Pastel - Brazil's Favorite Snack?

If you asked almost any Brazilian what food they would associate with the drinking of caldo de cana (freshly pressed sugar cane juice) the likely response would be "pastel." A pastel is a stuffed pastry that is deep-fried, and almost always served with a glass of caldo de cana.

For millions of Brazilians, a pastel serves as a quick lunch, a mid-morning or afternoon tide-me-over, or as an anytime treat at the market, a fair or at the beach.  Pastels have been part of the food culture of Brazil for almost a century, and most food historians are of the opinion that their origins can be traced back to the early-20th Century wave of Japanese immigration to Brazil. As newly-arrived immigrants from Japan began to leave the coffee plantations and move into the cities of southern Brazil one of the ways to succeed there was to open a restaurant. Anti-Japanese sentiments were strong at that time, and Japanese cuisine was unknown, so most of these restaurateurs opened Chinese restaurants. One always-popular item in such restaurants was the deep-fried spring roll, and it's from these small rolls that the pastel developed. What the pastel has retained from its spring roll ancestor is the thin, rolled-out pastry, the use of a filling, and the technique of deep-frying. What has changed is the size and shape of the pastry and the choice and variety of fillings.

Today, a pastel is most likely to be in the shape of a rectangle of the dimensions of a normal post-card or slightly larger, although other shapes and sizes do exist. It is filled with either a sweet or savory filling and is normally served hot right from the fryer - accompanied, of course, by the ever-present caldo de cana. A pastel is stand-up food, and meant to be eaten directly from the hand - they really can't be successfully eaten with a knife and fork. They are usually served in a paper napkin or in a small paper envelope, and the caldo de cana may be presented in a plastic cup.

I often wonder if McDonald's pies, which are similarly deep-fried, were inspired by Brazil's pasteis (pasteis is the plural form of pastel in Portuguese). They really aren't a pie in the North American sense of the word, and closely resemble a Brazilian pastel with a sweet filling, although Brazilian pasteis are not often filled with apples, cherries and other North American fruits.

Like many snack foods, the Brazilian pastel can vary tremendously in quality depending on the vendor. Poorly cooked in over-used oil with minimal amounts of filling a pastel can be a very depressing experience. But properly cooked in good-quality oil, with a tasty filling and crunchy pastry, it can be a delicious, if not exactly healthy, treat.

Caldo de Cana - Brazil's Liquid-Sugar Drink

It's no secret that Brazilians, on the whole, have a VERY sweet tooth. Fruit juices, even those from sweet fruits, are normally highly sugared, desserts can be achingly sweet, coffee is invariably drunk very sweet, and I've even seen kids plopping a tablespoonful or two of sugar into a glass of milk before drinking it. Considering Brazil's long and complicated history of producing sugar from sugar cane, it's really no surprise.

When a Brazilian wants a real sugar rush, however, he or she doesn't have to drink a fruit juice, or eat a pastry or cake - it's easy to get the real thing, unfiltered and unflavored. If you peel sugar cane itself, then run the cane through a pressing machine it yields a greenish-yellow juice called caldo de cana (cane broth) or garapa. This same pressing process, on an industrial scale, is the starting point for refining every type of sugar cane product, from molasses, through rum and cachaça, to brown sugar and on to the highly refined white sugars. On a much more artisanal scale thousands of small hand-cranked or electric presses can be found on streets and beaches in markets and fairs all over Brazil grinding out the juice which satisfies the national addiction for sugar.

Caldo de cana is not a highly flavored drink, and the overwhelming impression when drinking it is one of pure sweetness, pure sugar. Considering that it is normally between 40 and 50% sucrose by dry weight, it's no wonder that one's taste buds busily scream out "sweet, sweet, sweet!" when one drinks caldo de cana. The juice, otherwise, has little aroma or taste.

Although Brazilians love to gulp down a glass of iced caldo de cana on a hot day, I find that its high sugar content prevents it from being a thirst quencher. And for me, at least, the lack of a specific flavor diminishes its appeal. I'd much rather have a fruit juice with a lower sugar quotient and a bit of a citric/acidic punch when I'm thirsty. But I'm in the minority in this country - at least judging by the length of the lines in front of caldo de cana stands everywhere in Brazil. Lines of folks just waiting for their sugar fix to be freshly pressed and poured into a glass. Bottom's up!