Ecuadorian Cuisine - Fish or Shrimp Encocado

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How to cook fish or shrimp Encocado – The recipe

I admit that I thought Ecuadorian cuisine was sad and boring, usually rice and beans and grilled chicken or fish and patacones.
In fact, if you want to stay on $3/$5 for lunch and dinner, this is what you can eat and go.
You make a virtue of necessity as my mother always says.

But thanks to the time spent here I discovered that Ecuadorian cuisine offers much more than just the usual “soup”, and I really mean this word since here when you order “rice with minestra” means precisely rice with a lake of beans on the side.

From ceviche raw fish with onion and lemon, ok the Peruvian one is better but I don’t disdain this either, passing through the Encebollad or, fish cooked with yuca, fresh lobster cooked in all sauces, actually one of my favorite dishes is the shrimp encocado that is, rice with prawns in coconut milk which, unlike the Thai one, is not spicy and does not add curry and is rather sweet.

This dish is typical of Esmeralda destination on the north coast of the country but easy to find in almost all restaurants in seaside destinations given the high production of seafood and rich fishing.

So for my birthday I dedicated myself to cooking a different dish, since obviously I’m well known here for my Italian cuisine.
And since it turned out quite well and I found the preparation quite simple, I want to publish the recipe that I will propose again as soon as I get home.

I would like to point out that the preparation is not only simple but also rather quick, you don’t have to be a Master Chef to prepare it and I believe that success for this dish with an exotic touch is guaranteed.

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Ingredients for 4 people

1 kilo of shrimp
1 onion finely chopped
1 pomodoro
1/2 green pepper
1 teaspoon of sazanador (a powder made of onion, black pepper,
2 teaspoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of sugar
3 cups coconut milk
Salt and Pepper To Taste

Preparation of the Encocado

Finely chop the onion, tomato and half a green pepper.
Fry adding salt, pepper and sazanador.
When the color of our sauté satisfies us, in short the onion has not burnt, add the prawns which have been left to rest for about 20 minutes with the sazanador and have gained flavour, and cook them for about 4 minutes.

Once the prawns have browned too, add two cups of coconut milk and cook for about 2 minutes.
And there it is…encocado is ready!

Instead of shrimp you can cook fish but the procedure to follow is the same.
In case you prefer to use canned coconut milk instead coconut pulp and milk then add 1 teaspoon of sugarbut also the sweetness is to your liking, the important thing is that it does not cover the taste of the coconut.

The sauce must not be too liquid or too compact. It can be served with white rice (to embellish the dish, put the rice in a cup and turn it upside down on the plate, and then pour the encocado next to it) or with patacones.

What are patacones?
No sooner said than done! It seems that I make the best patacones in Ecuador, maybe one day they will explain to me where my secret lies since I am none other than slices of green banana cut and fried.
Once you have put the rounds of about 1 and a half cm thick to fry, when one side is already golden, place them on a plate and crush them with a glass or cup and then put them back on the heat and let the other side cook.