I decided to try the Brazilian dish called Bobó de Camarão (Shrimp and Creamy Cassava Sauce), a recipe from Karen of Kafka na Praia.The title intrigued me a bit. Creamy cassava sauce? I’ve had cassava plenty of times but not as a sauce. And, of course, I’ve eaten rice many times (It’s actually a food staple in my household). However, I’d never had the combination of rice and cassava as recommended in the recipe. The sauce ingredients consisted of shrimp, cassava (boiled and then pureed), tomatoes, chives, parsley, onions, garlic, red bell pepper, coconut milk, cilantro (I love cilantro!!!), milk, and palm nut oil (dende oil). While living in Africa, many of my childhood meals contained palm nut oil. I remember we even had a huge palm nut tree in our back yard. However, it is high in cholesterol and saturated fat. Especially, here in the U.S., it’s not considered a heart-happy oil, so we don’t often cook with it and try to avoid eating it. As a result, I had no palm nut oil in my kitchen cupboard. Some ethnic food markets sell the oil but I didn’t have time to go out and buy it. Instead of palm nut oil, I used olive oil. I know there’s a big difference between the oils — from taste to appearance. However, the olive oil worked out very well. The cassava sauce ingredients blended together very well. Everything complimented each other to bring out a delicious taste in the sauce. My favorite part of making the meal was adding the cilantro to the sauce. Have I told you that I love cilantro? Oh, yes, I think I have. For those who don’t care for cilantro, I’m sure that you can substitute it with flat leaf parsley. As the recipe directs, I served my cassava sauce hot with white rice. I made one adjustment to the recipe: I added hot pepper flakes.

Onion, garlic, red bell pepper, tomatoes — waiting to be chopped

Cassava

Cassava chopped

You can find the recipe here. Obrigada! Thanks, Karen! Different and delicious!

Paz