconut milk

1/2 cup palm oil (or olive oil as a substitute)

Season with dry onion powder, parsley, and ginger

Method:

Combine all ingredients (except shrimp) into a blender or food processor and pulse until smooth. Pour into a sauce pan and simmer until the mixture begins to thicken. Add the shrimp and cook an additional ten minutes. Serve with brown basmati rice.