Camarao na Moranga Recipe

Shrimp in pumpkin (camarão na moranga): a Rio de Janeiro classic

Camarão na moranga is one of those dishes you remember from the coast of Rio de Janeiro. You take a whole cabotiá pumpkin (Japanese squash), roast it, and fill it with shrimp that have been cooked down in catupiry (a Brazilian cream cheese) along with onion, garlic, tomato, bell pepper and fresh coriander. The pumpkin is both the bowl and part of the meal. As it bakes, the flesh turns sweet, and that sweetness plays off the savory filling inside.

Figure on ~250 g shrimp/person and 1 medium pumpkin (≈1.5 kg) per 3–4 people. Shells and heads eat up about 40 % of the weight, so if you are buying cleaned shrimp go with peeled_shrimp = 0.25 × persons kg; for head-on shrimp, use whole_shrimp = peeled / 0.6. Plan on roughly ~50 g/person of catupiry.

Most people trace the dish back to Restaurante Tia Palmira in Barra de Guaratiba (Rio de Janeiro), which put it on the map in the 1960s and is still a stop for visitors today. From there it spread to seafood restaurants across the city, and over time it came to stand for a certain style of Brazilian cooking.

Applications

The calculator scales the ingredients for whatever you are cooking for: a family lunch, a Christmas or New Year table, a beachside restaurant along Rio de Janeiro’s Costa Verde, a tourism menu, or a birthday party. If you run a seafood restaurant or a beach kiosk, it also feeds into your food cost (CMV) math.

FAQ

Can I substitute another pumpkin variety? Cabotiá (kabocha) is the one to reach for, since its flesh is firm and sweet; common moranga (Cucurbita maxima) will do as well. Skip butternut squash — it is too soft and watery, and the filling won’t hold.

What size shrimp should I buy? Medium-large grey shrimp (camarão cinza, 16/20 or 21/25 per pound) have the best texture for this. The traditional pick in Rio, though, is pink shrimp from the Atlantic coast.

Can I prepare it ahead? You can roast the pumpkin and make the filling up to 24 h ahead, keeping them apart. Hold off on assembling and reheating (15–20 min at 180 °C) until just before serving, so the shrimp don’t turn rubbery.