Surviving Carnaval

It can be done. Surviving the four-day onslaught of music, dancing, drinking and eating that is Brazil's Carnaval is possible. In fact, Flavors of Brazil has just done so, successfully, for the seventh time - twice in Salvador (home to Brazil's largest Carnaval), twice in Rio de Janeiro (famous for it's epically spectacular samba parades), and now three times in Recife/Olinda (known as the country's most traditional celebration). It's all a matter of judiciously expending the body's caloric and energetic resources. Go all out by all means, but don't go all out all the time - it just can't be done. Carnaval goes on non-stop for at least 96 hours, and no one, no matter how much Red Bull they drink, can do the same.

For a very short look at what Carnaval looks like at street level and at full intensity, watch this video that we made last Sunday in Olinda. The video shows one of the city's many blocos (Carnaval bands) passing by, with a singer atop a make-do sound truck pulled through the streets by the band's strongest members, and with the group's multitude of fan following along behind, singing and dancing in time to the Carnaval music.
We'll return to our normal, more culinarily  focused, posts starting on Monday, Feb. 18.

RECIPE - Polenta with Turkey Ragu and Mushrooms

Capixaba chef Sylvia Lis, using the Italian traditions of the mountainous interior of the state of Espírito Santo, combines left-over roast turkey with polenta and mushrooms to create an unusual and delicious lunch or dinner main course. The dish is based on Italian-immigrant traditions and is often served on December 25th (in Brazil, that's the day after the Christmas meal - not the 26th). Our previous post on Flavors of Brazil details the traditions surrounding this dish, this post will provide the recipe.
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RECIPE - Polenta with Turkey Ragu and Mushrooms (Polenta com Ragu de Peru e Cogumelos)
Serves 6

For the ragu:
3/4 lb (300 gr) left-over turkey meat, shredded
1/3 lb (150 gr) mushrooms, shitake if possible, sliced
2 Tbsp finely chopped onion
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 to 3 cups combined turkey broth (made from roast-turkey carcass) and left-over turkey gravy
2 sprigs fresh thyme
extra-virgin olive oil
salt to taste
finely chopped Italian parsley (for garnish)

For the polenta:
2 cups polenta
1 cup cold water
3 cups boiling water
1 Tbsp cream cheese
salt to taste
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Prepare the ragu:
In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil, then add the chopped onion and garlic. Cook for a minute or two, until the onion softens but doesn't brown. Add the sliced mushrooms and saute for a few minutes, tossing the mushroom slices frequently. Add the shredded turkey and the white wine. Bring the wine to a boil and cook for a few minutes, or until the wine thickens a bit. Add the turkey broth and gravy bit by bit, until you have a medium-thick rich sauce. Season to taste with salt if necessary. Reserve, keeping warm.

Prepare the polenta:
In a large saucepan, combine the polenta and the cold water, stirring and mixing until all the polenta becomes moistened. Add the boiling water and cook, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens and pulls away slightly from the edges of the pan. If necessary add more boiling water, in small amounts, to make sure the mixture doesn't become too thick - you want it to be just slightly soupy. It should be just pourable. Stir in the cream cheese, making sure it's completely mixed in, then season for salt.

Mounting the dish:
In a large deep rectangular or round serving dish, pour out the polenta. Using a ladle, spoon the turkey and mushroom ragu over the surface of the polenta, starting in the middle of the pan and working your way out to both ends. Sprinkle the ragu with chopped parsley and serve.

Christmas Leftovers - Espírito Santo-style

This post should by all rights have been published yesterday, at least if the majority of Flavors of Brazil's readers were in Brazil. The post is about day-after Christmas leftovers and what to do with them, and in Brazil the Christmas feast is eaten late in the evening on December 24th, not on December 25th. Consequently, it's on the 25th that Brazilian family cooks have to deal with leftovers.

However, most of our readers come from English-speaking countries, and in the majority of those countries, the Christmas feast comes to the table sometime on December 25th, and the leftover situation comes to the forefront only on the 26th. (We're not even going to get into the whole business of when Australia and New Zealand eat leftovers, there on the other side of the International Dateline.) In honor of those readers we've decided to use our post for today, call it Boxing Day if you want, to give our readers a bit of a lesson on what cooks in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo often do, and to pass on the recipe if you want to duplicate their efforts at home.

The fertile and mountainous state of Espírito Santo is located on the southeast coast of Brazil, occupying the stretch of coast north of Rio de Janeiro state and south of Bahia. It's a state that has a long agricultural tradition and for centuries European immigrants who were farmers in the Old World have chosen to continue that path in Espírito Santo when they arrived in the New. Espírito Santo has a large number of citizens who can trace their ancestry back to Italy, and many of them are farmers or come from farming backgrounds. Espírito Santo has a large dairy industry and many of Brazil's Italian-style cheese come from that state.

As always, immigrants to Espírito Santo brought their food traditions with them, and the cuisine of the interior of the state, in particular, is heavily influenced by Italian foodways. Capixabas (the demonym for people who live in Espírito Santo) are like most Brazilians and usually eat turkey for Christmas, which isn't really an Italian tradition. But when the 26th rolls around, local cooks make sometime typically Italian out of the turkey they have on hand. They make a rich ragu with turkey and mushrooms and serve it with polenta. What could be more Italian than that?

In our next post, we'll provide the recipe for this delicious way to deal with excess turkey.  

Brazil's Christmas Meal - Regional Variations

Just like North Americans do, most Brazilians eat turkey for their big Christmas celebration meal. That makes sense - after all the turkey is native to the Americas. In certain European cultures, goose is favored, or even salt cod - which also makes sense, as these foods have a long European tradition, but in the New World, turkey reigns supreme.

However, Brazilian Christmas isn't just about turkey. There are some other dishes that are equally traditional in Brazil, and which either are served alongside a turkey or instead of one. These traditional dishes vary from region to region in Brazil, which makes sense considering the huge geographical, climatic and cultural differences from region to region in this, the world's fifth largest and fifth most-populous nation.

This week, in the food section of the nationally-distributed newspaper Estado de S. Paulo, a number of well-known chefs from regions all around the country discussed what is traditional in their city, state or region, and provided recipes for some of the most popular regional Christmas dishes. In our next few posts, leading up to Christmas day, we'll detail some of these dishes and pass on the recipes to our readers. It's Flavors of Brazil's way of wishing our readers, who come from 220 different countries, a very Brazilian FELIZ NATAL!

STATS - Brazil's Chocolate Easter Egg Market

Anecdotal evidence would tell anyone wandering the aisles of a Brazilian supermarket in the weeks leading up to Easter that Brazil's have a very, very large appetite for chocolate Easter eggs - usually for very, very large eggs, too. Supermarkets in Brazil construct apparatuses for hanging Easter eggs in the aisles themselves, so that shoppers wander through the aisles as if in an endless cavern with shiny foil-wrapped stalactites hanging overhead.

But how many shoppers pull down an egg, or two or three, and plop it into their shopping cart? Just how many eggs are consumed in Brazil during the annual Easter-season chocolate orgy? In the age of the internet, it was relatively easy for Flavors of Brazil to find out.

According to chocolate-industry predictions, in Easter season 2012 Brazilians will consume 80 million chocolate Easter eggs. This number is about 10% higher than the totals for 2011, and economists posit that the bulk of the growth is due to the increasing economic power of the lower middle class - those who have moved from poverty levels to middle class in the last decade. This hunger for chocolate makes Brazil the third-largest chocolate market in the world.

This growth in the market comes even at a time in which prices for chocolate Easter eggs is rising much faster than the rate of inflation in Brazil. Prices for Easter eggs in 2012 are expected to be about 9% higher than last year, even though the cost of pure cocoa has fallen more than 4% during the same time period. The increased costs are put down to large increases in the price of sugar and the cost of labor.

The manufacture of Easter eggs in Brazil is dominated by multi-national food giants, and two of the top three producers are multi-nationals. The best-selling brand of chocolate Easter eggs in Brazil is Lacta, owned by American food giant Kraft. It expects to sell 27 million eggs this year. In second position, with 20 million eggs sold, is Brazilian chocolate manufacturer Garoto, and in third place, selling under its own brand name is Nestlé, which expects to move 17 million eggs.

One interesting statistic about chocolate Easter eggs shows the huge economic power of Brazil's most populous state, São Paulo. With just over 41 million inhabitants, the state of São Paulo makes up approximately 22% of the total population of the country. But according the the chocolate industry, Paulistas (those who live in the state) will purchase 45% of the Easter eggs produced in 2012.

However you slice these statistics, it's a whole lot of chocolate and sugar, and millions of square feet of shiny foil to wrap them in. But the chocolate Easter egg is thoroughly ensconced in Brazil's Easter iconography, and the continued success of the product is not even slightly in doubt.

Wine Pairing Suggestions for Salt Cod (Bacalhau)

Salt cod (bacalhau) and red wine

With the approach of Holy Week (Semana Santa), Brazilians' culinary thoughts turn primarily to two things - chocolate and salt cod (not necessarily together). These two foods are symbolic of the Easter season in Brazil, and in past years Flavors of Brazil has highlighted these food at this time of year. (Click here to read more about salt cod and here for Easter chocolates).

Although Brazilians drink much more beer than wine throughout the year, it's traditional to serve wine at the Good Friday and Easter feasts. As salt cod's traditional link to the Easter season is an inheritance from Portuguese culture, wine is the customary beverage, as Portugal has always been a wine-loving nation.

The problem is that pairing salt cod (bacalhau) with wine is a tricky business, and one can go seriously wrong. Salt cod's high salinity and complexity of the way it is normally cooked with other flavors such as onion, tomatoes, potatoes, olives, olive oil, etc. make it difficult to find a wine that stands up to the strong flavors and that complements them.

Salt cod (bacalhau) and white wine

In a recent article on the website of Prazeres da Mesa magazine, a number of Brazilian wine writers highlight some interesting suggestions. Here's a bit of what they had to say about suitable varietals to serve with salt cod (translations by Flavors of Brazil).
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Chardonnay (unoaked) - This white wine has a consistent structure and an agreeable freshness. It works well with dishes containing flaked salt cod which normally retains more salt than filets of salt cod.

Carménère -  This Chilean red-wine varietal stands up well to salt cod dishes which contain green peppers, a notoriously tricky flavor when it comes to wine pairings.

Pinot Noir - This grape, known for its smoothness and balance, is recommended when salt cod is roasted or served with few other flavors.

Vinhão (also known as Souzão) - From Northern Portugal's Douro regions, red wines made with this grape combine exceedingly-well with salt cod dishes that contain a lot of olive oil.

Touriga Nacional - Another Portuguese varietal, Touriga Nacional red wines are the perfect accompaniment for salt cod dishes containing cream, or other rich casseroles.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH - Brazil's Coscorão and Scandinavian Rosettes

Scandinavian rosettes

For us here at Flavors of Brazil, one of our absolutely favorite Christmastide treats when we were growing up in northernmost Michigan in the USA were something called rosettes. Alongside shortbread and pfeffernuss, they were proudly served on the Christmas cookie platter and even though everyone was stuffed with other Christmas goodies, it was impossible to resist a rosette - especially knowing that they wouldn't appear again for another year. Rosettes are a traditional Scandinavian Christmas cookie, and they are common in areas in the USA and Canada where there are large communities which share Scandinavian ancestry.

Rosettes are something like a sweet, deep-fried waffle. To make rosettes you need a special decoratively-shaped iron, a thin flour batter, powdered sugar, and oil for deep-frying. Once the batter is ready, the iron is dipped into the hot oil to get hot, then into the batter, then back into the oil. When the waffle is nicely browned, you remove it from the iron and you repeat the process until you've used up all the batter. When the rosettes are cool, you sprinkle them with powdered sugar. They're then ready to serve.

We at Flavors of Brazil have recently been doing some research on the traditional foods of Brazil's Minas Gerais state, where one finds some of Brazil's oldest and most traditional food customs. Our searches led us the other day to the small town of Virginópolis, and its traditional holiday waffle, called coscorão. Which turns out to be nothing other than a Scandinavian rosette, though it has been thoroughly Brazilianized by substituting polvilho (a type of manioc flour) for Scandinavia's wheat flour. Other than that the two delicacies are identical - the thin batter, the decorative iron and the deep-frying.

Brazilian coscorões

Scandinavian rosettes are closely linked to the Christmas season, but the holidays which are connected to coscorões in Virginópolis are the mid-winter festivals called Festas Juninas, held at the end of June. During these festivals, street vendors set up stands on streets and in squares to cook and sell coscorões on the spot, and locals stroll by in the evenings, listening to live music, watching folk dances and sampling the wares of all the food and drink vendors - and one place that's an obligatory stop is the coscorão stand. We're sure that the aroma and the taste of a hot coscorão is as evocative of family and holiday times for residents of Virginópolis as rosettes are for the millions of descendents of Swedes, Norwegians, Finns and Danes in central Canada and the American midwest. But now we're curious - where's the missing link from Scandinavia to the isolated interior of Minas Gerais and from rosettes to coscorões?

Rio de Janeiro Celebrates 447 Years of Sun, Sand and Feijoada

On January 25th of this year, Flavors of Brazil saluted the city of São Paulo on its 458th birthday. Today it's Rio de Janeiro, Brazils second-largest city and most famous tourist destination, whose birthday is being celebrating. March 1st is Rio's birthday, as it was on this day in 1565 that the city was officially founded by Portuguese colonists who named their new city São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro. Fortunately that unwieldly name has since been reduced to Rio de Janeiro, meaning River of January.

Rio's beautiful natural setting, tucked into bays and beaches around Guanabara Bay at the foot of spectacular mountains, has been exalted since the first day Portuguese caravels sailed into the bay - on January 1, 1502. Not realizing that the large expanse of water they were entering was a bay rather than the mouth of a large river, they named the bay Rio de Janeiro in honor of the New Year's Day they were celebrating. The name stuck long after the Portuguese realized their geographical mistake.

In many ways, Rio de Janeiro is Brazil's face to the rest of the world. The imposing statue of Christ the Redeemer (Cristo Redentor) atop Corcovado mountain and the shockingly-steep granite dome of Sugar Loaf (Pão de Açúcar) are among the most iconic tourist images in the world, and few world travelers haven't heard praise of the glories of Rio's major beaches, Copacabana and Ipanema.

So if you're feeling like offering a birthday toast to Rio de Janeiro, fix yourself a refreshing caipirinha, and toast a Cidade Maravilhosa (The Wonderful City) while watching this spectacular tilt-shift video called The City of Samba. It captures the city and one of its principal cultural manifestations, Carnaval, perfectly.

The City of Samba from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Feliz Aniversário, Rio de Janeiro

Brazil's Ash Wednesday Diet

Officially, in Brazil as in other Christian countries around the world, the Wednesday that follows Carnaval marks the beginning of a40-day period of renunciation leading up to Easter Sunday. Lent (Quaresma in Portuguese) is considered a time of mourning, repentence and abstinence, and there are traditional dietary restrictions associated with the Lenten period.

According to the Roman Catholic calendar, the 40 days of Lent are divided into days of abstinence and days of fasting. Fasting, in the Christian sense, means reducing one's daily food intake to one full meal and two small meals. Fasting is appropriate to the whole Lenten period. Sundays during Lent are not considered part of Lent itself, so fasting is not required on Sundays. In addition to the daily fasting requirement, there are two days during Lent, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, in which abstinence is required. Abstinence in this sense means the elimination of meat from the diet (fish are not considered meat).

In fact, in contemporary Brazilian Catholicism, those two days, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, are the only two days in the entire year when abstinence is obligatory.

During Lent, the majority of Brazilians eat their daily meals on their normal pattern, and the idea of only one full meal a day is mostly restricted to religious communities. Abstaining from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday is a common practice among Brazilian Catholics, however, and many Brazilians choose to remember the religious significance of those two days by not consuming meat.

Traditionally, during periods of abstinence, fish or eggs are substituted for the forbidden meat and become the central focus of the meal. In earlier times, before the introduction of electric refrigeration, fresh fish was unobtainable in many places, particularly those far from water. People in these locations largely depended on salt cod (bacalhau) to nourish them on days of abstinence. Today, even though modern transportation and refrigeration allow the sale of fresh fish far from the waters they lived in, Brazilians associate salt cod with abstinence and often prefer it to fresh fish.

salt cod (bacalhau)

Consequently, if you ask a Brazilian what he or she plans on eating today, there's a very good chance that it will be salt cod. Shelves in supermarkets have been laden with bacalhau for the past couple of weeks, and as families get together to recover from the madness of Carnaval, it's most often around a dinner table set for a meal of bacalhau.

The Street Food of Carnaval

Sambódromo, Rio de Janeiro

All over Brazil  this week, from small villages and outposts to the mega-metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazilians are celebrating the national explosion of alegria e folia (joy and craziness) that is Brazilian Carnaval. In 2012 they will be doing so for the 371st time, as Carnaval was first celebrated in Brazil in the year 1641, in Rio de Janeiro, in imitation of the Carnavals of Europe.

These days, Brazilian Carnaval goes well beyond anything seen in Europe or almost anywhere else - in terms of cultural importance, Brazilian Carnaval is only equalled by New Orleans' Mardi Gras, held at the same time as Carnaval in Brazil. The largest of the Carnaval celebrations are the largest peaceful street gatherings in the world, with up to two million celebrants thronging the streets.

Trio elétrico, Salvador

Frevo, Recife

Carnaval  is not celebrated in the same way everywhere in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro's Carnaval   , with its all-night-long samba-school parades in the Sambódromo is very different from the frenzied scene surrounding the huge sound-truck/moving stages called trio elétrico in Salvador, Bahia. Although music and dancing is an essential part of Carnaval everywhere in the country, even the rhythms and dance styles vary from city to city. Rio has its various forms of samba, Salvador dances to the rhythms of axé, and Recife's carnaval is inseparable from the fast beat and flying feet of frevo.

Although every city has its own Carnaval atmosphere and events, Carnaval food is, by and large, more standardized. When there are over a million dancing, drinking revelers in the street, as there are at Recife's Galo de Madrugada or Rio de Janeiro's Cordão da Bola Preta parade, there's no time nor space to feed that multitude anything more than street food that quickly fills the stomach and renews the energy. When revelers want to eat they want something quick, something filling and something cheap - and something nearby. Their needs are meet by thousands of pushcart vendors who seem to have the unerring ability to find a spot along the curb at any street gathering in the country, ready to sell french fries, hot dogs and other similar treats from their carts. Prices vary depending on the law of supply and demand but they are never very expensive, as street parties are not the carnaval venue of choice for the rich and chic (they have their own private balls). Street parties are for the rest of Brazilian society, from upper-middle-class university students, to blue collar workers, to domestic servants, the unemployed and even the homeless.

Beside the universal street food dishes like hot dogs, hamburgers and french fries, there is one carnaval treat that's particularly Brazilian. Grilled meat-on-a-skewer, known as espetinho in Portuguese, is available everywhere, and millions are consumed daily. Very similar to Turkish kebabs, Asian night-market skewers and other snacks of their ilk, Brazilian espetinhos are given their own Brazilian twist when they are rolled in crunchy, gritty farinha (toasted manioc flour) and topped with a spritz or two of hot sauce.

To wash down those hot dogs, espetinhos and burgers, Brazilians overwhelmingly rely on beer - generally canned lager (many cities entirely prohibit the sale of beer in glass containers in the build-up to carnaval). Just as push-cart food vendors are ubiquituous during Brazilian street parties, there's almost always someone with a styrofoam cooler filled with icy beer within short distance during a street party. The supply never seems to run out. Soft drinks, mineral water and alco-pop coolers are also available, but most revelers quench their thirst with plain old cerveja (beer).

Brazilian carnaval food is a nutritionist's nightmare - generally meat-heavy, often greasy and stodgy. But it's so clasely associated with the festival that carnaval food is unlikely to change drastically any time soon. Just as for many Americans the only time they ever eat hot dogs is at the ball part - it's an essential part of the ritual - for many Brazilians carnaval without a hot dog, or espetinho, is equally unthinkable.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012 - FELIZ ANO NOVO 2012

Happy World Pasta Day 2011 (Feliz Dia Mundial de Macarrão)

We've just learned here at Flavors of Brazil that today, October 25th, the entire planet is celebrating World Pasta Day. This date was chosen because it marks the anniversary of the first World Pasta Congress held in Rome, naturally, on October 25, 1995.

Although the origins of pasta are halfway around the world from Brazil in ancient China, and it was the Italians, not the Portuguese, who spread the love of pasta around the globe, Brazil loves pasta just as much as anyplace else on Earth. Call it massa, macarrão, espaguete, lasanha, or anything else you want it, just be sure to eat one of the most basic, most delicious and most variable foods that has blessed the human race before World Pasta Day ends at midnight.

And if you want to toast your pasta while you eat it, make sure it's with a nice dry red wine!

Happy National Cachaça Day 2011

Last year about this time, Flavors of Brazil saluted Brazil's National Cachaça Day which is commemorated every September 13, in honor of the date in 1661 on which the production of cachaça in Brazil was legalized. Such an important and august date deserves more than one post on this blog, so once again we're raising a glass of Brazil's national spirit and toasting the iconic sugar-cane-based liquor with the traditional "saúde!" Pronounced "sow-OO-gee", saúde is the Portuguese word for health and it is as obligatory when toasting in Brazil as Cheers! is in English.

 Expocachaça  at São Paulo's Municipal Market

As part of the lead-up to today's celebrations, an international cachaça exposition and trade fair was held last week in São Paulo. It took place at the city's beautiful municipal market and combined a profession trade fair with an exhibition open to the public. Organizers estimated that  20,000 visitors attended the exposition, and sales of  cachaça were estimated to be somewhere between R$800 thousand ($500 thousand) and $1 million ($600 thousand).

Blind tasting

As part of the trade fair a blind tasting was held to determine the best brands of cachaça in Brazil. The fours judges, two "sensory technicians", one journalist and a sommelier, tasted 91 different brands and ranked each one. Fortunately, rules of the tasting prohibited swallowing the liquor - elsewise, the judges would never have made it to the last few samples! Between each sample, the judges used dry white bread and green apples to clear the palate, and inhaled the aroma of coffee beans to clear the olfactory glands.

The cachaças were divided into two groups - white and aged (golden) - and each group received its own ranking. At the end of the tasting the judges divulged a list of the 10 best white cachaças and the 10 best aged (golden) brands in Brazil (and presumably the world).

Even though many of the winning brands are artisanal and only made in small quantities for the domestic market in Brazil, here is the complete list of winners. We at Flavors of Brazil are going to try to track down the best is each category to provide our own judgment on their quality and will report the results on the blog. We can't promise, though, not to swallow! (Maybe that's why it's called a blind tasting...)

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Brazil's best cachaças - Expocachaça 2011, São Paulo


White cachaças:
1) Casa Bucco
2) Branca de Minas
3) A Tentadora
4) Pé do Morro
5) Engenho São Luiz
6) Santo Grau Século XVIII
7) Germana Soul
8) Ouro 1 Prata
9) Batista
10) Engenho d'Ouro


Aged (golden) cachaças:
1) Pedra Branca
2) Magnífica Soleira
3) Velho Alambique
4) Germana Heritage
5) Chacrinha Ouro
6) Dona Beja Sarau
7) Vale Verde 12 Anos
8) Magnífica Envelhecida
9) Colombina
10) Capim Cheiroso

Feliz Sete de Setembro (Happy Seventh of September)

Today is Brazil's national holiday, called simply, like the Fourth of July in the USA, the Seventh of September. Although both the American national holiday and the Brazilian one are officially called Independence Day (Dia da Independência), in popular usage they are referred to more commonly by the calendar date.

Today's celebrations throughout Brazil commemorate the events of September 7, 1822, when the Portuguese Prince-Regent Dom Pedro II shouted out "Independência ou Morte!" to his troops assembled along the banks of the Ipiranga river in the province of São Paulo and thus initiated the rebellion that resulted in Portugal relinquishing control of its most important colony in 1823.

The day is marked in cities in town in Brazil with military-themed parades and with Brazilians thronging the country's beaches, lakes and parks. As we type this post here at Flavors of Brazil, we can hear the sounds of military bands parading in the distance, and occasionally the roar of military acrobatic jets entertaining the crowds along Fortaleza's seafront parade route.

Readers of the blog outside Brazil - if you have Brazilian acquaintances or friends living in your country, give them a call today to celebrate the day - all you need to say is "Feliz Sete de Setembro" - pronounced "Fay-leeze Seh-tche Gee Seh-tem-broo". They're very likely to be impressed both with the fact that you know today is a special day and that you speak such excellent Portuguese.

For readers of the blog here in Brazil, we say - Tudo de bom para o feriado. Aproveitem!

Salt Cod (Bacalhau) - Some Buying Tips

We're now well into Lent and only a few weeks away from Easter. Which means it's salt cod (bacalhau) season in Brazil. Long since having moved upmarket from a Lenten food for the poor to a luxurious holiday treat, salt cod is served in abundance throughout the 40 days of Lent, even by Brazilians who are not observant Catholics, or for that matter, Christians at all.

When one walks into a Brazilian supermarket at this time of year there are two things that immediately strike one's senses, reminding you that Easter-season is nigh. Your eyes are struck by the bright multi-colored foil wrappings of giant chocolate Easter eggs suspended overhead, and your nose is hit by the unmistakable aroma of salt cod - fishy and redolent of the sea, yet earthy at the same time.

Because salt cod is an expensive food item these days, there is a wide range of product available at a wide range of prices in most supermarkets. The national chains are always looking for ways to offer a less-expensive alternative for those who cannot afford the best pieces of this dried fish. It's important to know a bit about salt cod when buying it - what the differences are from piece to piece, and whether a particular piece is worth the price or not.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when buying salt cod, whether at Easter or at any other time. They'll help you make sure you're getting the best piece of fish possible for whatever price you are paying.

• Not all salt cod comes from the same species - for that matter not all salt cod is even from cod species. The best salt cod comes from true Atlantic cod (species: Gadus morhua). Other species, such as Ling, Pollock and Zarbo are inferior (in roughly that order).
• If not identified on the packaging, true cod can be identified by the thickness of the flesh, the straightness of the tail of the fillet, and its uniform straw-like color. White-fleshed salt cod isn't true cod. Also, the skin peels easily from the flesh in true cod - use your fingers to try to peel away a small corner.
•  Good salt cod should be quite dry, with no visible moisture. If you can bend a piece in your hands, it's not good quality.
• Good-quality cod is covered by a uniform layer of hardened salt. The salt should be visible to the eye.

Shopping for fish, whether fresh or salted, is a matter of being a discerning customer and knowing the signals that tell you if the piece you're considering purchasing is good or bad. A little bit of knowledge can help you avoid making a mistake - and with current salt cod prices, an expensive mistake.

Carnaval 2011 - The Last Day

Today is the last day of Brazil's annual orgy of celebration, Carnaval. For the past four or five days (or longer, depending on where in Brazil one is celebrating) all the cares of the world have been shoved aside for the celebration of worldly joy that is Carnaval in Brazil. Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, the pentitential season of Lent begins. But until then, Brazilians everywhere - in Brazil and overseas - don't want to hear about cares, woes or problems. The word on everyone's tongue is "alegria", which means joy, pure joy.

Flavors of Brazil will be in Rio de Janeiro throughout the Carnaval season, and in posts to come will try to provide some insight into the celebration. Frankly, however, Carnaval has very little to do with food, and less with gastronomy. Food, during Carnaval at least, is seen only as fuel to keep the body awake, alert and dancing. Drink, on the other hand, is an essential part of what Carnaval's about, and it's mostly beer.

For those who are curious about what Carnaval in Brazil is and isn't (there are many misconceptions about Carnaval), I recommend taking a few minutes to watch the YouTube video embedded below. Taken in Rio de Janeiro's Sambodromo, where for four nights during Carnaval the city's samba schools vie for the honor of being named the best of the year, the video gives a hint, though only a hint, of the flavor of Rio's Carnaval. The video shows the parade of one of the most famous and oldest of Rio's samba schools, Beija Flor. Beija Flor literally means "flower kisser" and is the Portuguese word for the hummingbird.


No matter where in the world you are today, or whether you're celebrating Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Fasching in Germany, Carnivale in Venice, or just another Tuesday in many corners of the world - Flavors of Brazil wishes all it's readers a Feliz Carnaval!

Happy New Year - Feliz Ano Novo

Best wishes for the new year to everyone who visits Flavors of Brazil,on this first day of 2011, or at any other time during the coming 12 months. 2010 was a great year for the blog, with rapidly growing readership numbers, and with increased interest in the blog from many corners of the globe. We've had well over 60,000 page views during the year, and the number of individual visitors is approaching 24,000. Thanks for all your interest and support. We hope that you'll find 2011 to be interesting, informative, and perhaps even a bit provocative on Flavors of Brazil. Happy New Year to you all.

Melhores desejos para o ano novo para todos que visitam Flavors of Brazil/Sabores do Brasil neste primeiro dia de 2011, ou em qualquer outro momento durante os próximos 12 meses. 2010 foi um ano maravilhoso para o blog, com um número crescente de leitores, e com um aumento de interesse no blog a partir de vários cantos do globo. Nós tivemos mais de 60.000 páginas visitadas durante o ano, e o número de visitantes individuais se aproxima de 24.000. Obrigado por todo o seu interesse e apoio. Desejamos que você vai achar 2011 interessante, informativo e talvez até um pouco provocativo aqui em Flavors of Brazil/Sabores do Brasil. Feliz Ano Novo para todos vocês.

Thanksgiving Turkey - Peru do Dia de Ação de Graças

Flavors of Brazil wishes our American readers a very happy "turkey day" today, and a great long weekend.

Although Thanksgiving isn't a holiday that's celebrated in Brazil, most Brazilians are familiar with the day and with the American tradition of eating turkey. (Not to worry, Brazil has plenty of statutory holidays, so the country is not suffering by missing one!) And Brazilians are certainly familiar with the traditional main course for the Thanksgiving feast - roast turkey.

Eating turkey is associated with holidays here in Brazil too, primarily with Christmas (Natal). I would guess that it's the size of a roast turkey that first linked it to large feasts and holiday celebrations, but the connection seems to be universal. Although it's not clear whether turkey was, in fact, served at the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving in Massachusetts, the bird is one of the many culinary gifts of the New World, as it comes originally from Mexico and North America, and was eaten throughout the Americas before the arrival of Europeans in 1492.

The Portuguese word for the turkey is peru (just like the country). In 16th century Portugal, when turkeys were first brought to Europe, there was some confusion as to exactly where in the Americas they originated, and they were named after the Spanish colony of Peru. It's very interesting that the word for this bird in at least three languages, English, French and Portuguese, comes from its supposed country of origin and that none of these languages gets it right.

Portuguese certainly has it wrong with peru. In French, the word is dinde, which is a shortened form of poulet d'inde (meaning "chicken from India"). Wrong again. And of course, the English name, turkey, also points to the wrong country. I'm not a linguistic expert, but I don't think the bird is called "mexico" in any language, which is should be by geographic standards. I don't know if there are other languages in which the common turkey has a toponym, but I'm curious as to other geographical mistakes in naming the animal.

Enjoy your turkey today, or your peru or your dinde or whatever else you choose to call it. And save some leftovers for me.

(PS... I've looked around the internet a bit more since this article was published, and it turns out that in fact other languages have chosen a toponym when naming this bird, and they too get it wrong. In Turkish the word for turkey is hindi and in Hebrew it's hodu. Both of these words mean "India" in the respective tongues.)

RECIPE - Maniçoba

Have you got a week with nothing to do? Or do you have to feed a crowd of 30-35 persons next week? Want to risk poisoning all those guests if you don't follow the recipe properly?

If your answer to those questions is YES, then Flavors of Brazil would like to present for your consideration a dish from the Brazilian state of Pará called Maniçoba.

This dish, which is one of the most famous festival and holiday dishes of Pará is made with the leaves of the cassava plant, or mandioca as it's known in Brazil. Because of the poisonous cyanides in these leaves, the dish requires a week's cooking time, and isn't worth the time or effort to make a small quantity. Thus, even in its home territory, maniçoba is a dish that's generally only consumed at festival and religious celebrations, where the numbers of people make all the effort that goes into cooking maniçoba worth while.

Since main ingredient of maniçoba is 33 lbs (15 kg) of fresh cassava leaves, I'm not worried that someone will read the recipe that follows, rushing it, and kill off their entire neighborhood, extended family or parish. But I think it's such an interesting recipe, and one that has such a long and colorful history, that it deserves a place in this blog.

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RECIPE - Maniçoba
 Prep time: 1 week
Serves 35-40

35 lbs (15 kg) fresh cassava (mandioca) leaves
4.5 lbs (2 kg) lard
4.5 lbs (2 kg) smoked bacon, whole
4.5 lbs (2 kg) pig's feet, salted
4.5 lbs (2 kg)  pig's ears, salted
4.5 lbs (2 kg) pig's tongue, salted
4.5 lbs (2 kg)  pig's tail, salted
4.5 lbs (2 kg) pork loin, salted
4.5 lbs (2 kg)  pork ribs, salted
9 lbs (4 kg) carne de sol
3 lbs (1.5 kg) kielbasa-type sausage
3 lbs (1.5 kg) chorizo sausage
3 lbs (1.5 kg) linguiças sausage
9 lbs (4.5 kg) beef tripe
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Remove stalks and central vein from cassava leaves, then thoroughly wash in cold water. In handfuls, grind the leaves using the finest blade of a meat grinder. You should have approximate 14 kb (6 kgs) of pulped leaves. Put the cassava leaves in a 40-50 quart industrial stockpot, add water to cover, and simmer for 72 hours (3 days). Thoroughly mix 8-12 times a day, making sure that the leaves don't stick to the bottom of the pot. When necessary to avoid drying out, add water to the mixture.

After 3 days, add the lard and the smoked bacon, whole. Continue to cook for 24 hours. On the fourth day, in another large stockpot add all the meats with the exception of the sausages and tripe and cover with cold water. Soak for 24 hours, changing the water several times.

On the fifth day, coarsely chop the tripe, pour boiling water over it to scald it, and let it cool in the water. Remove the salted meats from their soaking water, wash them thoroughly and boil them for 1 hours. Add the salted meats and the tripe to the cassava leaf mixture and cook for another 48 hours (2 days) removing the pot from the heat while sleeping.

On the sixth day, cut all the sausages into thick rounds, then add them to the stockpot. Continue to cook for 24 hours (again removing the pot from the heat while sleeping).

On the seventh day, you can rest, as the maniçoba is ready to serve, with white rice.

Recipe translated and adapted from Cozinha Regional Brazileira by Abril Editora

Happy National Cachaça Day!!

Today, September 13, is the unofficial but increasingly-recognized Brazilian National Cachaça Day (Dia Nacional da Cachaça). The date was chosen because way back in 1661, on September 13, 1661 to be precise, the Portuguese crown authorized the production of cachaça - a distilled liquor made from sugar cane juice. Apparently there had already been many years of clandestine cachaça production in Brazil, and under pressure from producers and consumers, the king of Portugal decided to legalize (and tax) the drink in 1661.

Since that date, uncountable billions, or possibly trillions, of gallons of cachaça have been consumed in Brazil, and in recent years, around the world. Even with a growing export market, however, Brazil manages to drink 99% of its cachaça, sending a mere 1% overseas. Long considered a workingman's drink, cachaça has steadily been working its way upmarket, and most of the growth in the market is in aged and premium cachaças.

Of course, it's impossible to celebrate National  Cachaça Day without toasting it with a caipirinha - THE iconic cachaça cocktail that's Brazil's contribution to the Cocktail Hall of Fame. To honor the 2010 edition of the holiday, noted Brazilian drinks consultant Márcio Silva has divulged his recipe for "The Perfect Caipirinha (A Caipirinha Perfeita). It differs from the classic recipe for a caipirinha (which can be found here on Flavors of Brazil) primarily in the use of simple syrup instead of granular sugar. According to Silva, the use of syrup allows the sweetness of sugar to integrate totally into the drink and makes it easier for the mixologist to control the sweetness of the cocktail.

Here is the recipe for a Perfect Caipirinha (translated and adapted from Folha de S. Paulo)

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RECIPE - Perfect Caipirinha

For the simple syrup:
1 lb (500 gr) granulated white sugar
1 cup cold water

For the caipirinha:
1 large juicy lime
1 1/2 oz (50 ml) good-quality cachaça
cubed ice, broken
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Make the syrup: Bring the water to a boil over medium heat. Stir in the sugar and continue to boil, stirring constantly, until it is totally dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool completely. Put the syrup into a clean bottle or jar and refrigerate. Can be kept up to one month in the refrigerator.

Make the caipirinha: Wash the lime well. Cut in half, then cut each half into four pieces. Put the wedges of lime in a tall glass, then add 2 Tbsp. (20 ml) simple syrup (more or less, to taste). With a pestle, or the handle end of a large wooden spoon, crush the lime wedges, making sure to extract all the juice. Add the cachaça and the chunks of cubed ice. With a long cocktail spoon, mix the drink until all the ingredients are combined and the drink is cooled.

Serve immediately.

(A previous version of this post referred to September 15 as National Cachaça Day in error.)