Absolutely delicious Cape Verdean pasties

This is not what I'm searching for. Written on 10-03-2011 by VanDaalen

The cuisine of the Cape Verde Islands is a mixture of African and Portuguese influences. Ingredients that are always available on the Cape Verde Islands are corn and fish. These ingredients are found in many Cape Verdean dishes. A snack that is consumed regularly with taste is the ‘pastel com diabo dentro’ or a pasty with the devil inside. The devil inside the pasty refers to the spicy stuffing.

Ingredients for Cape Verdean pasties

400 grams/ 14 ounces of corn flour

1 decilitre/ 3 fluid ounces of water with half a teaspoon of salt

1 sweet potato (also known as ‘Chinese yam’ and for sale in the supermarket or an Indonesian shop)

1/2 tablespoon of olive oil

500 grams/ 18 ounces of finely cut tuna, mackerel or codfish

1 onion, finely chopped

1 tomato cut into small chunks

3 ground chilli peppers (a bit less or more as required)

2/3 tablespoon of finely cut coriander

2/3 tablespoon of finely cut parsley

Preparation of Cape Verdean pasties

Brown the onion, tomato, coriander, parsley and the chilli peppers lightly in a frying pan with three tablespoons of olive oil. After two or three minutes, add the fish and let it all simmer for ten minutes on a low fire. Take the frying pan off the stove and let the stuffing cool off.

Boil the sweet potato until it’s well cooked and mash it with a fork or blender. Stir the cornflour through the mash and add 1 decilitre/ 3 fluid ounces of water, half a teaspoon of salt and half a tablespoon of olive oil. Knead the dough well and make little balls out of it, the size of a golf ball.

Flatten a ball with a rolling pin and put one flat tablespoonful of stuffing on it. Fold outer edges of dough over each other and push them tight. If desired, the edges can be pushed tight with a fork for a nicer effect. As soon as the dough is filled with the fish stuffing, the pasties can be fried in a frying pan with a large dose of olive oil. When they are golden brown you take them out of the pan and let them drain on kitchen paper for a while.

The pasties can be eaten at room temperature as well as hot.