RECIPE - Fried Fish, São Paulo Style (Frigideira de Peixe)

This recipe comes from Brazil's most populous state, São Paulo, home to more than forty-one million inhabitants, a majority of whom can trace their ancestry back to immigrants from Portugal, Spain or Italy. It's that Mediterranean ancestry which probably explains the quantity of olive oil (and olives) in this delicious recipe for fried fish. Since we've been discussing the role of olive oil in Brazilian cuisine the past couple of days here on Flavors of Brazil, it seems appropriate to feature a recipe in which both the fruit of the olive tree and the oil pressed from that fruit sit front and center.

The traditional recipe for this dish calls for the fish to be cação, which is the Portuguese word for shark as a food source (there's another word for the animal itself). There are significant concerns about the sustainability of shark fisheries worldwide, so we recommend that you choose another white-fleshed fish that doesn't easily flake - halibut being an excellent substitution.
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RECIPE - Fried Fish, São Paulo Style (Frigideira de Peixe)
Serves 4

For the fish:
4 shark, halibut or other white fish steaks
salt to taste
juice of one lime
4 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 large ripe tomatoes, peeled, sedded and chopped
1 cup pitted green olives, coarsely chopped (deli-style European olives preferred)
4 caper berries
freshly ground black pepper to taste


To garnish:

1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium red onion, cut into strips
1 medium tomato, peeled, seeded and cut into strips
2 Tbsp Italian parsley, finely minced
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Wash and dry the fish steaks. Season them with salt to taste and lime juice. In a large non-stick frying pan, heat the olive oil, and fry the chopped onion and tomatoes in it until the onions are transparent and the tomatoes are soft. Sprinkle half the chopped olives over the onion/tomato mixture, then add the four steaks in one layer. Sprinkle the remainder of the olives on top, and add one caper berry to the top of each steak. Cover the pan, and cook over medium-low heat for 10 minutes, or until the fish is just cooked through.

While the fish is cooking, heat another frying pan and add one Tbsp olive oil. Fry the onion and tomato strips briefly, until the onion is just transparent and the tomato strips are softened.

When the fish is cooked, sprinkle the fried onion and tomato-strip mixture over, the top with the chopped parsley. Serve immediately from the pan, accompanied by either white rice or boiled new potatoes.

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

The Quest for Brazilian Olive Oil

As detailed in yesterday's post on Flavors of Brazil about the size of the Brazilian market for imported olive oil, Brazil's consumption of olive oil (or azeite as they call it) is stupendously large, and is increasing exponentially from year to year.

Considering the economic value of the oil that is imported into Brazil every year, not to mention the equally large market for imported olives themselves, it's only natural that Brazilian agriculturalists and botanists have turned their thoughts to the possibilities of creating a domestic market in olives and olive oils. It has long been thought that Brazil didn't offer the climatic or soil conditions that the olive tree requires to grow and bear fruit. The area around the Mediterranean Sea, where the tree flourishes, is known for dry, sandy soil, hot and arid summers, and cool and damp winters. Brazil, with its tropical soil, year-round heat and high levels of humidity was thought to be inimical to olive tree cultivation.

It is true that large portions of Brazil, such as the jungles of the Amazon River basin, or the semi-arid northeast, just cannot support olive cultivation. But other regions of Brazil offer interesting possibilities, and research scientists have begun a number of agricultural research studies and tests to try to find the right combination of climatic conditions and olive tree cultivars to build a Brazilian olive oil industry from scratch. The preliminary results are very encouraging.

Maria da Fé, Minas Gerais

The largest project, and the one which is closest to developing a commercially viable domestic olive oil comes from the interior Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where at higher altitudes the climate more closely mimics Mediterranean climate, particularly during wintertime, than does most of Brazil. An agricultural research organization, called Epamig (a Portuguese acronym for "Agricultural Research Institute of Minas Gerais") located promising land for olive tree cultivation in the small city of Maria da Fé , located in the south of Minas Gerais. They planted a research olive grove there more than fifty years ago, and only now are their efforts bearing fruit - figuratively and literally, since olive trees require at least fifty years before they provide a sustainable quantity of olives.

In 2008 the first viable harvest from the groves at Maria da Fé yielded one ton of olives, resulting in 200 liters of oil. In 2009, the harvest yielded 500 liters of oil, and in 2010 about 1000 liters. The scientific analysis of the oil from Maria da Fé is very encouraging. The oil is very low in acidity (0.39%), an important factor in valuing olive oil, as the acidity can be no more than (0.80%) for an oil to be considered extra-virgin.

Although the quantity of oil produced so far by Epamig is miniscule, groves have been planted in a number of locations with climate and soil conditions similar to those at Maria da Fé, and these groves will begin producing shortly. Farmers in the states of Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo, realizing the economic potential of olive cultivation have planted hundreds of thousands of trees, anticipating the future market for domestic olive oil.

Epamig Olive Oil

In September of 2010, Epamig brought their olive oil for the first time to ExpoAzeite, an olive oil trade fair held annually in São Paulo. Tastings were offered and the consensus was that Brazilian olive oil has nothing to be ashamed of and can stand in the market for olive oil on its own merits, not just on the fact that it is Brazilian.

Though the Brazilian olive oil industry is still very much in its infancy, one would be forgiven if one said that its future looks golden - olive-oil golden.

INGREDIENTS - Olive Oil (Azeite)

Considering all the cultural and gastronomic links that unite Portugal and its former colonies in South America which constitute present-day Brazil, it's no great surprise that Brazil today has a tremendous appetite for olive oil. For what could be more emblematic of Portuguese cuisine than the liquid gold that is the gift of the European olive tree (Olea europaea)? Early Portuguese explorers and settlers arrived on the shores of Brazil bearing bottles of precious olive oil, and from its earliest days the nascent cuisine of Brazil made liberal use of the oil. Brazilian cooks of all kinds to this day employ the oil to fry foods and to season and flavor them.

Brazil's appetite for olive oil (azeite in Portuguese) is staggeringly large. Since virtually all of the olive oil consumed in Brazil is imported, import statistics can give us a handle on the size of the market. In the last year for which statistics have been published, 2009, 44,000 tons of olive oil were imported. Preliminary estimates for 2010 suggest that the total for that year will have increased to 50,000 tons - that is 100 million pounds of oil, or approximately 50 million quarts or liters.

About 95% of the oil that is imported to Brazil comes from the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, principally Iberia (Spain and Portugal), Italy and North Africa. The Mediterranean is where olives were first cultivated, and where olive oil was first produced, even before the Mediterranean became a Roman sea. Today, people who inhabit the Mediterranean basin, from the Middle East to Portugal, and from southern France and the Balkans to Morocco and Egypt consume more olive oil than in any other part of the world. But the Brazilians aren't far behind.

In Brazilian dishes which come directly from the Portuguese kitchen, or which are inspired by the cuisine of that country, olive oil is almost always the only vegetable oil used. Salt cod (bacalhau) without a liberal sprinkling of olive oil is unthinkable, and Portuguese-inspired soups and stews invariably emply olive oil. But even dishes which can't be traced back to European roots, like the Afro-Brazilian dishes typical of Bahian cooking, often call for olive oil - sometimes in combination with other oils, like corn oil, or the brilliant-orange palm oil called dendê.

As Brazil's economy grows, and the average Brazilian's ability to afford olive oil increases, it is expected that the import market for olive oil will continue to grow in the years to come. Some Brazilian agriculturalists and food scientists are beginning to wonder if the country really needs to import all of the oil that it consumes and are questioning why there is no domestic production of olive oil. Flavors of Brazil will highlight their efforts in our next post.