Expocachaça - Prize-winning Cachaças Announced

Brazil's national cachaça trade show and exhibition, Expocachaça, recently wrapped up it's 2012 edition which was held from September 04 to 09 at São Paulo's magnificent Central Market, familiarly known as the Mercadão. Divided into sessions for trade professions and the general public, the exposition showcased more than 150 producers of cachaça, ranging from artisanal mom-and-pop distilleries to the large national and international brands.

Along with tasting lessons and sessions, lectures and demonstrations on how to mix drink with cachaça and how to use it in cooking, there was a juried selection of the best cachaças in four categories: white, aged in urubama (a native Brazilian wood), aged in oak or other wood, and Special Super Premium.

The most coveted awards are those in the Special Super Premium category, and this year there were three distilleries honored with gold-medals in this group. They were Cambraia Extra Premium, Porto Morretes and Weber Haus Extra Premium.

Cabraia Extra Premium is a product of  Cachaça Cambraia from São Paulo state. The distillery was recently purchased by large national distiller Pirassununga, although it is still operated independently and produces only premium small-batch cachaças.

The other two gold medal winners were from Brazil's souther region, one from the state of Paraná and the other from Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost state.

From Paraná comes Porto Morretes cachaça distilled in the small town of the same name, while Rio Grande do Sul boasts Weber Haus Extra Premium Cachaça from Cachaçaria Weber Haus, a distillery that has won prizes and trophies for its fine cachaças at shows and expositions around Brazil and internationally.

As it's only very recently that there has been international interest in cachaça, it's quite difficult to source artisanal cachaças outside Brazil, although the situation is slowly improving as the drink becomes more well-known and appreciated outside its native territory. A quick online check of international availability of the three gold medal winners shows that only Weber Haus has representation outside Brazil, specifically in Australia and in Europe.

The Brazilianization of a German Cake - Kuchen into Cuca

The Portuguese word cuca (at least the culinary meaning of the word) is a direct derivation from the German word kuchen, meaning cake. The word is much used in the southern states of Brazil, where large numbers of German immigrants settled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and where German culture flourishes to this day. Among the most transportable of cultural elements, food traditions and recipes from Germany can be easily found in Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, the three states that constitute Brazil's southern region.

Cuca in Portuguese does not refer to all cakes - there's another word, bolo, to serve that purpose. A cuca is a specific kind of cake - the cake that North Americans call a coffee cake. Often containing fresh or preserved fruits, or alternatively, spices like cinnamon, ginger and cloves, cucas are not frosted. Instead they are topped by a crumbly mixture of flour, sugar and butter.

Cucas are most often flavored with apples and bananas, two fruits that grow particularly well in the climate of southern Brazil, though recipes for cuca exist that call for many other types of fruits - particularly fruits of the temperate zone, within which the south of Brazil lies.

Brazilians eat cuca as part of a breakfast buffet, or as a mid-morning or late-afternoon pick-me up with coffee. It's less likely to show up as a dessert, though that's not unheard of. For the millions of Brazilians who don't live in the south, a cuca is an entirely Brazilian conception and few of them would be able to spot its German origins. In areas where temperate zone fruits can't survive, apples or cherries are likely to be replaced by mangoes or cajus, making the treat more Brazilian and less German. But at heart, a cuca is still the same homey cake that is was in its European homeland, back it's still called a kuchen. In Germany a warm kuchen served with coffee at the kitchen table is a symbol of gemütlichkeit, in the USA or Canada a coffee cake served the same way symbolizes coziness, and in Brazil, a slice of cuca means aconchego. Whatever you call it, it still symbolizes the human warmth of the family kitchen and it still tastes just as great.

A Canadian-Brazilian FairyTale - Rance Hesketh's Happy Pigs

Rance Hesketh (in blue T-shirt) and his pigs

The lucky porkers who live on the Alfheim ranch, located high in the Serra do Mar mountain range that separates São Paulo city from the coastal plain of São Paulo state, just might be the most blissed-out pigs in all of Brazil. The ranch, whose name means "elf home" in German, is situated deep in the dense mountain forests of the Mata Atlantica, Brazil's threatened coastal rain forest. It is at Alfheim that Rance Hesketh, 49, a transplanted Canadian, cultivates organic crops and raises a variety of animals in the best-possible and most organic way, and it is there where those fortunate porcines spend their days rooting around, rolling in the mud and grunting contentedly.

Hesketh moved to Brazil in 2008, although he was already familiar with the country from previous visits, upon arrival began to implement his dreams for the ranch. Among his plans and ambitions was a scheme to raise native breeds of pigs organically and humanely. He eventually decided to raise two breeds, the Sorocaba and the Monteiro. When the ranch was ready to receive its first animals, he traveled to Mato Grosso state in western Brazil to pick up his first breeding pairs. Today, Alfheim is home to about 150 pigs who share their territory with organically raised dairy cows and free-range chickens.

The pigs are only fed organic food, which is primarily cultivated on the ranch itself. Sugar cane and manioc are planted on the ranch, and provide the bulk of the pigs' nutrition. Corn which comes from neighboring Paraná state supplements their diet and contributes about 20% of the animals' caloric intake. When the pigs are ready to go to market they are also given whole milk from the ranch's cows to prepare them for slaughter.

Every week, the ranch sends two or three pigs, aged between 3 and 6 months, to the nearest licensed slaughterhouse, located in Ubatuba, 35 kilometers away. Hesketh would prefer to slaughter the pigs on site, but is forbidden to do so by agricultural regulations. He disagrees vigourously with this requirement and says, "What good does it do to submit the animals to the stress of transport? It destroys all we have done in raising them humanely. We need to come up with a less stressful way of slaughtering our stock."

The pigs from Alfheim go to market at a much smaller size than most pork - at about 70 kgs (150 lbs), yeilding about 20 to 30 kgs (45 to 70 lbs) of deboned pork - but Hesketh believes that at that size, the animal provides a better-tasting and more tender meat.

The idea of humanely raising meat animals who feed only on organic, vegetable food is a new one in Brazil, where such ideas are just beginning to take hold with producers and consumers. Whether there is a viable market for such meat in the long run is still unknown. But what can be stated with certainty is that the grunts of the Sorocaba and Monteiro pigs who call Alfheim home sound like the grunts of very, very happy piggies.

With material from an article by Olivia Fraga published in the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper. Translation of Mr. Hesketh's remarks by Flavors of Brazil.

RECIPE - Barreado

If you are planning to make this traditional dish from Brazil's southern state of Paraná, (read more about barreado here) you're going to need two specific things that might not be already hanging around in your pantry. First, the dish must be cooked in a large clay pot with a lid - the type of pot that's often referred to as a bean pot. Bostonians use them for cooking baked beans, as do Quebecers, so if you're in either of those categories you just might have one in the house. If not, you'll have to beg, borrow or steal one, as the dish really can't be made in any other pot or pan.

Second, you'll need to find manioc flour to make the thick dough that seals the pot. Not being able to source manioc flour doesn't mean that you can't make barreado however, just that it won't be completely authentic. You can make the same sort of dough with wheat flour and water. Manioc flour is also used to thicken the broth in a traditional barreado, but again you can substitute flour, although the result won't taste exactly the same.

One of the nice things about making barreado is that all the cooking can be done long before the dish is served. In fact, the dish tastes better this way. So when you want to do your cooking the day before you serve a meal, barreado is an excellent option.

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RECIPE - Barreado
Serves 4

6 lbs beef shank, cut into long strips in the direction of the grain
salt to taste
1 lb lean smoked slab bacon, cut into julienne strips
5 medium onions, chopped
5 cloves garlic, chopped
3 bay leaves
1 Tbsp dried oregano
1 Tbsp ground cumin
2 to 3 cups manioc flour, mixed with a little water to make a thick dough

For the pirão
cooking liquid from the barreado
1 cup manioc flour

sliced ripe banana to garnish
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Season the beef with salt to taste (remember the dish will contain bacon, so season lightly). Reserve.

In a large saucepan, fry the bacon strips until they have rendered their fat and are beginning to brown. Add the chopped onion and garlic and cook for 3 minutes. Then add the beef, the bay leaf, the oregano and cumin and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the meat has browned.

Put everything from the saucepan into a large clay bean pot, then add sufficient water to cover. Reserve.

Make a thick dough with the manioc flour and water, and roll it with your hands into a long thick "rope." Cover the bean pot, then firmly press the rope around the rim of the lid to seal the pot entirely. Cook the dish over lowest flame or electrical burner for 6 hours. If steam begins to escape from the pot, use additional manioc flour dough to patch the holes, making sure the pot stays sealed for the entire cooking process. Let the pot cool completely, then break the seal to open the pot. (Be careful when opening as there might still be steam in the pot.)

Remove the beef from the pot, leaving the cooking liquid in the pot. When the beef is cool enough to handle, shred the beef with two forks.

Pour the cooking liquid into a clean saucepan. Heat over medium heat and when the liquid is hot, sprinkle manioc flour, by the small handful, over the surface then mix in. Continue to add manioc flour slowly until the mixture thickens to the consistency of gravy.

Reheat the shredded beef if necessary, then place some in the bottom of 4 deep soup plates. Pour some  pirão over - enough to moisten the beef and provide a bit of gravy, but not enough to drown the meat. Garnish with slices of ripe banana and serve with plain white rice.


Recipe translated and adapted from Cozinha Regional Brasileira by Abril Editora.

Barreado - Paraná's Iconic Claypot-cooked Beef

A sealed barreado pot

We've been talking a lot recently at Flavors of Brazil about pressure cookers, and how they are a common feature of contemporary Brazilian home kitchens. It turns out, though, that the tradition of using pressure and steam vapor to cook and tenderize tour cuts of meat in Brazil predates the invention of the pressure cooker itself.

In the southern Brazilian state of Paraná there is a well-known traditional dish called barreado that uses a hermetically-sealed clay pot to achieve the same results that a pressure cooker does. There are various theories about who created the dish and when, some saying it was native Amerindian tribes and other attributing the dish to tropeiros, colonial donkey-caravan traders. What is not in doubt, though, is that the technique is very old.

Barreado is basically a meat stew thickened with manioc flour and served with slices of banana. Barreado must be cooked in a clay pot for a long period of time over low heat - preferably the coals of a wood fire. To seal the pot, cooks first make a thick paste of manioc flour and water and then apply that seal to the edges of the pot's lid to ensure that vapor cannot escape. The seal is renewed as needed during the long cooking period, which can be as long as 12 hours. Some 19th Century recipes call for barreado to be cooked for at least 24 hours, though there is probably very little reason to extend the cooking time that long.

Because of the long cooking time in a moist environment even the toughest cuts of meats are rendered fall-off-the-bone tender. To serve barreado, the meat is lifted from its broth and is shredded, while the broth itself is thickened with manioc flour to create a thickened sauce called a pirão. The meat is served on a bed of pirão and is garnished with banana slices. Cachaça is the drink of choice when eating barreado.

Barreado is associated with the coastal region of Paraná, particularly the small community of Morretes located in the state's litoral. On weekends thousands of tourist from the state's capital, Curitiba, and from further afield swamp the small town of only 15,000 residents and fill its restaurants in search of a plate of barreado. For many of them it's a reacquaintance with a treasured dish from their past, for others it's a new experience that connects them to the culinary history of Paraná.

Next time round, we'll post a recipe for make-at-home barreado.

RECIPE - Slavic Soup (Sopa Eslava)

When March has come in like a lion and the days are cold, damp and blustery one's mind often turns to thoughts of hot, meaty, comforting soups. There's nothing better than a bowl of soup to warm one  from the inside out. Other than steeping in a hot bath for a prolonged period of time, soup is probably the most pleasurable way to warm the body when it's just come in from the cold.

The comfort of hot soup on a cold day is an unknown pleasure to most Brazilians. In the twelve-month heat wave that is the most typical kind of weather in Brazil, soup just doesn't have the appeal it does when the outside temperature is below zero. Consequently, Brazilians don't eat soup as often as do people living in colder climes, and soup isn't served nearly as often as it is closer to the poles.

In the most southerly parts of Brazil, though, soup is more common. There are really two explanations for this. First, the south is the coldest part of Brazil, relatively speaking. Being farther from the equator, the southern states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná have four distinct seasons, and in mid-winter (July and August south of the equator) days can be drizzly and raw, and from time to time there's even a dusting of snow. It's real "soup-eating weather."

The second reason that the south has more of a taste for soup is related not to weather but to immigration patterns. This part of Brazil has the highest percentage of European immigrant roots, specifically northern European. The Brazilian south was settled, in many places, by immigrants from Germany, from Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe. One of the things that these immigrants carried with them from their homelands in Europe to their new homes in Brazil was a love of soup. That, and the memories of favorite soups from Europe have resulted in a soup-eating tradition in southern Brazil. Families who can trace their ancestry back to the countryside of Eastern Europe treasure old recipes for soup and put soup on the family table to this day.

This recipe, which has obvious European roots, comes from Paraná, where it is called simply Slavic soup. It might come from Poland, or from the Ukraine, or from Bulgaria (where the family of Brazil's current president, Dilma Rousseff, comes from). But it's now become Brazilianized and rebaptized in honor of immigrants from all the slavic countries of the world.
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RECIPE - Slavic Soup (Sopa Eslava)
Serves 10

1 lb. stewing beef, cut into small cubes (1/2 inch max)
1/2 Tbsp salt
1/2 cup neutral vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 lbs (1 kg) boiling potatoes, peeled but whole
8 cups (2 liters) light beef, chicken or vegetable stock (or water)
sweet paprika to taste
3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 1/4 cup sour cream (or Brazilian creme de leite)
salt to taste
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Toss the cubed meat with the salt. Reserve.

Heat the oil in a large pot until hot but not smoking. Add the cubed beef and fry for 15 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the garlic and fry for 3 more minutes. Add the chopped onion and continue to fry for 10 minutes more, or until the onion is soft but not browned. Add the potatoes and the stock, the paprika and the Worcestershire sauce, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes or until the potatoes are very tender. Correct for salt. 

Remove the potatoes, mash them, and return them to the pot. Add the sour cream or creme de leite and cook for 10 more minutes.

Serve immediately. If desired, garnish with a dab of sour cream and a few fresh sage leaves.

Recipe translated and adapted from Cozinha Regional Brasileira by Abril Editora.

RECIPE - Steam-roasted Back Ribs (Costela no Bafo)

Beef ribs, and specifically the larger ribs known as back ribs, are surrounded by some of the most flavorful meat on the the entire butchered cattle carcass. And though they are wonderfull grilled with a smoky or sweet barbeque sauce, or braised in red wine or other liquid, Brazilians know that sometimes they're bestsuited to being served unadorned at table, without the presence of other flavors to complicate the picture. With just a  little seasoning and nothing more, the meaty and succulent flavor of the ribs shines through in full simplicity.

This recipe for oven-roasted back ribs, which comes from the tiny northeastern Brazilian state of Paraíba, results in very tender, melt-in-your-mouth meat that separates easily from the bone. It's a useful recipe to have when you want to showcase the meat itself or if you don't have access to an outdoor barbeque - the other way Brazilians like to cook their back ribs (costela).

Because back ribs are very rich - the meat has high fat and connective tissue content - keep the trimmings to a minimum when serving them. Boiled potatoes and a simple salad make the perfect accompaniment. Brazilians often serve french fries with back ribs , so if you prefer you can substitute fries for the boiled potatoes. We think that boiled potatoes are better suited in this case, but the choice is yours.
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RECIPE - Steam-roasted Back Ribs (Costela no Bafo)
3 portions

3-rib section of beef back ribs
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 small onion, finely chopped
salt to taste
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In a small bowl combine the chopped garlic and onions, the Worchestershire sauce and salt. Mix together to make a paste. Rub this paste into the meaty side of the rack of ribs and let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350F (180C).

Put the seasoned ribs into a dutch oven with a top, or in a deep roasting pan. Cover the dutch oven or pan with aluminum foil, making sure to make a tight seal. If using a dutch oven, you can put the top on over the aluminum foil. Place in the preheated oven and roast for 1 1/4 hours.

Remove the aluminum foil and return the pan to the oven for about 10-15 minutes to allow the surface of the meat to become browned.

Remove the ribs from the pan, place on a platter, and cover loosely with aluminum foil. Let stand for 15 minutes, then cut into three pieces, each one with a rib, and serve immediately.

Recipe translated and adapted from Cozinha Regional Brasileira by Abril Editora.

RECIPE - Golden Chicken with Pine Nuts (Frango Dourado com Pinhão)

This recipe for chicken in a pine-nut laced béchamel sauce comes from Aline Mutz Guerra, who is chef at the highly-regarded Estrela da Terra restaurant in Curitiba, the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná. Curitiba is widely considered one of the most livable cities in Brazil, with a strong economy, good transportation and infrastructure and a highly-educated population. In the past Curitiba welcomed immigrant communities from many European countries, plus Japan, but today most of the population growth comes from Brazilians migrating to Curitiba from other areas in the country. It is estimated that at least half of the current population was not born in Curitiba.

Aline Mutz Guerra is a Carioca (a person from Rio de Janeiro) who, when she moved to Curitiba, barely knew how to cook. Largely self-taught, she began by cooking for family and friends, making use of local traditional recipes and ingredients. Eventually she opened her own restaurant and in 2009 was appointed chef at Estrela da Terra, which has been open for 16 years and which is housed in a old house which has been awarded heritage status by the city of Curitiba.

The photo below shows how Mutz Guerra presents Golden Chicken with Pine Nuts at Estrela da Terra. With North American pine nuts, which don't have the size or the dramatic color of the Brazilian pinhão, it is better to mix them in with the chicken and béchamel sauce rather than to try to duplicate the decorative technique Mutz Guerra employs.
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RECIPE - Golden Chicken with Pine Nuts (Frango Dourado com Pinhão) 
Serves 4


For the béchamel
2 Tbsp. corn starch
1/2 cup cold water
1 cup Philadelphia-style cream cheese
2 cups whole milk

For the chicken
2 entire chicken breasts, boneless, with with skin attached
salt to taste
1 cup corn kernels, fresh or frozen
1 cup green peas, fresh or frozen
1 1/2 cups pine nuts, toasted in dry frying pan until lightly browned
1/2 lb (200 gr) grated mozzarella cheese
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Make the béchamel. Dilute the corn start in cold water. Bring the milk just to the boiling point over medium heat in a heavy saucepan. Add the diluted corn starch and cook, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens. Add the cream cheese, stir to dissolve, then remove the sauce from heat and reserve.

 Preheat the oven to 400F (200C). Put the chicken breasts, skin side up, in an ovenproof casserole dish. place in preheated oven, and cook for 20 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked and the skin is golden. Remove the dish from the oven, let the chicken cool slightly, then remove the skin and cut the chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks. Reduce oven temperature to 350F (180C)

In a ovenproof serving dish mix the chicken, the corn and peas, the pine nuts and the béchamel. Salt to taste. Sprinkle the top with grated mozzarella. Place in oven and cook for 10 minutes, or until the top is golden and crusty.

Serve immediately.

RECIPE - Beef in Beer with Pine Nuts (Carne ao Molho de Cerveja com Pinhão)

This informal beef stew comes from the state of Paraná in southern Brazil, and demonstrates its southern origin by the inclusion of pine nuts (pinhões) which are cultivated in that state, and by the use of beer as a cooking liquid. In the more tropical regions of Brazil, further north, neither beer or wine are used in stews and casseroles, but in southern Brazil, which has a rich tradition of European immigration, both of these alcoholic liquids are common in such dishes. Paraná is home to significant communities of descendants of German, Ukrainian, and Polish settlers, and beer of part of the culinary pantry of the state.

The recipe calls for Brazilian pine nuts, which come from a different family of pines than do the pine nuts commonly available in Europe and North America. Although there will be a slight difference in taste, normal pine nuts may be used in this recipe with great success.

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RECIPE - Beef in Beer with Pine Nuts (Carne ao Molho de Cerveja com Pinhão)
Serves 4

2 medium onions, quartered
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 Tbsp. neutral vegetable oil
2 lb (1 kg) chuck steak (acem), cut into 2" (4 cm) cubes
2 tsp. annatto powder (can substitute sweet paprika)
1 Tbsp. Dijon-style mustard
3 bay leaves
2 tsp. dried oregano
6 oz. pilsner or lager beer
1 cup (250 ml) water
salt to taste
1 Tbsp. corn starch
1/4 cup (50 ml) water
1/2 lb (250 gr) pine nuts
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Put the onion, garlic and vegetable oil in a blender or food processor and blend completely. Heat a heavy saucepan with cover over medium-high heat, add the blended onion and garlic and cook, stirring constantly just until it begins to brown. Add the chunks of beef, and continue cooking until the meat is browned on all sides.

Add the annatto or paprika, mustard, bay leaves, oregano, the beer and 1 cup of water to the browned meat, plus salt to taste. Bring to a boil, cover the pan, reduce heat and simmer until the meat is tender, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Add additional water if needed to prevent drying out.

Dilute the corn starch in 1/2 cup cold water. Uncover pan, add the corn starch and pine nuts. Continue to simmer with the pan uncovered for about 10 minutes or until the liquid thickens and the pine nuts are heated through.

Serve immediately with potatoes or noodles.

Recipe translated and adapted from Cozinha Regional Brasileira by Abril Editora

These are Brazilian Dishes?? (REPOST)

(Please click here to read about this series of reposts of original posts from May 24, 2010 to June 12, 2010)

Imagine that you just bought a book of Brazilian regional cuisine. It has a beautiful cover and you thought it would be nice to have a book of Brazilian recipes in your collection of cookbooks. When you get it home and open it up to thumb through some recipes you find recipes for these dishes: lasagne, gnocchi, beefsteak tartare, chucrute, spatzle, Kassler rippen, and even knackwurstchen mit sauerkraut und salat. You'd think that somehow the wrong cover got put on the wrong book, and what you had was not a Brazilian cookbook but a German or Italian one. If your new book was about the regional cuisine of the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, however,then those recipes are exactly the ones you  should expect to find, as they are the typical foods of this state of immigrants, particularly from Germany and Italy.

Southern Brazil is different from the rest of the country in topography, climate, racial and ethnic mixture, and all forms of culture, including cuisine. The three southern states, Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul, share a temperate climate that is very different from most of Brazil, which is tropical year-round. In the mountains of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul temperatures fall to freezing or below frequently during the winter months of June, July and August. Most of the current population of these states can look back up the family tree to find ancestors living in Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Lebanon or Syria. And like descendants of immigrants around the world they continue to honor their immigrant heritage. Village festivals might include Oktoberfest-style beer tents and oom-pa-pa bands in lederhosen. Italian holidays are celebrated, as is the grape harvest with wine festivals. It's very different from the beach, sun and palm tree picture postcard image that most people carry in their minds when they think of Brazil.

But just as Carmela Soprano's baked ziti cooked at her home in New Jersey is not the same thing as her great-grandmother cooked in Italy, the dishes of these states, although they might have a name that comes from the family homeland, have been molded and modified by the years spent in Brazil. It's interesting to see what has changed over the course of a trans-oceanic voyage and a century or two in the New World, and what has not. In the next few posts, I'll give you some recipes from this region that reflect the immigrant heritage of southern Brazil. One thing for certain, the ingredients will not be difficult to find anywhere in North America or Europe. This is the cuisine of temperate climates, and the ingredients are very similar to areas with similar climates north of the equator.

RECIPE - Chicken Risotto (Risoto de Frango)

In the last few posts, I've been talking about the European-influenced cuisines of Brazil's southern states. Unlike the population of more tropical regions in the center and north of the country, the bulk of the population of Brazil's south can trace its ancestry back to Europe, usually by way of immigrants to Brazil in the 19th and early 20th Century.

Yesterday, I posted a recipe from the state of Santa Catarina, which has a large German immigrant community. There are also German communities in the state of Paraná, which borders Santa Catarina on the north, but in Paraná the primary ethnic and cultural groups are descendants of immigrants from Portugal and especially from Italy. The capital, Curitiba, has a large and vibrant Italian community, as do the cities of Colombo and Santa Felicidade.

Just as Flavor of Brazil's recipe for chucrute was an evolution, not a copy, of German sauerkraut, this recipe from Paraná - delicious and different chicken risotto - is a Brazilian adaptation of an Italian original. Particularly interesting is the use of chicken gizzards as the primary protein for the dish. This recipe serves a large group, which makes the dish particularly appropriate for a feast or dinner for family or friends.
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RECIPE - Chicken Risotto (Risoto de Frango)
Serves 10

For the broth:
5 quarts water (5 litres)
1 whole chicken, 3-4 lbs. (2 kgs.), chopped into 8 to 10 pieces
1 whole tomato
1/2 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 celery stick
2 or 3 whole fresh sage leaves

For the risotto:
1 lb. (500 gr.) chicken gizzards, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
6 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1/2 cup tomato sauce
salt to taste
3 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup Italian parsley, chopped
additional grated parmesan cheese, to taste
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Make the broth: In a large deep pan or stockpot, combine the water and all ingredients. Heat over medium-high heat, and when the water begins to boil, reduce the heat and let simmer for 50 minutes, loosely covered. Remove from heat, and let cool. When cool, remove chicken, discard skin and all bones, and then shred the meat. Reserve. Pass the broth through a sieve lined with several layers of cheesecloth, Reserve.

Make the risotto: Season the gizzards with salt, then fry them with the olive oil in a large, heavy saucepan. Add the onions and continue to saute until the onions become lightly browned. Add the chopped tomatoes and tomato sauce and stir. Add 2 cups of the reserved chicken broth and cook over medium-low heat for 40 minutes, or until the gizzards are soft. Meanwhile, bring the remaining broth to a simmer in another pot.

When gizzards are cooked, add the rice to the pan, stir and bring the mixture to the boil over medium-high heat. As it begins to dry out, add more broth by the cupful, allowing each to be absorbed before adding another. When the rice is almost cooked, stir in the reserved shredded chicken. Continue adding broth until all the broth is absorbed, or until the rice is tender. At this point, remove the risotto from the heat, stir in the 1/2 cup parmesan and the parsley and mix lightly. Correct the seasoning. Put into a serving dish, sprinkle additional parmesan on top and serve immediately.

Recipe translated and adapted from Cozinha Regional Brasileira by Abril Editora.

These are Brazilian Dishes??

Imagine that you just bought a book of Brazilian regional cuisine. It has a beautiful cover and you thought it would be nice to have a book of Brazilian recipes in your collection of cookbooks. When you get it home and open it up to thumb through some recipes you find recipes for these dishes: lasagne, gnocchi, beefsteak tartare, chucrute, spatzle, Kassler rippen, and even knackwurstchen mit sauerkraut und salat. You'd think that somehow the wrong cover got put on the wrong book, and what you had was not a Brazilian cookbook but a German or Italian one. If your new book was about the regional cuisine of the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, however,then those recipes are exactly the ones you  should expect to find, as they are the typical foods of this state of immigrants, particularly from Germany and Italy.

Southern Brazil is different from the rest of the country in topography, climate, racial and ethnic mixture, and all forms of culture, including cuisine. The three southern states, Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul, share a temperate climate that is very different from most of Brazil, which is tropical year-round. In the mountains of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul temperatures fall to freezing or below frequently during the winter months of June, July and August. Most of the current population of these states can look back up the family tree to find ancestors living in Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Lebanon or Syria. And like descendants of immigrants around the world they continue to honor their immigrant heritage. Village festivals might include Oktoberfest-style beer tents and oom-pa-pa bands in lederhosen. Italian holidays are celebrated, as is the grape harvest with wine festivals. It's very different from the beach, sun and palm tree picture postcard image that most people carry in their minds when they think of Brazil.

But just as Carmela Soprano's baked ziti cooked at her home in New Jersey is not the same thing as her great-grandmother cooked in Italy, the dishes of these states, although they might have a name that comes from the family homeland, have been molded and modified by the years spent in Brazil. It's interesting to see what has changed over the course of a trans-oceanic voyage and a century or two in the New World, and what has not. In the next few posts, I'll give you some recipes from this region that reflect the immigrant heritage of southern Brazil. One thing for certain, the ingredients will not be difficult to find anywhere in North America or Europe. This is the cuisine of temperate climates, and the ingredients are very similar to areas with similar climates north of the equator.