Apa De Camarao, is something like a prawn pie, its a special kind of dough with a prawn stuffing. It does not have to be like the stuffing in this recipe, people use prawn balchao or any other masala prawns that you are fond of. This recipe we use a simple prawn saute with a bunch of veggies and common goan spices for a masala.
The Apa De Camarao can take quite a long time to make due to the fact of the dough having to rise. We faced a few problems with this dish, we ran out of gas and the cylinder had to be changed 🙂
Which lead to the oven cooling down and restarting a couple of hours later as mom goes to church in the mornings. But it still turned out well except the stuffing was a little on the dry side, perhaps due to the long hours in the oven. I am very tempted to try the Apa De Camarao dough with shredded chicken cafreal as a stuffing, I have a feeling it would turn out awesome.
Ingredients to make the Apa De Camarao Bread:
1 Leveled Tablespoon Dried Yeast
1/2 Cup Water
350 Grams Maida
1 & a half Egg
2 Teaspoons Ghee
Coconut Milk
1 Teaspoon Sugar
Oil
Apa De Camarao Stuffing Ingredients Used:
Around 200 Grams Cleaned Prawns
A Masala of 8 Kashmiri Chillies,
1/2 Tsp Cumin Seeds Jeera
1/2 Tsp Turmeric Powder Haldi
5 – 6 Pepper Corns
5 Flakes Garlic
1/2 Inch Ginger
Small Ball Tamarind
Sauté Ingredients:
2 Tbsp Chopped Coriander Leaves
2 Onions
1 Big Tomato
1 Green Chilly
Procedure:
Time to do some, multi tasking for this recipe, relatively simple but as we said time consuming. There are three main parts to it, the first would be preparing the dough, second getting the stuffing ready and then putting it together and baking it.
So first go through the entire recipe as its possible to do the parts together. Lets start with heating some water, and setting aside the yeast in a cup.
Make sure the water is less than boiling temperature so if its boiling, wait for it to cool a little and then put it in.
Keep the cup with yeast aside and chop the onions, coriander, chilly and tomato.
Time to sauté the onions, in a little oil, cook the onions for a bit.
You can then add the tomato and the chilly until the onions get a little brown.
While thats cooking you need to grind the Masala ingredients mentioned above in a little water and add it to the Sauté.
Mix the masala with the bagaar.
Its time to add the cleaned weighed prawns.
Mix it with the masala and stir it.
Then add the Ginger Garlic paste
Keep it on a slow flame an stir the prawns till the masala is evenly distributed.
Cook it for a while and when the prawns are getting done add the coriander leaves stir it and keep it aside.
By this time your yeast should be bubbling, its ready to be used so lets get the dough ready, or you could have your dough mixture ready for the yeast at this point if you are multi tasking.
Blend the scraped coconut in a blender, you would probably want to know how much coconut milk is required. You don’t need too much, you just need it to knead the dough, instead of using water you use coconut milk. We used around 150 grams of coconut.
Grind the coconut and place it in a muslin cloth.
Squeeze out all the juice and keep it aside.
Get your maida (refined flour) out in a nice big vessel that you can knead the dough in.
Add the one and a half egg to the maida.
Add a pinch of salt to it,
Add the Ghee to the mixture,
Add some of the coconut milk
Add the yeast to it,
Its now time to start kneading the mixture.
Keep adding coconut milk till the dough is ready.
Once the dough begins to stick to itself its getting ready.
Once that happens you can stop adding coconut milk your Apa De Camarao dough is ready.
You now need the dough to swell up, you need to keep it in an airtight plastic bag, we used a ziplock for the same. Before you use it, don’t forget to oil the plastic so that the dough doesn’t stick to it.
Once thats done put the dough in it, it needs to be kept in a warm place for the dough to rise faster.
If your room temperature is low, the dough will take longer to rise, we had to leave the dough overnight for the dough to rise fully.
Once it rises you need to break the dough into two pieces
Flatten one of the pieces to fit the bottom of a flan vessel or any decorative oven wear that you have.
Flatten the second ball so it can lay on top of the bottom layer and stuffing.
Add the masala prawns on the bottom layer of the dough and spread them evenly.
Use the second layer to seal the dish
If you like, once again the simple fork design or any other designs that you would like.
You need to turn on the bottom heat and bake it till it gets done and then turn on the top heat until its golden brown.
That’s the ready to eat Apa De Camarao.
As you can see the ready to eat Apa De Camarao looks delicious and definitely is worth experimenting with.
Portugese, Camarao is prawns, Apa is bread 🙂
This site has really got me interested in cooking Goan food, which I only ate when I went on holidays to Goa. Many many thanks….I prepared the sannas this Easter, they were awesome. I'd really love if you could out up the original Appa De Camaraon recipe, the one made like the sanna batter. I ate this many times at the fontainhas chapel feast in the '70s. Thanks once again
Nice site… "Apa De Camarao" is a Portuguese dish or goan ?? thanks for sharing 🙂 really love it 🙂
Please use toddy instead of yeast, It makes a world of a difference to the pie.
Bless all those who put their recipes on line. Because of people like you, people like me who do not know how to cook goan food will be able to learn. Thank you once again.
hey its a very nice blog would like to c some veg recipes too if possible and also if anyone could help me the recipe of russian salad
I came here looking for Sorpotel and Xacuti, things i plan to eat while in Goa next month.. totally love your blog and am following and blogrolling you to keep reading more recipes:)
Hi Clyde,
I am researching on Goan food, and quite by accident I stumbled on your blogspot. It is very informative, beautifuly presented, and creates a deep wish to write to your mother, Yvette Oliviera Fernandes.
Could I please have her e-mail ID, or alternately yours, which ever is convenient to you?
Thanks and regards,
Radha Nair/Pune
I am so very happy to have found your blog. You have wonderful recipes here and doing such a service to fool lovers everywhere by sharing your wealth of knowledge in such details.
THANKS!
Devaki @ weavethousandflavors
oK cool and thanxxx a ton!!!
The mitten are the buttons u have all over,mittens=thick baking gloves!
Does ur pal help with blogs et all, i have tweaked mine quite a bit, but need a few more tweaks:-)))
hey tasha
sorry i dont live in goa, not sure about the yeast…
a friend of mine helped me with the design of the site hes in mumbai… not sure wat u mean by mittens 😀
anonymous @ rechiad masala….. ur lucky its most probably going to be the next post when I manage to get it up… already have the photos but no time at the moment…
Hi, this is truly a lovely site, if it aint enough for the gorgeous recipes , the amazing layout.
And the best recipes around!
Can u help me with some info, where do u find yeast in Goa?
And secondly this site is well designed and i love the buttons for each option and those absolutely cute mittens, who does this kind of work in goa?
I found in a few posts,that ur very helpful and that made me ask u ,with the assurance that u reply to all the queries here:-)
thnaxxx a ton lods and happy day!
One more thing. Can you post the recipe for fish rechiad. My mom loves it and I would like to make it for her when she visits.
Wow….you've got a wonderful blog. Thanks for sharing these recipes! I am a mangalorean and my best friend is a Goan. I remember the yummy dishes her mom made for us. Your blog brought back wonderful memories. The pictures make it easy to understand.I'll try some of these. Thanks a lot and looking forward to more recipes 🙂