24 April 2009
Quail eggs!
Ok, so I know quail eggs are found all over the world and not just in Brazil, but here they are very popular. "Ovos de cordorna," like all eggs that come from the small bird who comes from the pheasant family, they are like miniature, brown-camouflage versions of chicken ones, with an inner shell that is a slightly lighter robin-egg, light blue color.
The taste is equatable to that of a hen's egg, but I think is richer in flavor. P.S., throughout most of Latin America one does not find eggs in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Instead, they are located on a shelf, at room temperature, and in my opinion, allows for a more consistant, farm-fresh taste. I have never heard of people getting sick from eggs kept this way, as long as they are consumed by the validation date.
I find them easiest to eat soft or hard boiled simply because it is less shell-removing work than say trying to make a scramble. Esthetically, you also cannot help but prefer a tiny hard-boiled, Easter egg-coloring-gone-marbled egg, to the boring white kind, right? I also think a quail's feathers and headress are quite chique. A nice, natural closure to the poor-quality chocolate/marshmallow/hyper-color dyed/ubber-sugary style egg holiday that just passed! Happy post-Easter!
23 April 2009
To the juice bar...home again, home again, giggidy, gig
You can have your liquid health mixed with water or milk (occationally soy milk), sweetened or sugar-free, and with optional add-ins like oats, other powered grains or milk, and chocolate vitamin powder (think Nesquick).
On this night I selected, for me, one of the greatest discoveries in the world of fruit-jaca (zha-ka)! Known also as jackfruit, is the largest tree-borne fruit on earth and can reach a weight of up to 80 pounds! The outside armor is a bit intimidating, with its gree spines and sour smell, but just crack it open and see a beauty come out of the beast. The edible parts, which resemble little bouquets, taste like perfumed flowers mixed with pears...or something like that! The first time I sampled jaca was when I was traveling through the north of Brazil and stayed at a little bed & breakfast in the state of Bahia. We were served this with our coffee and our tapioca "bread" and I immediately fell in love! I had never seen jaca as a juice before and was eager to give it a whirl. Delicious!!
Lanchonetes also serve an assortment of food, though usually of the pocket sandwich (called salgados, pre-made and kept warm in glass cases for the customer to see...good if fresh, food poisoning territory if old) or bread-and-cold meat varieties. Sometimes made-to-order, hot foods are also an option. Most contain grilled or breaded beef or chicken, ham, eggs, or cheese, rice, beans (I prefer black), French fries, and salad (almost unanimously consisting of lettuce and sliced tomatoes, sometimes onions and carrots, and palm hearts if you are really lucky). Hamburgers are also a Brazilian staple, though few here know that they were not a Brazilian invention. Sadly, you will never find pickles on the side!
I got a chicken-salad sandwich on warm, salty-buttered bread with shredded carrots and corn (and I think fresh parsley) mixed in...can it get much better than that!
11 April 2009
Easter week begins...let's see how much sugar we can eat!
Starting with the first photo on the left, the little chocolate balls at the bottom are called "Brigadeiro" (bree-ga-dair-oh). According to Wikipedia, the candy was created in the 1940's after "Eduardo Gomes, a Brazilian Air Force brigadier who first gained notoriety for playing a part in quashing a communist coup attempt in Rio de Janeiro. Later he ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1946 and 1950. This was a time of shortage of traditional imports such as nuts and fruits because of the war. But, at the same time, Nestlé was introducing its chocolate powder and condensed milk (known popularly as Leite Moça) in the country." Add a lot of butter and coat in some chocolate sprinkles and you have a truffle-like winner.
Next is an orange-shaded maracujá (passion fruit) tart, complete with the fruit's black seeds on top as decoration. In the next photo is a lime version of the tart. It is amazing how light and fluffy this one is despite being primarily made of heavy cream!
On to a local favorite, pé-de-moleque (pay-dgee-mo-lekee) or "street-boy's foot". Again from Wikipedia, here is the origin of the name. "Certain streets in Brazil were made by laying down various odd rocks in a loose layer of sand/dirt, and having street-boys stomp on them to flatten the surface. Streets made by this method came to be called 'pé-de-moleque.' The appearance of the peanuts stuck together by molasses was found to be similar to that of these types of streets, and so, the sweet took the same name." Here in Paraty, our streets are famous for their imported Portuguese stones that make up the quaint, better-keep-your-eyes-on-the-ground-or-you'll-trip-and-fall-on-your-face cobblestones of the streets in the old part of town. Apparently this same dessert is found in parts of India by the name "chikki." Ok, so that is a great name too, but not as funny as the Brazilian one!
Then we see pudim de aipim e coco, or yucca/cassava and coconut pudding. This hearty, moist, baked dessert combines two favorites of mine: the South American (though it is found throughout tropical cultures) root vegetable and coconut!
Above left, are two more sugary coconut dishes. First is cuzcuz (pronounced like the northern African grain, couscous, and possibly takes its name from the influence of immigrants in Brazil from that region). Though normally found sweet, cuzcuz is made from manioc root and can be made into savory recipes with chicken and vegetables also. This one here is gummy and spongy and not as loaded with sugar, so is a popular candidate for condensed milk as a topping. Next to the cuzcuz is what is named "quebra-queixo", or "jawbreaker!" This is the one that I described earlier that is impossible to cut. I understand the name since trying to bite and chew through the toasted, shredded coconut glued together with caramelized sugar, definitely takes dedication, and good teeth!
The second photo is another type of pudding baked in the oven called "Italian cassarole," made from cheese and coconut...are you kidding...delicious!
My choice on this day is tapioca pudding covered with a caramel sauce. Tapioca in Brazil is not like the spoonable kind in a bowl found in the US. In fact, in the northeast of the country tapioca is common as a both a meal, and a dessert. There the manioc flour from which it comes is formed into a batter that is pan-fried like a crepe, and filled with ingredients ranging from shrimp or beef with cheese, to chocolate, coconut, guava paste and/or banana blanketed with, you guessed it, cheese! Here in the Southeast, tapioca is usually found in a thicker, square form like you see below. Check out the bite mark in the right-hand photo. That is how dense it is, despite still being able to soak-up all that caramel "broth" as it is described in Portuguese. It also retains the texture of "spider eggs" as we used to call them as kids.
Ok, I am officially worn out after my sugar rush and need a nap! I'll be back later with more sweet treats, only this time with more chocolate, Brazilian Easter egg-style! Tchau! (tch-ow) (Ciao) (Bye)
09 April 2009
Autumn in Brazil...time to eat pine trees!
The kind here, called a pinhão (peeng-yow) or pinhões when there is more than one, are larger than say the ones made famous in Italy and essential for basil pesto. They are usually about 1 1/2 - 3 inches long, encased in a hard, coffee-brown shell and edible only after a good amount of cooking. Most locals stick them in a pressure cooker, but as I am not confident with the unpredictability of a pot on the stove containing the equivalent of a steam-powered engine under its lid, so I prefer the old-fashioned boil-till-it's-done method. The ones in the above photo are already cooked. They were kept in lightly salted, boiling water for about an hour on the stove and eaten warm as it is easier to peel open the layers that way. Most people here use their teeth to crack the casing and squeeze out the innards, but I think my dentist would advise against that. The smell was fantastic too and I did a make-sift, vapor facial afterwards with the scented water. Getting at the fruit of the tree requires as much dedication as eating an artichoke does, but worth the effort to get at the good stuff inside. I though was the kind of kid that would spend hours in front the fireplace hand cracking walnuts and pecans, using a pick to get out every last soft morsel.
So what do they taste like? It is kind of like a cross between a sugarless date and a slightly sweet potato, with an undercurrent of Christmas tree thrown in for good measure. It has a firm, kind of grainy texture but not with the oily residue of other nuts. I made my own version of pesto with these pinhões and it came out great! Tis' the season!
14 March 2009
Brazilian-style ice cream Part II
Is that CORN in the picture above? Yep, a corn and cream popsicle has now been added to my top 5 list of fabulously-strange-yet-tasty frozen treats! This local company makes other, more traditionally tropical flavors like pineapple, papaya, guava, toasted coconut, and mango, as well as watermelon, açaí with guaraná, maracujá (mah-dah-koo-zhah) or Brazilian passion fruit and in the photo below, an Amazon fruit known for its health properties called cupuaço (koo-poo-ah-soo), and some cream/chocolate combo named "mini-skirt!"
It's the end of Summer here so a cool ice cream hits the spot on steamy days. But you are stuck in the depths of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, you are thinking. Now is not the time for cold food! Come on-do you not have central heating? Trick your hibernating brain into thinking it is time to come out of the cave and whip together some canned corn, heavy cream, sugar, maybe a little cinnamon, and freeze the mixure in ice trays with sticks. YUM!!!!!
04 February 2009
Ice cream makes firemen happy!
In Brasil ice cream “self-service” is very popular. It is kind of like a buffet but with a scale at the end of the line. You pay for how much it weighs. (There also is a regular food version of this that I will cover at a later date). The front of the line starts with scoopers, cups, bowls and/or waffle cones, and ends with unlimited sticky, unhealthy toppings (M&Ms, chopped nuts, regular AND sweet & sour gummy worms, and marshmallow cream) to smother your frozen dessert with. The best aspect of this is that you can combine and make science experiment-looking creations that would make any five year-old proud.
The flavors range from basic flavors like vanilla and chocolate that Gringos are used to, to regional specialties made from vegetables like “chu chu” (shoo-shoo), which is a green, teardrop-shaped plant that grows on vines in tropical areas, and “abóbara com coco” (a-bow-bah-dah), or squash with coconut. Other selections of interest include “maracujá” (mah-dah-koo-zhah), or passion fruit; “goiaba” ( goy-ah-bah), or guava; “jabuticaba,” a dark berry; condensed milk; whipped cream with cashew nuts or “castanha de cajú”; Ferrero Rocher, after the famous hazelnut and chocolate candy from Italy; and a white concoction with a flavor I cannot place named “Beijinho” (which means “little kiss”).
This particular “sorvetaria” (soh-veh-tah-ree-a) is a bit over-lit and sterile, but they advertise lack of hydrogenated vegetable oil (because I prefer cream and sugar over air-poofed fat), and the exterior art murals were painted by a friend of ours. You can see a little of it behind my husband as he digs into his ice cream. The owner is also super nice and curious to ask me if the reason so many Americans are epidemically overweight because they eat bacon and eggs for breakfast. Though that is a loaded question with complex answers, I agree with him and add the statistical fact that large numbers of people there also eat nothing but processed and fast food. I also want to add that it is also because ice cream is so popular in the
I kept my choices monochromatic and had pistachio and chu chu. The flavors were smooth and just like you would expect from a place that puts a little love into what they serve.
03 February 2009
Ok...here's the last Obama endorsement...for now
You have to see this yummy write-up on Good magazine’s blog: http://www.good.is/?p=14505
Tomorrow we will tie this together with Brasil’s version of ice cream- sorvete (soh-veh-chee, or like we say here in Paraty, soh-veh-tch). Enjoy!