Brazil: Food
Lisa writes: Looking back at these Brazil entries, it appears that we spent 90% of our time talking to friends and seeing the country and only about 10% eating, when, in fact, the exact opposite is true. We ate and ate and ate and ate. Every minute was either eating, recovering from eating, or planning our next meal.
I only ran into a couple of food items that were absolutely new and strange. Neither was scary. I'm sure they could have come up with something if they'd tried hard, but our suburban, college-educated hosts would have had to look up the roasted guinea pig recipe on the internet, same as me.
First new item, to the right, was [Tom? spelling?]. It's a topping/sidedish of pan-fried corn meal mixed with beans or meat or sausage. Elison's dad (a former professional chef) made it one night with pieces of sliced Portugese sausage and diced mango. It was pretty salty both times I had it. You can either eat it straight or put it on top of your beans and rice. It's good.
Second new item is an unspellable and pronounceable fruit. It's a berry. Dark purple, almost black, skin. Shiny. About the size of a big grape. You don't eat the skin. You bite a hole in it and slurp out the gooey white juice in the middle. It tastes a lot like a SweeTart candy. It usually has two little seeds. You just spit these out. The weirdest thing is how these grow -- not on the ends of branches, like grapes or any other kind of berry I've ever seen. They grow right on the bark of the bush, all over. Click on the picture to see what I mean. The bigger, the sweeter. And of course the biggest and sweetest ones are the highest and hardest to reach.
Another not-really-weird but new thing was requeijão. It's just cream cheese, but it's the consistency of sour cream. You buy it in little glass jars at the grocery store, like the Welch's grape jelly jars that your grandma saved to use as juice glasses. Same size. Spread it on bread. Use it to make stroganouff. Put it on pizza.
Speaking of pizza, I'm not sure if this is an original Brazilian idea or if they stole this
from California Pizza Kitchen. Would you like some argula on your pizza?
I only ran into a couple of food items that were absolutely new and strange. Neither was scary. I'm sure they could have come up with something if they'd tried hard, but our suburban, college-educated hosts would have had to look up the roasted guinea pig recipe on the internet, same as me.
First new item, to the right, was [Tom? spelling?]. It's a topping/sidedish of pan-fried corn meal mixed with beans or meat or sausage. Elison's dad (a former professional chef) made it one night with pieces of sliced Portugese sausage and diced mango. It was pretty salty both times I had it. You can either eat it straight or put it on top of your beans and rice. It's good.
Second new item is an unspellable and pronounceable fruit. It's a berry. Dark purple, almost black, skin. Shiny. About the size of a big grape. You don't eat the skin. You bite a hole in it and slurp out the gooey white juice in the middle. It tastes a lot like a SweeTart candy. It usually has two little seeds. You just spit these out. The weirdest thing is how these grow -- not on the ends of branches, like grapes or any other kind of berry I've ever seen. They grow right on the bark of the bush, all over. Click on the picture to see what I mean. The bigger, the sweeter. And of course the biggest and sweetest ones are the highest and hardest to reach.
Another not-really-weird but new thing was requeijão. It's just cream cheese, but it's the consistency of sour cream. You buy it in little glass jars at the grocery store, like the Welch's grape jelly jars that your grandma saved to use as juice glasses. Same size. Spread it on bread. Use it to make stroganouff. Put it on pizza.Speaking of pizza, I'm not sure if this is an original Brazilian idea or if they stole this
from California Pizza Kitchen. Would you like some argula on your pizza?
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