Pastéis de milho

Cape Verdean maize fritters, a soft cornmeal dough wrapped around tuna and fried until the shell shatters

Origin: Praia, Santiago & Cape Verde

From the journey of Corn.

The Cape Verde islands were uninhabited when the Portuguese reached them in 1456, and everything eaten there had to be carried in. Maize arrived early, within a few decades of Columbus, because the archipelago sat directly on the Atlantic route and served as the acclimatisation garden for American crops before they went on to the mainland. It became the foundation of the islands' cooking and has stayed there: cachupa, the national dish, is built on it, and so is this. Pastéis de milho, also called pastel com diabo dentro, the pastry with the devil inside, are a cornmeal dough enclosing a filling of tuna cooked down with onion and chilli. The name refers to the heat of the filling, and the better version of the story is the plainer one: the devil is inside because you cannot see what is coming until you bite. The dough is unusual and takes practice. It has no wheat and no egg, so it holds together on the gelatinised starch of the cornmeal alone, which means it must be worked hot and shaped while it is still almost too hot to touch. Cooled dough cracks. This is the single reason the recipe defeats people, and it is a matter of timing rather than skill.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 300 g fine white cornmeal
  • 600 ml water
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp oil

Filling

  • 300 g fresh tuna, finely chopped, or 2 tins of tuna, drained
  • 1 large onion, finely chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 2 tomatoes, finely chopped
  • 1 malagueta or scotch bonnet chilli, finely chopped
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 small bunch parsley, chopped

To fry

  • 1 litre neutral oil, for deep frying

Method

  1. Make the filling first and let it cool. Fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil until soft, add the tomatoes, chilli, and bay leaf, and cook down to a thick paste, about twelve minutes.
  2. Stir in the tuna and cook for five minutes more. Season well, fold in the parsley, discard the bay leaf, and spread on a plate to cool completely.
  3. For the dough, bring the water to the boil with the salt and oil. Take it off the heat and rain in the cornmeal, whisking hard to avoid lumps.
  4. Return to a low heat and stir with a wooden spoon for eight to ten minutes, until it forms a stiff, smooth, glossy dough that comes away from the pan in one mass.
  5. Tip onto a board and knead for two minutes while hot, wetting your hands in cold water as you go. Keep the dough covered with a damp cloth from here on: it must stay warm and it must not dry.
  6. Take a golf ball of dough, flatten it into a disc on a piece of oiled cling film, spoon a teaspoon of filling into the centre, and use the film to fold it over into a half-moon. Press the edges to seal and crimp them. Work quickly and keep the rest covered.
  7. Heat the frying oil to 180°C. Fry in batches for three to four minutes, turning once, until deep gold and blistered. Drain on paper.
  8. Eat hot, ideally within the hour, with a squeeze of lime.

Notes

Everything about this recipe is temperature. The dough must be hot to shape and will crack the moment it cools, so keep the bowl over a pan of warm water if you are slow. The filling must be cold, or it will steam inside the shell and split it. If a pastel opens in the oil, lift it out at once before the filling fouls the pan. Fine cornmeal is essential; polenta grind gives a gritty shell that will not seal.

The Gastrographer

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Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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