Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid!! - Facing up to Buchada

As I said in the introductory post to this blog, I intend Flavors Of Brazil to be about all types of Brazilian cooking and food - traditional and modern, regional and national, expensive and cheap. I exclude nothing about food in Brazil from this blog.

Which leads directly to buchada. I live in the Brazilian state of Ceara, on Brazil's Northeast Coast, and so naturally I'm very interested in local food traditions. And one of the most popular and traditional dishes from Ceara is buchada.

The word buchada comes from the Portuguese word bucho, meaning animal's stomach. And what buchada turns out to be is nothing but a Brazilian variant on Scottish haggis - a lamb's (or goat's) stomach stuffing with various types of offal.

I do try to be an adventurous eater, but I have to confess that offal and I really don't get along all that well. In fact, we don't get along at all. Offal, awful - to me they're just variant spellings. But I can't really write with any authority about buchada in this blog without tasting it. And there's the rub...

So, I've determined to let my prejudices fall to the wayside, and I'm going to confront buchada face-to-face. I have a good friend, Antonio Carlos, who makes the best buchada in Fortaleza, according to those who have sampled it. I'm going to ask him to cook a buchada in my apartment, and I will photograph the process and the results. I will also do my best to critique the final product, assuming that I'm able to keep my gag reflexes under control.