Camarao ao Catupiry

I promised some Braziilian Recipes, so here is the first one.  If only I could pronounce it...  We all liked this a lot, the flavors were simple but melded together nicely.  My only complaint is that the cream cheese curdled.  It didn't do this at Cafe Do Brazil, and I'm wondering if they cooked the sauce on the stovetop, then poured it over the cream-cheese coated dish rather that cooking it all together in the oven.  Next time, I'll try that method, and let you know how it went.  Because it curdled, it lost the creaminess that I remembered in the restaurant dish.
For this one, I made the sauce and put it on top of a chicken breast rather than using shrimp.  It was great, and we realized that it could be a very versitile sauce.  So, for dinner the following evening, I placed the leftover sauce on top of an egg omlette.  Oh my goodness...I think it was better than on the chicken!  Haha!
Enjoy, and stay tuned for Brazilian Recipe #2!

Camarão ao Catupiry



Ingredients:

2 lbs of fresh shrimp (medium or small size) (Didn't use the shrimp, but put finished sauce on a chicken breat)

1 Catupiry cheese or 1 lb of Philly

1 can of hearts of palm, thinly sliced into rounds

4 large, juicy tomatoes

1 onion, finely chopped

1/2 cup milk

2 tbsp of finely chopped parsley

2 tbsp of finely chopped green onions

1 tbsp of corn starch

salt and pepper

10-15 whole peppercorns (you can leave these out if you don’t want people biting into them)

Parmesan cheese to sprinkle

lime juice



Methods:



Preheat oven to 450° F. Spread cheese over bottom and sides of 13 x 9 pyrex. Peel, devein and wash shrimp, sprinkle with lime juice and salt. Leave in refrigerator until ready to use. Chop tomatoes into big chunks and puree in blender. Saute onion in olive oil until limp, add shrimp, cover and bring to a simmer. Add tomatoes, parsley, green onions and whole peppercorns. Simmer for fifteen minutes. Dissolve corn starch in milk. Add hearts of palm and milk to shrimp, stir for a couple of minutes and remove from heat. Add salt and pepper to taste (remember the cheese is salty!). Pour shrimp mixture into pyrex. Sprinkle top with parmesan cheese. Bake until cheese is melted (about 15 minutes). Serve from pyrex. Serve with Brazilian style white rice.