The Recipes That Connect This Brazilian Community to Its Moroccan Roots

Shared by Esther Serruya Weyl
Recipe roots: Spain and Turkey > Morocco > Belem, Brazil 

Esther Serruya Weyl, an extern at Blue Hill at Stone Barnes, is our cook-in-residence. Read more about her family’s heritage in last week’s story. 

In the late nineteenth century, members of a Jewish community in Morocco left the tip of Africa for the region of north Brazil around the city of Belém. In their new home, they preserved historic traditions and adopted new ones, creating a unique cuisine.

“When they arrived in Brazil they found themselves in a very different place. The ingredients are completely different, so they had to adapt a lot,” Esther Weyl, a chef who grew up in the community, explains. Paprika, a staple of the community’s cooking in Morocco wasn’t available locally, so it was replaced with urucum, a local seed that’s beaten with sugar or pepper to produce a flavor akin to sweet or hot paprika. Preserved lemons were swapped for preserved limes, and couscous, once hand rolled with semolina was replaced with local yucca flour. “Everything they could adapt, they did — to make those recipes survive,” Esther adds.

A lunch in the Jewish community of Belem in the 1960s.

They also adopted new recipes and ingredients. “When they arrived they saw ingredients they fell in love with,” Esther says, particularly yucca. A northern Brazilian staple dish of fermented yucca juice with fried shrimp is made in her community with salted deep fried fish, and feijoada, a classic Brazilian stew of meat and beans, is made without pork and served at Shabbat lunches. 

The community also blended Portuguese with a language they brought from Morocco called Haketia. That language developed in Morocco when Jews fleeing Spain during the Inquisition blended Ladino (a mix of Spanish and Hebrew) with the Judeo-Arabic spoken by Jewish families already living in Morocco. “We have a lot of expressions we still use [in Haketia]. And, I grew up thinking that it was Portuguese,” Esther says. In the kitchen and linguistically, the community is both of this place and of another place. 

Esther started to research her community’s recipes and traditions a few years ago. In 2017, she traveled to Morocco with her mother and, “I really connected with the food there. It reminded me how that food was my food from home,” she says. It prompted her to start asking family members about recipes like her grandmother’s dafina, a Shabbat stew from Morocco, a red pepper salad, and a potato casserole called cojada. 

Esther went on to ask nearly 40 cooks in her community a series of questions, including if they would share their family recipes with her. Among them, there are the Lahat sisters who shared their recipes for fumaça, an eggplant dip and escabeche de peixe, or fried tilapia in vinegar and olive oil, that comes from Tangier. Delicate fish albondigas or meatballs for Shabbat are a contribution from Donna Clara and her daughter Myriam and amaronia, a layered dish of chicken, eggplant, and onions touched with honey, that has roots in Turkey, comes from the Rangel family. And for something sweet, there’s a dessert recipe for meringue with the amazonian fruit cupuaçu from one of the community’s greatest cooks, Helena Obadia Benzecry.

At the core of Esther’s work is a drive to understand and preserve what binds the community together. She explains: “I want to see what is common to everybody’s houses.”

Escabeche de Peixe (Fish Escabeche)

Makes: 4 servings
Total time: 4 hours to 12 hours

Ingredients
½ pound skinless red snapper filet, sliced into 3 x 1 inch pieces
1/4 cup olive oil for frying
½ cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon ground black pepper 
¾ cup white vinegar
½  onion thinly sliced
½ cup + ¼ cup olive oil, divided
¼ bunch cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
4 to 6 sprigs cilantro for garnish

Preparation
1. Place about ¼ cup olive oil in a medium sized pot over medium high heat. There should be about ½  inch of oil in the pot. 

2. Sprinkle the pieces of fish with salt. Place flour into a small bowl. Dip a piece of fish in the flour and shake off any excess flour. Dip the fish into the oil, if it sizzles vigorously, the oil is ready for frying. Place the piece of fish into the oil and continue the process with another 4 to 6 pieces of fish. Fry the fish on each side until golden brown, about 2 minutes on each side. Transfer the fish onto a paper towel lined plate to drain any excess oil. Continue frying the rest of the fish in batches. 

3. Place the vinegar, olive oil, onion, and cilantro into a deep mixing bowl or container. Mix to combine all the ingredients well. Place all the fried fish into the bowl and make sure all the pieces of fish are submerged in the liquid. Seal the bowl with plastic wrap and set it aside for at least 2 hours before serving. The escabeche can marinate up to 8 hours, overnight, as long a it is stored in the refrigerator. 

4. Serve the escabeche at room temperature. 

Fish Albondigas

Fish Albondigas
Makes: 4 to 6 servings
Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients
For the sautéed onion and garlic mixture:
1 onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil

For the fish balls:
1 pound skinless red snapper filet, finely chopped
1 tablespoon breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon vegetable oil 
¼ bunch cilantro leaves, finely chopped
¼ bunch parsley leaves, finely chopped
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
Juice of ½ lime
1 teaspoon kosher salt
⅛ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ of sauteed onion and garlic mixture

For the sauce:
8 to 10 plum tomatoes, deseeded and finely chopped
½ of sauteed onion and garlic mixture
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1 tablespoon olive oil

Preparation
1. Place a saucepan over medium heat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and add the onions and garlic. Saute until translucent and starting to brown, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

2. Place the chopped fish, breadcrumbs, cilantro, parsley, nutmeg, lime juice, salt, pepper, and half of the sautéed onion and garlic mixture into a large mixing bowl. Mix until combined well. Set aside.

3. Place a deep saucepan over medium to high heat. Add the remaining sauteed onion and garlic, tomatoes, 1 teaspoon of salt, and cook for about 15 to 20 minutes until the tomatoes thicken and cook through. Add 1 cup of water. Stir mixture well and bring it to a simmer. Cook for about 20 more minutes until the sauce thickens.

4. Take 1 tablespoon of the fish mixture, form it into a ball shape with your palms and place it into the simmering sauce. Continue with the rest of the fish mixture until all the fish balls are submerged in the tomato sauce. Cook the fish balls uncovered for about 10 to 15 minutes until they are cooked through.

5. Serve the albondigas hot with a side of rice.

Meringue with Orange Marmalade

In Brazil, Esther prepares this meringue with the amazonian fruit cupuaçu, which is only available locally. Esther shared her recipe for the meringue using orange marmalade which is available globally, instead of cupuaçu.

Makes: 4 to 6 servings
Total Time: 15 to 20 minutes

Ingredients
4 egg whites 
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
4 tablespoons store bought orange marmalade

Preparation
1. Whip up the egg whites to soft peaks in a stand mixer. 

2. Place the sugar and water in a pot over medium high heat. Dissolve and cook the mixture until it reads 240 degrees on a thermometer. 

3. Mix the egg whites over medium speed and very slowly drizzle the hot sugar mixture into the egg whites. Continue mixing until the meringue reaches stiff peaks. 

4. Transfer the meringue into a large bowl and add 2 tablespoons of the marmalade. Fold the marmalade into the meringue a few times to create orange streaks. Place the mixture into a large serving bowl and top with the remaining 4 tablespoons of marmalade. 

5. Seal the meringue with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours. Serve cold.