Off to Brazil

During the last couple of weeks we have been eating Brazilian food. Out of all the food we have cooked so far this year, I think this cuisine has been the most unique experience - where we have truly tried some foods that we have not eaten at home before. We even ordered some ingredients off the internet in preparation for our cooking adventure.

We have some Brazilian friends - so it was great to have a chat with Eduardo about the food that would be typically eaten in Brazil. To get a bit of a taste for what is actually eaten in Brazil we had to have a black bean dish.  Black beans are eaten daily in some households in Brazil, so Freijoada was a must to try, accompanied by Farofa (a crumb like dish made from manioc flour, combined with bacon, chorizo, onion garlic, parsley and salt), rice and a green sauteed vegetable dish (we used kale for our dish). Of course, we also had to make some Brigadeiro - the national sweet.

Here is a bit of a snapshot of the ingredients we bought from an Australian Website called Brazilian Style Imports:

At the back we have some Dende Oil (also known as Palm oil) - I got the smallest bottle I could, to prevent wastage. Brazilians use dende oil for cooking, but also to pour over food to garnish it (a bit like you would add a splurge of olive oil to an Italian dish). I had to buy a bottle of Cachaca - this is basically a national alcohol made from distilled sugarcane juice. It is used to make Caipirinhas - a very lethal cocktail drink served normally with lime and sugar syrup/sugar and lots of ice.  I also invested in a couple of tins of the national soft drink - Guarana, an energy drink made from the Gurana fruit originating from the Brazilian Amazon Jungle. At the front we have the toasted Manioc Flour I used to make Farofa, some black beans (a bit cheaper than buying from the supermarket or health food shop), and lastly some Guava paste - to be used on cheese platters.

During the Brazilian cooking experience I also had to purchase a couple of other ingredients - dried shrimp/Prawns (called Xinxim in Brazil) - which I purchased from the local Asian supermarket, and Tapioca Starch from the regular supermarket (a mere $8 a packet!!!). The Tapioca Statch is used in cheese bread (Paode Queijo).

OK - so here is a run down of our experience:

Night 1

Feijoada - a black bean dish cooked in water for just over 2 hours, with pork - including chorizo, proscuitto (you can use smoky bacon), pork ribs.  You can put whatever pork cuts you want in this - for example pork shoulder, trotter etc.

Farofa - A dish which kind of resembles bread crumbs, made by sauteing onions, garlic, bacon, chorizo with Manioc flour and salt. This is used as a crumbly topping normally served with BBQ'ed meats and Feijoada.

Recipes for the above can be found here:  http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/feijoada or http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/black-bean-meat-stew-feijoada

Sauted Kale called Couve. They use a flat leaf variety in Brazil. It is sauteed with garlic and onions and served as a side dish.

Boiled rice - a lot of meals are accompanied by rice.

All of the above is served with a slice of Orange!

The adults also tried Caipirinhas with pineapple, normally this drink just contains lime, cachaca liqueur, sugar and ice, but we added pieces of pineapple and some pineapple juice, just to make it a little less alcoholic. Recipe for this one is here:  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/caipirinhas-pineapple 

Night 2

Whilst waiting for Dave to get home from work, we chowed down on a fruit and cheese platter which contained the Guava paste I had purchased on line. Very nice.

For dinner I made Xinxim De Galinha - a tomato and coconut milk based chicken dish, which normally has prawns in it as well (which I left out on account the girls don't like prawns). I did however add the dried shrimp, which turned out to be a little fishy for the girls - but the adults enjoyed the meal. Next time I won't add the shrimp!

Night 3

Soup night! I think every cuisine has soup somewhere in it's repertoire. The girls really loved this soup - which was a simple chicken and vegetable soup with rice (Canja De Galinha). I also made cheese breads (called Paode Queijo). Both these recipes are going on the repeat list to be made again. 

The Cheese Breads are made from Tapioca Starch - which resembles corn flour. The recipe was so simple, you dump all the ingredients in the blender and blend, and then pour into cupcake or mini muffin tins and bake in the oven for 15 minutes. You can also premake the batter and store in the fridge for up to 7 days.

For dessert, we made Brigadeiro (chocolate and condensed milk - what could go wrong!). Not bad for our first attempt, but I think I have to stir for even longer than the 10 minutes it said in the recipe, to thicken the mixture more, and prevent it from flattening when put in the fridge to set. here is the recipe: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/brazilian-chocolate-truffles-brigadeiro

Night 4

For our last trick, we made something called Barreado (aka clay pot stew). Of course we didn't have a clay pot - but you can also make in the slow cooker. This dish was unusual in three ways - firstly you layered meat, onion, bacon, herbs etc in the slow cooker, secondly you add a lid of dough (which I think is to keep the moisture in), thirdly - there is no liquid added to the recipe, it cooks in it's own juices. Dave and I both enjoyed this one. The girls were not as enthused (but don't forget they are not huge fans of red meat).  Here is the recipe:  http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/clay-pot-stew-barreado

We served the dish with a Brazilian Cobb salad (which I could not find the palm hearts of tinned black beans to go with it!). Essentially it's a de-constructed salad served with a lovely citrus dressing.

There we end our Brazilian food experience - there's still a heap of dishes I want to try, but we will have to leave this until we get around to Brazilian again one day!

At the moment we are enjoying some Japanese food, and we pulled the following two out of the country container for following weeks - Malaysia and Russia (Eliza sure does like to challenge me!)

Di :-)