RECIPE - Tropical Roast Chicken with Passion Fruit Sauce (Chester Tropical com Molho de Maracujá)

Ana Maria Braga

This recipe comes to Flavors of Brazil courtesy of Ana Maria Braga, one of Brazil's most popular daytime TV hosts and the closest thing to Martha Stewart that Brazil has produced. The recipe is for a roasted Chester (click here to find out who/what Chester is) in a sweet-and-sour passion fruit glaze. Though you'll be unlikely to source a Chester to make this exact recipe, it certainly is equally suited to a large roasting chicken, which is what a Chester is after all.
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RECIPE - Tropical Roast Chicken with Passion Fruit Sauce (Chester Tropical com Molho de Maracujá)

For bird:
1 large roasting chicken (or Chester), thawed if frozen
3 Tbsp fresh rosemary leaves, crushed
1 tsp powdered cinnamon
4 Tbsp soy sauce
1 cup passion fruit juice (fresh or from concentrate)
1 cup water
2 Tbsp melted butter
1 Tbsp corn syrup
4 Tbsp toasted sesame seeds

For gravy:
Pan juices from roast
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup passion fruit juice
salt and pepper to taste
seeds of one passion fruit (optional)
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Begin 12 to 24 hours prior to roasting bird. In a small bowl, combine the rosemary, cinnamon, soy sauce and passion fruit juice and blend well. Put the bird in a large zip-loc bag, pour the marinade mixture over, press out excess air and seal the bag. Marinade the bird in the refrigerator, turning the bag over once or twice during this time.

Take the bird out of the refrigerator about 1/2 hour before beginning to roast it. Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Put the bird in a large roasting pan, pour the marinade over and around it, and brush the skin of the bird with the melted butter. Put the bird in the oven and roast it, basting from time to time with pan juices. Roast for about 20 minutes per pound, or until the internal temperature reaches 165F (75C). Remove from oven and let stand for 15 minutes, loosely covered with aluminum foil.

Meanwhile, make the gravy. Stir the cornstarch into the passion fruit juice. Heat the juices remaining in the roasting pan, using a wooden spoon to scrape up solid bits. Add the passion fruit juice, and bring all to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the gravy has thickened. Season with salt and pepper and add passion fruit seeds if desired.

Serve the bird whole to be carved at the table, and pass the gravy separately.

RECIPE - Passion Fruit Cake (Bolo de Maracujá)

One of our habits here at Flavors of Brazil is to search out a thematically suitable recipe for publishing the day after we have an article about a particular Brazilian food, be it fish, fowl or fruit. If we run a piece about a fish called robalo (snook in English), we're likely to follow that with a robalo recipe the next day. Or if we track down an exotic fruit from the Amazon or the Pantanal and feature it in a posting, the next post often will have a recipe based on that fruit.

The most recent posting on this blog was about three very exotic Brazilian foods - endangered heritage foods that have been catalogued for preservation in the Slow Food Ark of Taste. These three food, which include a flour made from sun-dried river fish, a smelly but delicious fruit from a hardwood tree, and a wild variety of the commonly cultivated passion fruit (maracujá). Recipes for the first two of these heritage foods are thin on the ground and a bit of internet searching came up with almost nothing in the way of recipes. Besides which, even if we did publish a recipe almost none of the readers of this blog would have the slightest chance of sourcing the main ingredient.

The wild passion fruit known as maracujá da Caatinga, though, is not entirely unlike cultivated and commercialized passion fruits, even if it is more highly perfumed and densely flavored. So we've decided to feature a common Brazilian recipe for a simple cake soaked in a passion fruit syrup. In the extremely unlikely circumstance that you have an available supply of maracujá da Caatinga please use it (and let us know the results.) Otherwise use whatever fresh passion fruit is available to you, or in a pinch, even canned or frozen passion fruit pulp.
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RECIPE - Passion Fruit Cake (Bolo de Maracujá)

cake:
4 whole eggs, separated
2 cups granulated white sugar
2 cups cake flour
1 cup passion fruit juice
2 heaping Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
2 tsp baking powder

syrup:
2 fresh passion fruits (3 if small)
1 cup granulated white sugar
1/2 cup water
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Make the cake:
 Preheat oven to 350F (180C).

In a medium mixing bowl combine the egg yolks, the sugar and butter and beat with hand mixer or cake mixer until light and fluffy. Reserve. In another bowl, preferably copper, beat the egg whites to soft peak stage. Reserve.

Alternatively add small quantities of  passion fruit juice and flour to the creamed sugar/butter mixture, mixing each in thoroughly before proceeding. When completely added in, fold the egg whites in gently - do not overmix.

Pour the batter into greased and floured tube pan, bundt pan or springform cake pan. Place in preheated oven and cook for about 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Make the syrup:
While the cake in baking, combine the passion fruit pulp (seeds included), the sugar and water in a small saucepan. Bring rapidly to a boil, reduce heat slightly and cook for 5-10 minutes, or until the liquid has cooked down and you have a this syrup. Remove from heat and reserve.

Completing the cake:
As soon as the cake is done, remove it from the oven. Using a metal or bamboo skewer poke holes in the surface of the cake. Pour the syrup over while the cake is still hot so that is will penetrate the holes and soak into the cake. Let the cake cool completely before removing from the cake pan.

RECIPE - Passion Fruit Curd (Coalhada de Maracujá)

This recipe for passion fruit curd, made in the style of English lemon curd, isn't Brazilian at all, though it could be. That's why I think it deserves a place here at Flavors of Brazil. For if passion fruit (maracujá in Portuguese) isn't a Brazilian flavor, then I don't know what is. Besides, as regular readers of the blog know, I'm wild about any food that includes passion fruit - including this one.

I happened across it while bouncing around the web the other day in a beautiful Australian blog called Almost Bourdain. It would make sense that an Aussie food blog would have just such a passion fruit recipe, as the fruit grows there as well as it does in Brazil and passion fruit is an authentic Australian passion - think of Pavlova without passion fruit; it just doesn't make it, does it? In the blog post, the original recipe is credited to an Australian cookbook called bills open kitchen, by Bill Granger.

I have translated the recipe title into Portuguese just to make it look a bit more Brazilian. But true-Brazilian or not, I have a feeling that readers of Flavors of Brazil will love it.

Note: If fresh passion fruits are not available in your area, check the freezer section of your local gourmet supermarket or health food store. You might find frozen passion fruit pulp, and it works very well in this recipe.
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RECIPE - Passion Fruit Curd (Coalhada de Maracujá)

4 whole eggs, free-range if possible
1 cup (250 ml) passion fruit pulp, fresh or frozen
2/3 cup (150 gr) superfine (caster) sugar
5 oz (120 gr) unsalted butter, softened
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Place the eggs, fruit pulp and sugar in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, making sure that the bowl doesn't touch the water. Cook for 7 or 8 minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the sugar has dissolved completely and the mixture has thickened . Remove from the heat, then whisk in the butter gradually, a bit at a time, until the mixture is completely homogenous. Let cool completely.

If not using immediately, store in the refrigerator.

Airline Treat - Mousse de Maracujá Caramels

Airline travel has become increasingly standardized around the world in the past decades, and the formerly-glamorous world of air travel has almost totally disappeared in most places, including Brazil where airline travel has grown tremendously in recent years. On Thursday night I returned to Fortaleza from Rio de Janeiro on a flight by TAM, Brazil's largest airline and was reminded of gentler times and the small touches of service that one seldom finds these days on board a plane when the stewardess passed down the aisle handing out candies prior to take-off.

When I first began flying, the practice of handing out candies or chewing gum prior to departure was nearly universal - ostensibly to help passengers adjust to changes in cabin air pressure. Outside of Brazil, I can't remember the last time I've seen it though.

On TAM, on the other hand, I can't remember a flight when the candies weren't offered, so I assume that it's part of the standard service practice on board. I don't always take the candies, but on this last flight I did, and I'm very happy that I did so. TAM seems to have a new flavor caramel now, and the flavor is my favorite - passion fruit (maracujá). I'm only sorry that I didn't grab a handful when they were passed out.

It turns out that maracujá is a new flavor for the candy's manufacturer, Arcor, too. According to the industry website Gastrononia & Negócios, this newest flavor was only recently launched and is the latest addition to Arcor's line of toffees and caramels.

I think that TAM was very clever in switching their candies to this flavor, which is very closely identified with Brazil. Now if they'd only start serving caipirinhas!

Making Graviola/Maracujá Juice (Soursop-Passion Fruit Juice)

Yesterday, a friend of mine stopped by with a gift from her back yard. She has a graviola (soursop in English) tree growing there, and we're currently in the middle of the harvest season for graviola here in Fortaleza. She's overwhelmed with graviola, and kindly brought a good-sized one over as a present.

The fruit was very ripe, and I knew I had to do something fairly quickly with it, even though I refrigerated it immediately. I am a total fan of graviola juice, and so decided I would make fresh juice with the aid of my blender. I snooped around the internet a bit before I started, and found a suggestion to add the juice of one maracujá (passion fruit) per jar of graviola juice, which I thought was a wonderful idea. First, because I love maracujá. Second, the highly-acidic juice of the maracujá might cut the sometimes-sticky, custardy flavors of the graviola and would provide just a bit of a bite, which seemed to me would be a good thing. Fortunately, I had a couple of maracujás in the house, so I didn't need to go shopping before beginning.

I started off with one medium-sized graviola, very ripe.

First, I cut the graviola in half, and with my hands pulled the pulp out from the halves, seeds included.

I placed the pulp in a blender, and blended until the pulp was pureed and smooth. I then strained the pulp through a small sieve to remove the seeds and seed bits, plus any woody remainders of the pulp.

Then I poured the strained graviola puree into a juice car.

Next up was the maracujá.

I cut it in half, blended it and strained it just as I had done with the graviola. I was left with a small amount of juice that was very concentrated and acidic.

I added this maracujá juice to the juice car, plus about 2 cups of cold water to thin down the graviola puree. Brazilian recipes invariably call for the addition of sugar, but after testing I found that the sweetness of the graviola, even with the added maracujá juice, as just right and didn't need additional sweetening.

The juice was creamy and rich, and absolutely delicious. Pure graviola juice can be overly aromatic and almost cloying in texture and taste, and I thought the maracujá juice was exactly what was needed to avoid both of those problems. The juice still tasted like graviola juice, not maracujá juice. But it was tamed by the presence of maracujá and certainly made more refreshing. From here on out, I'll not make graviola juice without adding that magic ingredient - maracujá.

RECIPE - Passion Fruit Mousse (Mousse de Maracujá)

If Brazil declared a national dessert, it would most likely be passion fruit mousse. Easily and quickly made, it is served at dinner parties at home, it's a staple in the dessert counters of delicatessens and bakeries, and it appears front and center on many restaurant menus.

When made at home in Brazil, passion fruit mousse calls for fresh passions fruits (about 6 large), sweetened condensed milk, and a dairy product called creme de leite, which is somewhat similar to evaporated milk. Since the fresh fruit and the creme de leite can be difficult to obtain outside Brazil, here is a recipe which can easily be made in most North American cities (and probably European, Asian, and African too, for that matter).

Click on "read more" for the recipe...

What color is a passion fruit?

If you can buy fresh passion fruit in your local supermarket, what color is it? And what shape and size? Large, smooth and yellow, or small, wrinkled, and dark purple? The answer to this question most likely depends on the country in which you are shopping, or if you are buying imported fruit, which country produced the passionfruit. There are two distinctive varieties of the edible passion fruit; one is bright yellow, about the size of a small grapefruit, glossy and smooth, and quite light for its size. The other is much smaller, typically about the size of a large lemon, dark purple, less glossy, and often wrinkled in appearance. Here in Brazil, only the yellow variety is available, and in Australia the purple variety is the one that is consumed. I've tasted both varieties and can't distinguish one from the other by taste or aroma. According to botanical sources, however, the two colors are separate species, occur in distinct geographical territores, and bloom at different times of day.

Passionate about Passion Fruit

Why is it that some people love strawberries obsessively, and others would kill for a sweet, freshly-picked ear of corn? Could it be memories connecting the taste with long-past pleasant times and experiences? Or is there a chemical disposition in one's taste and smell receptors that causes one to love this food and hate that one? I don't know the answer; however, I do know that whatever the reason, I adore passion fruit. I must have first tasted passion fruit in my 20s or 30s, so it can't be a case of a Proustian response to some long-lost childhood paradise. I guess I'll just have to put it down to chemistry then.

In any case, for a passion fruit addict like me, living in Brazil is a junkie's paradise. Passion fruit (Portuguese: Maracujá) (Bot: Passiflora edulis) is cheaply and readily available all year round, and is used in a large number of dishes and drinks. There's passion fruit juice, which Brazilians will tell you has a tranquilizing and sedative effect, and there's the juice's stronger cousin, the caipifruta de maracujá, which is basically a caipirinha made with passion fruit juice rather than lime juice.