Start with stale, leftover bread. Add to this some of Portugal’s most decadent, richest ingredients, and you have açorda de gambas, a dish that manages to bridge the gap between poverty and indulgence.
The Portuguese are masters at transforming leftover or stale bread into new dishes. In the north, leftover slices of bread are dipped in eggs, fried in oil and sprinkled with sugar in the dessert known as rabanadas. In the south, açorda is a soup made from slices of day-old bread topped with hot water, garlic, herbs, and a poached egg. The south is also home to migas, bits of stale bread and fat that are cooked into an almost omelet-like form.
Lisbon’s contribution to the genre exists somewhere in between these last two.
“It’s a porridge of leftover bread,” says Maurício Varela, the Head Chef of Santa Joana – a contemporary Portuguese restaurant in a beautifully-renovated convent space – when we ask him to describe açorda de gambas. The dish, a thick soup of stale bread, coriander, garlic, prawn broth, prawns, and egg yolks, is a staple at restaurants across the city. Yet Varela suggests that Lisbon’s take on açorda is not entirely indigenous, and is a blend of the culinary traditions of the inland, rural, poorer areas – that bread and those herbs – and the ingredients of a big, coastal city.
“I think it has to do with being in Lisbon, the capital,” Varela says. “You have access to those things” – referring to prawns – “we’re near the sea.”
Açorda can also be based around other ingredients, and Santa Joana’s Culinary Director, the renowned Portuguese chef Nuno Mendes, developed a wild mushroom açorda that’s on the restaurant’s menu at press time. But for this recipe, Varela opts to go the more traditional route, and cooks the bread with a fragrant broth made from prawn heads and shells.
“I’m using prawn stock made from gamba alistada, red prawns from Algarve,” Varela tells us. “This makes it a little bit more sophisticated than most açordas.”
This base is supplemented with more fragrant ingredients such as coriander, garlic, white wine and olive oil. Yet açorda’s most important ingredient is arguably egg yolks. When making the dish, Varela brings it to a boil before removing it from the stove and stirring in egg yolks, warming – but not cooking – them in the residual heat of the broth and bread.
“It will bring creaminess to the dish,” Varela explains. “Egg yolks act as an emulsifier, they bring all the flavors together.”
Varela finishes his take on açorda with a garnish of a single raw egg yolk ringed by raw prawns, – a decadent gesture in what is an otherwise workingman’s dish.
Recipe: Açorda de Gambas, Bread Porridge with Prawns
The dish requires a prawn broth, which is made with the heads and shells of the prawns and your desired combination of aromatics.
Use a hearty bread; Varela used pão alentejano, a dense sourdough from southern Portugal.
Varela chose to serve a small portion of the prawns “cooked” in the residual heat of the açorda, with the remainder served on top of the dish. If you don’t want to eat raw prawns, you can simply add them all at the earlier stage.
Serves 2
For the stock
250g medium-sized whole prawns
Aromatics (your choice of onions, garlic, parsley, bay leaves, orange or lemon peels, white wine, peppercorns)
For the açorda
100ml extra-virgin olive oil
25g cilantro stems, chopped
25g garlic, peeled and sliced thinly
200g leftover sourdough bread, cut in 2cm squares
2g salt
1 pinch white pepper
150ml white wine
25g cilantro leaves, chopped
4 egg yolks
Prepare the stock: Peel and devein the prawns, reserving the shells and heads. You should have around 125g of peeled, deveined prawns. Retain 100g of the prawns whole, and chop the remaining 25g. Set aside. In a saucepan, combine the prawn heads and shells, your desired aromatics and 500ml of water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Strain, discarding the solids; you should have around 500ml of broth. Keep the broth hot.
Prepare the açorda: In a medium saucepan over low heat, heat the olive oil and add the cilantro stems and garlic. When they start to release their aromas, add the day-old bread, salt and white pepper. Mix well. Increase the heat to medium, add the white wine and let it boil to evaporate the alcohol, stirring frequently to break up the bread. Add the broth, stirring frequently, until the mixture is slightly reduced and has the texture of a relatively uniform porridge.
Remove the saucepan from the heat and add two of the egg yolks, mixing vigorously. Add the chopped prawns and the cilantro leaves, stirring to combine. Taste, adjusting seasoning with salt and white pepper, if necessary. The açorda should have the texture of a thick porridge, and should taste rich from the egg yolks and prawns, subtly acidic from the white wine, and should be fragrant from the prawns and cilantro.
Serve the açcorda: Remove the açorda to two shallow bowls, topping with the remaining raw shrimp and egg yolks.
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