Acarajé

Acarajé is tradititional and very characteristic food to Brasilian cuisine. It is deep fried snack food, what is made from black-eyed pea flour and origin from Bahia state. 
For filling originally used paste from shrimps, nuts and coconut milk, so called Vatapa and salsa. Acarajé is most known street food in Brasil. 
I read from different web-pages, that it is not so easy to prepare this snack. Part of ingredients will give specific taste to this dish, what is not possible to replace with other ingredients. One of these ingredients is unrefined palm oil, what has specific taste and colour.

As usually I have made some developments in recipe. I made filling where I used cheese, mayonnaise, ham, garlic and ginger. I tried to use palm oil for fritting, but this unfortunately had too strong and specific taste for me so I changed the palm oil to rape oil. In rape oil fried Acarajé I liked very much. 😊

Some preparings and sourcing of needed materials and it is possible to make Brasilian street food also at Estonian home.😊

Idea I got from this web page:
https://www.tastemade.com/videos/acaraje-recipe

Acaraje ingredients:
450 g black-eyed peas
1 onion (chopped)
salt for flavouring

In a food processor, add the peas and process until coarse. Transfer to a bowl and cover with cold water. The skins will float to the top. Scoop them out and discard. Allow peas to soak at least for 8 hours. Drain the water.
In food processor, add the soaked peas and chopped onion. Blend until it turns into a paste.
Transfer to a large mixing bowl, season with salt and mix with a wooden spoon until the volume doubles. 
Heat the oil. Make from dough small balls and fry them from both sides until these are golden brown from both sides. Let the balls cool a little and slice in half and add filling and salsa.

Filling ingredients:
100 g grated Gran Regale cheese
100 g chopped ham
100 g mayonnaise
small piece grated ginger
1 grated garlic glove

For making filling mix all ingredients.

Salsa ingredients:
half red bell pepper (finely chopped)
1 tomato (deseeded and finely chopped)
half onion (finely chopped)
chopped parsley leaves
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp white wine vinegar

Mix all salsa ingredients.

Serve Acarajé with filling and salsa.