On 2013-03-25 18:31:50 +0000, sf said:

>> I consulted two or three other recipes but made the one by Blazes that
>> you relayed. It's kind of odd, frankly. I wondered if all those
>> peppers and the onions would be well enough cooked when the fish was.
>> The onions weren't. It still tasted great, and Nancy made some
>> Brazilian garlicky rice, a side of carrots and fennel and a little
>> tomato/cucumber salad. The farofa was fun and reminds me how grreat
>> that stuff can be.
>
> That's why I don't usually follow any recipe exactly as written and
> consult many, as you said you did. When they vary, you know it's
> written to personal taste and mine is as good as theirs.

Also, though sometimes I'm lucky, I have gotten to the point where any
"grand recipe project" is considered a test-run or lab-test: I assume
it will have conspicuous flaws that will be eliminated on the second
pass. This also assumes that in the first pass I'll decide the general
project has conspicuous merit.

Having said all that, I'm delighted to many of my first passes have
turned out so well over the past year.

>> Most of the recipes have you sauteing the onions and veggies before
>> throwing the fish in, I think that's a better approach, so I'll temper
>> that on the next pass. We're plotting more moqueca dishes, it works
>> well with shrimp as well as a sturdy white fish. We've got the dende,
>> so we might as well. For chile powder we used Japanese shichimi and it
>> was great. The whole thing was pretty glorious.
>>
> The recipes that don't have you precook the vegetables tell you to
> cook the stew a long time. Come to think of it, I used the last of my
> bag of Trader Joe's frozen multi colored peppers, so they were soft to
> begin with. What I did was cook the stew the 30-40 minutes called
> for, but didn't add the fish until the end. I added it in big chunks
> (of less than 2 inches) and didn't let it go any more than 5-10
> minutes, serving when it was just cooked through.

My conclusion as well: fish last. Additionally onions first.

Ate it last night as well: Two days running. It's amazing what a day
in the fridge does to soups and sauces!