How Shrimp Moqueca Tells a Story of Afro-Brazilian Cuisine

Many of Maricel E. Presilla’s fans know the Cuban-born James Beard Award–winning chef from her restaurants, including Cucharamama in Hoboken, New Jersey, named after the long wooden spoon used in Ecuadorian kitchens. But none of her three businesses survived the pandemic. “You had to be there in person to experience it,” Presilla says. “A pair of customers cried as I was locking up.”

What Presilla’s patrons might not realize is that her cooking is informed by decades of scholarship. Her PhD dissertation on medieval Spain was a way to leave painful memories of Cuba behind. “I spent too much time on it,” Presilla admits. “My adviser said, ‘It’s an exercise, not your life’s work.’”

But that understanding of medieval Spain, combined with her studies on cultural anthropology with a focus on the African diaspora and Latin American history and food, did become her life’s work. Over the years, Presilla poured her tendency toward exhaustive fieldwork into books on chiles, chocolate, and the indigenous cultures and cuisines of Latin America; her magnum opus, the 500-recipe compendium Gran Cocina Latina, was published in 2012.

Ten years into this massive research project, Food & Wine asked the culinary historian and author for a first look, which appeared as a feature titled “10 Top Dishes from South America.” The May 2003 story led with creamy, spicy shrimp moqueca from coastal Brazil. 

Now, F&W is taking a look back at this classic Afro-Brazilian recipe, with some updates. Two decades ago, the magazine called the dish Bahia-Style Shrimp in Coconut Sauce rather than by its actual Brazilian Portuguese name, favoring familiarity over authenticity. Similarly, the 2003 recipe called for replacing the traditional (and then-hard-to-source) dendê oil — or red palm oil — with homemade annatto oil to achieve a similar characteristic reddish sheen. Over 20 years later, a bottle of dendê oil is a few clicks away. (As an alternative, Presilla recommends a peppery extra-virgin olive oil.)

After all this time, Presilla wouldn’t change anything else about the recipe. Besides dendê oil, Afro-Brazilian cooking’s other signature elements are habanero chiles and coconut milk, which have been readily available here for decades. “The heat is not gratuitous,” Presilla says. “Without a touch of spiciness, moqueca is not moqueca.” 

And while Americans have become chile-fixated, Presilla still wants to be considerate of people’s tolerances. That’s why she calls for halving the chile and removing it before serving. In fact, she says, there’s another super-handy modulating technique called “dancing the chile”: You cut a cross in the bottom of a pepper and dip it in a simmering sauce while patiently tasting until you get the heat level that’s right for you. 

To make moqueca, sweet peppers, onion, scallions, and tomatoes are first softened in the dendê oil and then simmered briefly with tomato sauce, coconut milk, and chile. Why add tomato sauce when there are already minced tomatoes in the mix? It lends another layer of flavor complexity to what is essentially a quick-cooking dish, Presilla explains.

Lastly, the freshest shrimp (or whitefish steaks, such as grouper, or both) is poached in the stew just until pink. It’s not enough time, Presilla points out, for the seafood to absorb much flavor from the sauce. That’s why she marinates the shrimp first in garlic, lime juice, and salt. Chopped cilantro and more lime juice added to a burbling moquequeira — the clay pot that the stew is traditionally cooked and served in — make for a punchy, zesty finish.

For Presilla the cook, the coconut milk gives moqueca its body and velvety sauce. But for Presilla the food historian, it also holds together a constellation of tastes and past events that define northeastern Brazilian cooking: floral, pungent dendê oil from Africa. Spicy habaneros, sweet bell peppers, and acidic tomatoes, all native to Latin America. Brazil’s own briny coastal seafood. Plus cilantro, limes, and coconuts, imported by the Portuguese. “Why does a French chef add a touch of cream?” she asks. “Because it’s a great unifier.”

Looking back, Presilla marvels at the work that went into writing Gran Cocina Latina: the travel to remote places, the taxi drives and boat rides, the risky treks to uncover information. “Things you research for 20 years,” she says, “it’s not duplicable. I don’t have enough time left.