INGREDIENTS - Creme de Leite (cream)

In the last post on Flavors of Brazil, which included a recipe for the Brazilian version of Beef Strogonoff (estrogonofe), among the ingredients called for was a product called creme de leite (which simply means milk cream). In the estrogonofe recipe it substitutes for the sour cream found in many more traditional versions of Strogonoff, as sour cream is not generally available in Brazil.

Many, many Brazilian recipes call for creme de leite, and if the recipe forums and culinary FAQ websites are to be believed, there is a lot of confusion as to what creme de leite is and is not. Cooks from other countries who are trying to use a Brazilian recipe are often stumped when trying to find an acceptable substitute for creme de leite. Equally so, Brazilian cooks who try to cook their favorite recipes with creme de leite when outside Brazil don't know what to use.

Basically, creme de leite is nothing more than what we generally know in English as cream. It is the fatty portion of milk (the part that rises to the top in unhomogenized milk) containing about 30-40% milk fat. In Brazil, it can generally be bought in two forms - fresh, which is purchased refrigerated and which must be kept refrigerated, and UHT-treated, which is purchased unrefrigerated and can be stored at room temperature until the container is opened. At that point, any unused portion must be kept in the fridge. Fresh creme de leite is normally sold in plastic bags, and the UHT version is sold either in small cans or in Tetra-brik boxes.

The UHT-treated creme de leite is heat-treated to ensure long shelf life, and it is also churned slightly so that it has a significantly thicker consistency than the fresh. Because of this thicker consistency, when substituting other ingredients for creme de leite, it's best to use something like sour cream or creme fraiche. Plain North American or European fresh cream will not have the same consistency and the result will be different. Obviously sour cream will change the taste of the final dish, though creme fraiche will less so.

Just as expat Aussies carry Vegemite with them when migrating or travelling and Americans go to great lengths to find peanut butter overseas, Brazilians living outside Brazil often express "saudade" (nostalgia) for creme de leite and beg visiting relatives to bring some along with them. Or, on their visits home to Brazil, they fill any empty space in their suitcases with creme de leite for use across the seas.

None of the substitutes are perfect reproductions of Brazilian creme de leite, but for most purposes, other dairy products can successfully be swapped. But if you're making a Brazilian dish with creme de leite for Brazilian guests, don't expect them to say it tastes just like Mama made - because she used creme de leite and you didn't

RECIPE - Doce de Leite

Whether you call it dulce de leche in Spanish, or prefer to use the Brazilian Portuguese doce de leite, this decadently rich and delicious treat is not that difficult to make at home. It does require patience, and an arm that's strong enough to keep stirring for quite a while, but the result is infinitely better than most store-bought versions, and will keep for a very long time in the fridge. (In fact, the dish was most likely invented as a technique to preserve fresh milk in hot tropical climates - sugar is a powerful agent of preservation.)

The ingredient list is short and sweet (sorry about the pun!). Total time required is about an hour and a half, plus time for the cooked doce de leite to cool down. If you wish to flavor your doce de leite you can do so during the final five minutes or so of cooking time by adding things such as grated coconut, powdered cinnamon, or cocoa powder to taste. Once cooled, the doce de leite can be used in a number of ways - it can be served as is, or used in an ingredient in the creation of another dish.

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RECIPE - Doce de Leite
10 portions

2 quarts (2 liters) whole milk
4 cups (750 gr) granulated white sugar.
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Combine the milk and sugar in a large heavy-bottomed pan (enameled cast-iron is best, but any heavy pan will do. Avoid pans that are thin, as the bottom of the doce de leite can easily burn). Stir with a wooden or silicone spoon until the sugar dissolves completely.

Place the pan over medium heat and bring slowly to a boil, stirring constantly with the spoon (approximately 15 minutes).

Reduce the heat, and continue to cook, stirring contantly, until the mixture is reduced to about 1/6 of its original quantity and developed a rich brown color and a shiny, creamy consistency. (approximately 45 minute to 1 hour). ** If you wish you can continue to cook for another 15 minutes or so, letting the mixture continue to thicken. When cooled, this doce de leite will have the consistency of fudge, and can be cut into pieces.

When the mixture has reached the desired consistency and color, pour into a glass casserole or lasagne dish and let cool completely. 

Cooled doce de leite can be kept in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

Translated and adapted from website Tudo Gostoso.

Doce de Leite

If you've read the previous post on Flavors of Brazil, you'll already know that we've recently returned to Brazil from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Although the two countries are neighbors and good friends (apart from football/soccer!) their cuisines are quite different. Some culinary traits, however, they do hold in common - particularly their love for grilled meats of all sorts, for pizza, and especially for the sweet preparation known as dulce de leche in Argentina and here in Brazil as doce de leite (pronounced dough-see gee LAY-chee). Both names merely mean milk sweet.

This thick, unctuous and very sweet mixture of milk and sugar is known throughout Latin America, from the Rio Grande in Mexico's north, to Cape Horn at the bottom of South America, and in recent years has begun to conquer new territories in the USA and Canada. It's only in the parts of the Americas that have an Iberian colonial past where it truly reigns as the king of sweets, though.

Basically, doce de leite is nothing more than milk sweetened with sugar that is boiled down until it is concentrated into either a creamy paste, or even further into a fudge-like consistency. It's not uncommon for doce de leite to be reduced to one-sixth of it's original quantity. While it is being boiled down, the mixture undergoes two browning processes -  carmelization and the Maillard reaction - which give the final product its characteristic caramel/butterscotch flavor and it's warm, toasty brown color.

In Brazil, kids (and sometimes even adults) love to eat doce de leite straight up - out of the jar or can. The bulk of it, though, is used in the creation of sweets and desserts. For instance, doce de leite is a favorite flavor of ice cream (sorvete) everywhere in Brazil - an idea that has been adopted by Ben & Jerry's and Häagen-Dazs, among others. Bakeries and confectionaries use it as a filling for cream puffs, sponge roll cakes and between layers of layer cakes. It makes a delicious dessert sauce when heated and thinned with whole milk or even better, cream.

Making doce de leite at home is not that difficult, though most Brazilians buy theirs at the shop. There are a wide range of doces de leite available, from large industrial producers, like Nestlé or Parmalat, to small and artisanal producers on dairy farms in every region of the country. In the next post, I'll provide a DIY recipe for making doce de leite in your own kitchen.

INGREDIENTS - Clarified Butter (Manteiga de Garrafa)

All aspects of a traditional cuisine are informed by the cultural landscape in which it develops. Ingredients, techniques, equipment used, food preservation, all depend on topography, climate, availability of water and many other cultural factors, even such unlikely ones such as language. This is precisely why no two traditional cuisines are exactly the same, as they do not have the same "genetic background."

Nonetheless, certain elements of many different traditional cuisines seem to pop up independently in cultures that are geographically worlds away, and with little communication or connection between them. For example, the custom of eating crispy-fried insects can be found in traditional cultures from Australia, to Thailand, to Brazil's Amazon rain forest. Such similarities are nothing surprising, as cultures might share available ingredients, or similar climates, without even knowing of each others existence. The need to turn available foods into something palatable is universal.

Brazil's semi-arid northeast (called the Nordeste in Brazil) is a hot, unforgiving landscape with scant vegetation and less water. It resembles parts of the plains of India in all of these aspects. Both areas are  centers of cattle ranching and inhabitants rely on dairy products as an essential part of their diet. Until recent times refrigeration was uncommon in either area, and so preservation of dairy products was a matter of importance. In addition to cheeses, interestingly, both areas developed similar techniques for preserving butter without refrigeration, by clarifying it to remove the milky solids, leaving behind only the dairy fat. The Indians know the resulting product as ghee, and in Brazil's Nordeste is it called either "manteiga de garrafa" (literally, butter in a bottle) ou "manteiga da terra (butter of the earth).

Today, many urban Brazilians in the Nordeste  but manteiga de garrafa not because they must, but because it's part of their traditional palette of flavors. It is an essential ingredient in many of the iconic dishes of this region, and its characteristic taste and smell instantly identify any dish in which is it used as coming from the Nordeste. It seems that the product is virtually unknown outside this region of Brazil, and its availability of limited in other parts of the country.

Today, manteiga de garrafa is available in all local food shops and supermarkets in the urban centers of the Nordeste, but many people still prefer to buy it from roadside stands in the countryside, claiming that the taste is more authentic. Manteiga de garrafa is strongly flavored, and for some it's definitely an acquired taste - it has a strong barnyard aroma, with buttery and even cheesy dairy flavors predominating.

Like butter or cheese almost anywhere in the world, manteiga de garrafa is not something that many people make at home, although recipes for homemade manteiga de garrafa do exist. But most kitchens in Brazil's Nordeset have a bottle of it in the pantry or on a shelf. It lasts forever at room temperature, and when needed, it gives that "down-home" flavor that people everywhere crave.