INGREDIENTS - Azedinha (Sorrel)

The European herb sorrel, which came to Brazil with Portuguese colonists and which has been enthusiastically adopted by Brazil cooks, is very appropriately named in Portuguese. It's known as azedinha, which can be translated literally as "the little sour one." Anyone who's familiar with the taste of sorrel will know how well that name describes the plant - sorrel's primary taste is a sharp, tangy sourness. (Incidentally, the English name refers to the same characteristic - sorrel derives from an old French word surele, meaning "sour.")

The sour taste of sorrel (Rumex acetosa) is due to the presence of oxalic acid in the plant. In high concentrations, oxalic acid is toxic and can be fatally poisonous, although it would almost be impossible to eat enough sorrel to receive a toxic dose. Spinach also contains oxalic acid, though in a lesser quantity than sorrel. The only food plant that has dangerously high concentrations of this acid is rhubarb and in rhubarb oxalic acid is only found in the leaves of the plant, which are not normally eaten. Rhubarb stalks do not contain the acid. Black tea also has oxalic acid in low concentrations.

Sorrel grows well in most regions of Brazil with the exception of the tropical rain forest zone in the the country's north. It's used most frequently in parts of Brazil where there is a population whose ancestries can be traced back to Europe - to Portugal, Spain or Italy in particular. Sorrel is used to flavor soups stews and sauces, dishes whose flavor can be lifted and freshened by a hint of acid. Adding sorrel to a dish has the same effect as adding a squeeze of lemon or lime juice - it cuts fatty richness and perks up the flavor of the dish's protein component.

In the next post, Flavors of Brazil will publish a Brazilian recipe for grilled salmon with a sorrel sauce.

INGREDIENTS - Dendê Oil (Azeite-de-dendê)

Fruits of the Dendê palm

Back in the earliest days of this blog, in the middle of a recipe post for an Italo-Brazilian-fusion risotto, we published some basic information about an edible oil called dendê that is an essential element of traditional Brazilian cooking, most particularly the African-influenced cuisine of the state of Bahia. Bahian cooking without dendê is unthinkable. It's an almost-omnipresent ingredient there and an essential part of the typical Bahian flavor profile.

Because of its importance to Brazilian gastronomy, and because many of this blog's readers have expressed interest in this shockingly bright orange oil, we thought that dendê deserved a post of its own. And so here it is.

Dendê oil comes from the fruit of the African Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis), native to West Africa in the region from Angola to Gambia. Mature oil palms grow to great heights, up to 60 feet (approx. 20 meters) and produce a brilliant red fruit. It's from the pulp of this fruit that dendê oil is processed. The kernel of the fruit also is a source of oil, but that oil is called palm kernel oil in English and its use is restricted to soaps and cosmetics. The edible oil comes from the pulp.

The African Oil Palm (and naturally dendê oil) arrived in Brazil along with the millions of African slaves which were brought to this country to work the gold mines and on the sugar and cotton plantations. Even today, those areas of Brazil which have a higher black population are likely to consume more dendê, especially in those areas, like Bahia, where African cultural traditions are still vibrant. But dendê is eaten all throughout Brazil, though not always in the quantities that it's eaten in Bahia. It is still a highly-inmportant edible oil in West Africa, its original territory.

Dendê oil and its consumption by humans is a controversial topic among botanists and nutritionists. On the positive side, the bright red-orange color of the oil is due to the presence of high levels of carotenes - alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and lycophene. These phytonutrients are all highly beneficial to humans and have significant anti-oxidant properties. Studies show that dendê has up to 15 times as much beta-carotene as carrots. It is also a source of tocotrienol, part of the vitamin E family.

On the other hand, dendê oil is highly saturated, and the consumption of large quantities of saturated fats has been shown to have deleterious health effects in humans, primarily an increase in cholesterol levels.  Dendê does not contain cholesterol, only animal fats do that, but highly-saturated fats can contribute to increased levels of cholesterol in humans, both LDL ("bad" cholesterol) and HDL ("good" cholesterol).

Because it is a saturated fat, palm oil is a valuable source of edible oil in the processed food industry. Saturated fats do not become rancid quickly and can be heated to high temperatures without burning. Because of this much of the world's supply of palm oil is processed for use in the food industry, and during this processing loses much of its nutritional benefit without losing any of deleterious qualities. Fortunately, as its used in traditional Brazilian cooking, unprocessed dendê oil is desired and in most cases only a small amount of that, so food scientists say that eating dendê the way Brazilians do isn't damaging to one's health.

In traditional Bahian cooking, dendê oil is used as a cooking fat in dishes such as acarajé, the iconic dish of Bahia, and as a flavoring ingredient in many of the most well-known Bahian dishes - xinxim de galinha, various moquecas, bobó de camarão, vatapá and others. As a flavoring ingredient it is most commonly combined with coconut milk, chili peppers and cilantro. It's the combination of these ingredients that for many people make a dish definably Bahian. Dendê oil is also an important ritual food in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé.

Artisanally-produced dendê oil

Because of its distinctive color and flavor, there really are no acceptable substitutes for dendê oil in recipes which call for it. The color can be approximated by the use of annatto oil, but the taste is unique. It can be purchased outside Brazil in markets which cater to Brazilian expatriot communities. It can also be found, often more easily, in market which sell African foods, or which cater to African communities. In most of these shops it will be called simply Palm Oil, or African Palm Oil. It can easily be identified by it's bright color and by the fact that some or all of the oil will be solid at room temperature.

INGREDIENTS - Worcestershire Sauce (molho inglês)

Since at least half of the English-speaking population of the world can't seem to pronounce Worcestershire sauce correctly, can you blame Brazilians for not even trying? I don't. Worcestershire is one of those horrible English words that English-language students around the world love to hate - because there is no visible correspondence between the letters on the page and the pronunciation that comes out of the mouth. And to make matters worse, the correct pronunciation is full of consonant clusters bunched together. There's nary a vowel in sight. So the Brazilians smartly decided to opt out of the whole mess and just call the stuff English sauce (molho inglês). So much simpler, straightforward and easyto pronounce. According to Wikipedia, the Spanish language has done the same thing - Spanish speakers call it salsa inglesa.

Whoever it was who first decided to call it English sauce knew the historical origins of this mixture of vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarind, onion, garlic and "secret" spices. England is home to the original Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce, even though the inspiration for the recipe most probably came from British India during the days of the Raj. Some claim that Worcestershire sauce's ancestry can be traced back as far as the Roman fermented-anchovy sauce called garum, but that link has not been proven.

Molho inglês is a common-enough ingredient in Brazilian cooking, though it's not as commonly used as Worcestershire sauce is in England or Canada. Brazilian cooks use it to spice up and flavor salad dressings, dipping sauces, marinades, stroganoff (estroganofe), and tomato sauces. If Brazilians knew what a Bloody Mary was, they'd probably use it in making one, but since tomato juice, and hence the Bloody Mary, are almost unheard of in Brazil, they don't.

Unfortunately, however, most brands of Brazilian molho inglês are weak imitations of the English original. They are whimpy and merely sweet, lacking the salty, fishy punch of the real thing. I can understand why Brazilian Worcestershire sauce might be sweeter because of the notorious Brazilian sweet tooth, but normally Brazilians don't shy away from strong flavors, so I'm not sure why it is so weak.

Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce is available in a few exclusive gourmet shops here in Brazil , but the cost for the smallest bottle imaginable is well over $20.00. The stuff is delicious, but let's be realistic, it's not like 30-year-old aged balsamic vinegar. If it weren't for the fear of the bottle breaking in my suitcase, I'd be smuggling Worcestershire sauce in my luggage every time I return to Brazil. But the mere thought of all my clothes reeking of vinegar, molasses, anchovies and tamarind has been enough to dissuade me - so far at least.

INGREDIENTS - Banana Flower (Coração de Banana)

Just yesterday, as I walked out to the parking structure behind my apartment in the urban center of Fortaleza I noticed that one of the banana plants that grace the garden was beginning to bear fruit. Hanging from the central core of the plant was a thick bamboo-like stalk. Along the lower portions of the stalk tiny green fingers reached up for light and air, the nascent bananas themselves. And at the lower tip of the stalk hung an elongated dusky-crimson bulb, formed, like an upside-down artichoke, of overlapping leaves. The flower was still in a bud state even though it was quite large - about 8 to 10 inches long. Since an artichoke is merely the bud of a variety of thistle, the resemblance between the two does make sense.

And just like the artichoke and other flower buds such as capers and tiger-lily buds, the banana flower that I spotted is, or will be soon, edible. The banana flower is an important ingredient in many tropical cuisines such as Thai, Indian and not-surprisingly Brazilian. Here in Brazil almost the entire banana plant is employed usefully in the kitchen - the fruit of course, the flower, and the leaves which are used as serving platters or used to wrap foods for steaming.

Although banana flowers are particularly associated with the food of the interior Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, they are appreciated everywhere in Brazil where bananas can grow, which is just about anywhere. A banana plant (large though they are, they are not trees, they are plants) will grow happily in almost any location and in any soil as long as it has plenty of sunshine and water, lots of heat and absolutely no frost. Most agricultural zones and many urban regions of Brazil fit that bill climatically. Everybody in Brazil eats the fruit of the banana, or at least I've never met a Brazilian who didn't, and a lot of them eat the flower as well. In Brazilian Portuguese, there are a lot of names for this part of the plant, most of them regional variations. Sometimes it's called flor de bananeira (banana-plant flower) or flor de banana (banana flower) just like in English, but it's more commonly known as coração de banana (banana heart). In some places it bears the charming name of umbigo de banana, which literally means "banana belly-button."

To prepare a banana flower for eating, the tougher outer leaves are stripped away, just as they are in an artichoke, and only the tender inner leaves are used. Because the outer leaves exude a sticky sap which can stain and blacken clothes and surfaces, it's a good idea to use rubber gloves when preparing the flower. I can personally attest to the importance of this precaution - the sap is super-sticky and WILL NOT wash away. Your fingers will be sticky for hours. LFMF (in Internetese "Learn from my fail.") The tender inner leaves can be eaten raw, and often are, in Thai salads for example. In Brazil the leaves are  normally chopped then cooked and are not traditionally served raw.

The leaves of the banana flower are not sweet, and have a meaty quality which makes them very useful in vegetarian main dishes. In south-east Asia and India they are used as the focus of a number of curries. In Brazil, they're either mixed with meat or substitute for it, often combined with vegetables and seasonings to complete the dish. In tomorrow's post on Flavors of Brazil, we'll publish a recipe which uses this unusual ingredient. Although it's not commonly available in non-tropical regions, I remember seeing banana flowers available once or two in Vietnamese markets in Vancouver, my hometown. If they can be sourced in definitely-non-tropical Canada, they're likely to be available elsewhere, at least in urban areas where there are immigrant communitites from tropical regions. If you happen to eagle-eye a banana flower in an ethnic market - they're unmistakeable - pick one up and try a Brazilian, or a Thai or a Vietnamese recipe at home. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

Three New Products added to Slow Food Brasil's Ark of Taste

The Ark of Taste, just one of the many projects of the international Slow Food movement, is an international catalogue of heritage foods in danger of extinction. Traditional crops, methods of cultivation or production, or wild food sources are identified by Slow Food as food practices threated with extinction and worthy of preservation. Once a food item enters the Ark of Taste Slow Food members work to ensure that the item is nurtured and preserved and that it doesn't disappear in our increasingly homogenous 21st century world.

Flavors of Brazil has previously highlighted some of Slow Food Brasil's entries into the Ark of Taste - the small green fruit called umbu, and the colossal Amazonian fish piracuru. There are also 22 additional products in the Brazilian Ark, including three that were just recently confirmed by Slow Food International upon the request of Slow Food Brasil.

The three new entrants bear the impenetrable names of piracuí, jatobá and maracujá da Caatinga . Faithful readers of this blog and anyone who's been to Brazil is likely to recognize the word maracujá. It's the Portuguese word for passion fruit, but the other two words most likely draw a blank. So what exactly has just been granted access into the Ark of Taste? Let's find out.

piracuí

This is one of the more unusual entries in the entire list of Brazilian Ark of Taste Products. It's a type of flour. What makes it unusual is that the flour is made from fish. Piracuí comes from the Amazon and is a traditional method employed by the residents of the forest, the ribeirinhos, to preserve the bounty of the wet season for use during the long months of the dry season when many of the smaller rivers and streams of the forest dry up.  To make piracuí the ribeirinhos sun-dry small fish which they've netted in the river, and then grind these tiny fish to make the flour.

jatobá

Here we have another flour used by indigenous populations. This time though the flour comes not from fish but from the fruit of an enormous hardwood tree whose habitat is the dry savannah known as the Cerrado. The  tree can grow up to 130 ft (40 m) high and can live for hundreds of years. It is a valuable source of hardwood for furniture making and for flooring, but it's the seeds of its fruit that have earned it a place in the Ark of Taste. These seeds are ground into flour by natives of the Xingu tribal family. The natives use the flour to toast simple cakes and breads over open fires. Jatobá seeds and flour have a strong characteristic aroma which is highly appreciated by the natives, but which many others find extremely unpleasant. Which might explain some of the English-language names for the  tree - stinktoe, stinking toe and old man's toe. It's said though that the taste of the flour is sweet. This combination of strong, offensive odor and sweet taste is something that the  shares with Asian durians.

maracujá da Caatinga

Passion fruit (maracujá in Portuguese) is a native Brazilian species of fruit that has spread around the globe and is appreciated in tropical climates, where it flourishes, and non-tropical climates, where it's a highly valued import. The maracujá da Caatinga is a related species of fruit which grows wild in the region of north-eastern Brazil called the Caatinga. The Caatinga is a harsh, semi-arid landscape that is suitable for raising cattle and goats and very little else. The maracujá da Caatinga often grows spontaneously at the edges of pastures and communal feed ranges and has been loved by local ranchers and farmers for hundreds of years. The fruit of the  is highly flavored, with a strong perfume. Both the taste and the aroma are reminiscent of honey, and the taste of the fruit is denser, sweeter and more acidic than the fruit of the cultivated . Maracujá da Caatinga, like all varieties of this family of fruits, has a tranquilizing and relaxing effect on humans and inhabitants of the Caatinga rely on this property as an aid to sleep.

Like their cousins on the Brasilian Ark of Taste, these three heritage foods are threatened by encroaching populations, loss of habitat and all too frequently, lack of interest in preserving them. Once a food has been identified as a threatened heritage by inclusion in the Ark of Taste, the next step is the implementation of something called a Presidium, an organized development plan to preserve and protect the food. Let's hope that these three very unusual foods move quickly into the shelter provided by a Slow Food Presidium.

Those Exotic, Difficult-to-find Ingredients

As a blog about all things Brazilian in the world of gastronomy and cooking, Flavors of Brazil must deal constantly with the problem that one or more ingredients in an important dish or preparation might be very difficult to find outside Brazil.Flavors of Brazil is written in English, and although about 25% of our page views come from Brazil, the vast majority of hits come from English-speaking countries - the USA, Canada and the UK leading the list.

Consequently, we're often faced with an editorial dilemma when deciding which dish to feature, or what recipe to publish. Should we post a recipe that requires an ingredient that is virtually unobtainable outside Brazil, or should we avoid publishing it so as not to frustrate readers who'd like to try the recipe but can't find the ingredients they need?  For example, many dishes from Bahia require dendê oil, made from a palm tree and not widely available in North America or Europe. You can't make Brazil's famous acarajé without dendê, and Flavors of Brazil couldn't pretend to any sort of completeness without a recipe for acarajé.

Our solution has normally been to publish the recipe, indicate which ingredients might be difficult to find and to suggest substitutes where possible. Where substitution of an ingredient would render the recipe meaningless, we try to suggest possible sources of the ingredient.

All of which brings us to the topic of this post. Just as Flavors of Brazil might make a list of Brazilian ingredients which are hard to find, with suggestions about substitution, one of Brazil's national newspapers, Folha de S. Paulo, this week published an interesting piece on ingredients from other countries and cultures which are difficult or impossible to source in Brazil. Readers of this blog from the USA, from Australia or France, for instance, might be surprised that foods that are absolutely mundane to them and universally available are considered exotic and strange in Brazil.

I remember the first time I finally tracked down fresh celery here in Fortaleza, and served it on a vegetable platter. Almost none of the twenty or so guests at the party knew what it was or recognized the flavor when they sampled it. Celery just doesn't have a place in most Brazilians' kitchens, and its distinctive flavor doesn't contribute to stocks and broths, or to tuna salad, or to vegetable platters in this part of the world.

So, just to amplify this list, and exemplify the notion that exoticism is in the eye of the beholder, here are some ingredients discussed in the piece from Folha de S. Paulo:

• rhubarb
• curry powder
• maple syrup
• buttermilk
• parsnips
• sour cream
• lemons

The next time you're in the produce section of your local market and spot a package of celery, or pick up a tub of cour cream, just think to yourself, "How exotic!"

INGREDIENTS - Torresmo

The ice-cold beer and salty-snack bar culture of Brazil is an important part of that nation's food culture - something any tourist returning from Brazil can tell you, and something that faithful readers of this blog have heard before in a number of posts. Whether the bar be a few rustic tables covered by a palm-thatched roof on a deserted beach in Brazil's northeast, or a concept-laden ultra-chic lounge in Leblon or Jardins, there will be plenty of sub-zero lager beer and crunchy snacks with a high levels of sodium and fat. It's inevitable and unavoidable (even if one might want to avoid it). When Brazilians go to a bar most of them want beer to drink, and most of those beer drinkers want to wash their beer down with something crunchy, fatty and salty.

This combination isn't something the Brazilians invented, or something unique to Brazil. As one of my oldest friends philosophized way back in our university days, at the end of a long afternoon sitting at a bar in Burlington, Washington, contemplating the the free popcorn in front of him, "Where there's beer, there's salt." Absolutely true. Popcorn, unshelled peanuts, potato chips, nachos, fries, onion rings - they all fit the bill.

In Brazil, and particularly in the state of Minas Gerais, the most common bar snack is likely to be something called torresmo. Torresmo is the Portuguese word for pork skin that has been fried at high temperature to melt away the fat, then salted and dried. In other words - at least American words - pork rinds. I say American words because in the UK they're generally known as cracklings or scratchings. This snack, in fact, seems to have a huge number of colorful regional names. In Newfoundland they have a lovely onomatopoeic word for them - scrunchions. In Quebec they've been baptized, colloquially, as oreilles de chrisse - Christ's ears. In Mexico and the US Southwest they're called chicharrón. And in case you'd been wondering, the Hungarians known them as either tepertő or töpörtyű . Personally, when in Budapest, I always call them töpörtyű  - wouldn't you?

Torresmo is part of the Portuguese contribution to Brazilian food culture, with a few seasoning touches contributed by African slaves. Originally, pork skin and the fatty subcutaneous layer beneath it were cooked to melt the fat and obtain lard - the only way that this cooking fat could be obtained. Somewhere, sometime a clever devil decided to sample the crunchy bits of pork skin that remained once the fat had been drained off - probably with a salt shaker in his or her hand - and the torresmo, the crackling or the pork rind was born.

In Brazil, torresmo is primarily considered a snack to eat with drinks - most likely a beer or a shot of cachaça. In mineiro cooking (the cooking of the state of Minas Gerais) torresmo is an essential part of the panoply of dishes that all together constitute feijoada and it's also served with the bean and manioc dish feijão-tropeiro.

For those adventurous enough, or crazy enough to want to make their own torresmo at home, the next post here at Flavors of Brazil will provide a typical Brazilian recipe.

INGREDIENTS - Chayote (Chuchu)

Of all the edible plant families, the Cucurbitaceae clan has to be one of the most varied and also one of the most ubiquitous. The family name itself probably means nothing to 99.99% of the world's population, but there are very few people wandering the earth who haven't eaten one or another of the family members at some time - a cucumber, a cantaloupe, a watermelon, a pumpkin, a zucchini or a honeydew melon.

One member of this family, scientifically known as Sechium edule, has a long history as an important food crop in Meso-American and South America, but it's only within the past decade or so that it has become an established menu item in North America and Europe - excepting in Cajun cuisine where it's always been an integral part of the culinary larder. In Louisiana they call it a mirliton, but most of the rest of North America calls it by its Mexican name, chayote. In the English-speaking Caribbean, it's a christophene and in India it's a chow chow. In Brazil, where it is a common ingredient in salads, stews and mixed vegetable preparations, it's a chuchu.

Chuchu is almost always available in vegetable markets and supermarkets in Brazil, without a definite season and it's always inexpensive. Yesterday, in Fortaleza, I bought some for R$0.75/ kg or about USD$0.20/lb. It's particularly associated in Brazil with the cooking of the northeastern region, but grows almost anywhere in this warm-weather country and is eaten in just about every region.

Chuchu can be cooked like almost any other summer squash, such as zucchini or patty-pan, and benefits from shorter cooking period. The flavor is somewhat bland, but combines well with other ingredients in soups or stews. Its uses in the kitchen, however, aren't restricted to cooked dishes - chuchu can also be eaten raw, and makes a great addition to a fresh salad. It also takes very well to pickling.

The next posts on Flavors of Brazil will include some typical Brazilian recipes that feature this versatile vegetable.

From the Rivers of the Rain Forest - Aviú

The Amazon, the world's largest river by all counts, is in fact not a river but instead a system of rivers. For most of its length, the main stream - one of literally thousands of rivers in the basin - isn't even called the Amazon in Portuguese, it's the Rio Solimões. Only when the Rio Solimões merges with the Rio Negro just below Manaus at the famous Meeting of the Waters is the name Amazon (Amazonas in Portuguese) applied to the river.

Some of the rivers that are tributaries of the main stream are among the greatest rivers on the planet in their own right. The Rio Negro, which flows into the Amazon from the north, is by volume the second largest river on Earth, superceded only by the Amazon itself. Its length exceeds 1500 miles. The longest tributary, the Tocantins, is more than 2250 miles long and it only enters the Amazon when that river has almost reached the sea.

One of the major Amazon tributaries, called the Tapajós - a relatively small tributary at only 1200 miles long - is home to one of the most exotic and interesting ingredients in the Brazilian culinary larder. It's a freshwater micro-shrimp called aviú whose natural habitat is in the shallow quiet reaches of the Tapajós River. The miniscule aviú's size ranges from 1/2 inch (1 cm) to about 1 inch (2 cm) and it has long been a favorite food of local Indian tribes. When caught aviú may be eaten fresh or dried for storage and later consumption. One of the most common ways to eat aviú is in an omelet, and it can be added to rice to provide flavor and protein to that dish.

Clearly, aviú is an ingredient that can only be described as exotic - it's impossible to find outside its geographical boundaries, and the territory which in inhabits is near the South American pole of inaccessability - that is, the geographical point on the entire continent that most challenging to reach due to its remoteness and lack of accessibility.

Needless to say, here at Flavors of Brazil we haven't yet had the opportunity to taste aviú. Though it's on our to-be-tried list, I think it'll be quite some time before I make my way to the headwaters of the Tapajós in search of an elusive aviú omelet.

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

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 - Gizzards (Moela)

When I was a kid, our family was pretty vanilla when it came to the foods that were put on the table - nothing to strange or exotic really. The family's idea of something foreign and sophisticated was lasagne. We ate a lot of meat and potatos (and casseroles!) Certainly no sweetbreads, tripe, or even much in the way of liver. However, from time to time, my mother would serve a dinner in which the main course was sautéed chicken gizzards. Where did that come from? I really don't know but as a kid I loved them. With a chewy, muscular texture, and meaty taste, I thought they were wonderful.

Later, I lost my taste for gizzards, based probably on cultural prejudices against organ meats, I stopped eating them. Offal and awful were synonymous to me. For a long time I didn't give gizzards a second thought. Moving to Brazil, though, has brought gizzards (called moela here) back to mind. They are a favorite food of many Brazilians, and along with chicken hearts, a favorite bar food. While chicken hearts are normally served grilled on a skewer, gizzards in Brazil most often come braised in a sauce and are served with chunks of French bread to sop up the sauce. Sometimes the sauce is spicy, sometimes it is tomatoey and herbal, and sometimes it's just a quick gravy made with the pan juices. But it's almost always delicious.

Served with rounds of icy-cold Brazilian lager beer, and shared, along with the conversation, among friends around the table in a boteco or bar, gizzards make a marvelous light meal. If you've never been a gizzard-eater, or like me had forgotten about them, return them to their rightful place on the plate. You might be very pleasantly surprised.

In the next post on Flavors of Brazil, I'll provide a typical Brazilian recipe for gizzards sparked with a sophisticated, contemporary twist.

INGREDIENTS - Untangling Basil in Brazil (Manjericão and Alfavaca)

If you look in almost any English - Portuguese bilingual dictionary you'll find that the English word "basil" is translated into Portuguese as "manjericão." One multilingual dictionary translates manjericão into a number of languages such as French (basilic), English (basil), Italian (basilico) and German (basilienkraut). However, when I go to my local supermarket here in Fortaleza, or any fruit and vegetable market anywhere in Brazil, the plant that is labelled manjericão is not what I know as basil, or as basilic or as basilico.

Manjericão certainly has many of the same flavor elements that basil does, and the overall taste is quite similar. The appearance of the plant is very different, though. Instead of large, glossy, bright green leaves it has small, velvety leaves that are a somber green in color. I've come to rely on manjericão in many recipes that I use that call for basil. Even when raw basil is included, I've been able to substitute manjericão without changing the overall flavor of the dish. But my culinary curiousity always made me wonder why Brazilian "basil" didn't look like the plant I was used to.

In researching various foods for Flavors of Brazil, I've come to realize that the only wayto make certain that the English word and the Portuguese word  for something refers to the same species is to try to find the scientific name for each and see if they are the same. Doing a bit of internet-digging I discovered that I was right - dictionaries notwithstanding, basil (Ocimum basilicum) and manjericão (Ocimum gratissimum) are not identical. They do belong to the same genus, Ocimum, so they're related, which explains the similarity in taste, but they are not the same thing.

Using the scientific names as a starting point, I thought I'd see if there was a word in Portuguese that correctly translated basil, and one in English that correctly translated manjericão. It turns out that these words do exist. The plant that we know of in English in basil is known in Brazilian Portuguese as alfavaca and in Portugal they call it manjericão-de-folha-larga. I've run across the name alfavaca in Brazilian cookbooks and gastronomy magazines, but have never seen it in supermarkets or markets. I was curious as to what it was but since it wasn't available to me, I didn't bother to try to find out. Now I know. Conversely, the plant called manjericão is called African basil in English, or in Hawaii where it is naturalized, wild basil.

My guess is that these two herbs, with similar tastes, differ in choice of climatic conditions for cultivation. The basil that is familiar to English, French and Italian speakers grows best in Mediterranean climates - hot, dry summers and cooler, sometimes rainy winters. The manjericão that Brazilians prefer would seem to be a tropical variety, cultivated here, in Africa and Hawaii.

All of which is interesting from a botanical and linguistic viewpoint, but perhaps less so from a culinary one, as I see no reason why the two plants are not totally interchangeable for all culinary purposes. The only exception might be in something like an Italian salada caprese, where the bright red tomato, white mozzarella and vivid green basil mimic the colors of the Italian flag. In that case, it would be worth walking past the manjericão in the produce section and search out some true alfavaca.

INGREDIENTS - Origone

A popular food from the southernmost state of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, origone are a form of pressed, dried peaches. Rio Grande do Sul is much less tropical than most of Brazil, lying in the temperate climate zone, so fruits that are cultivated in North America and Europe, like peaches, cherries, apples and grapes, can be grown there and nowhere else in Brazil. In most of Brazil there is not enough of a cool-weather season to generate the period of dormancy that these fruits require. In Rio Grande do Sul, on the other hand, there is a distinct winter season, with occasional snow at higher altitudes, and so temperate-climate fruits flourish.

The culture of Rio Grande do Sul has always been influenced by the culture of its neighboring Spanish-speaking countries, Uruguay and Argentina. To this day, inhabitants of Rio Grande do Sul are called gaúchos, the name given to the cowboys of the pampas throughout southern South America. The Portuguese name for these dried peaches, origone, derives from the Spanish word orejón meaning "big ear." When I was a kid I used to call dried apricots and peaches "dried ears" - the resemblance was clear to me. I guess that I wasn't the only to notice that resemblance.

Origone has a long history in the southern part of Brazil. In early times, drying fruit in the sun was a common and reliable way to preserve the bounty of the harvest for eating later in the year. The gauchos were often away from their homes for much of the year, herding cattle on the treeless expanses of the pampas. They had to carry much of their foodstuffs along with them and origone was light and easy to carry and store. The concentrated sugar and vitamins in these dried fruits also made them a valuable nutritive source when fresh fruits were not an option..

What once was made and eaten out of necessity became a food habit in Rio Grande do Sul, and origone is now considered one of the regions traditional ingredients. Although origone is delicious eaten "as is", it's more often reconstituted by cooking and eaten as a sweet dessert, or part of a savory dish of rice or meat. However it's eaten, it's symbolic of Rio Grande do Sul, and of that state's gaúcho culture.

INGREDIENTS - Mangaba

In Brazil, a native fruit called mangaba is often confused by non-Portuguese speakers with mango (manga in Portuguese) because of the similarity of their names - mangaba/manga. However there is no botanical connection between the two fruits, and culinarily no connection in flavor. The mango is native to the Indian subcontinent and has spread around the world, being cultivated in almost every tropical area. The mangaba (Hancornia speciosa) is native to Brazil and is almost exclusively cultivated there to this day. Although it's an extremely popular fruit in Brazil, particularly in the northeast, it's almost unknown outside the country.

The mangaba fruit is a round yellow-to-red colored ball about the size of a baseball. The interior of the fruit is white with a number of small seeds. When the fruit is ripe, the pulp is so soft it practically melts in the mouth. The flavor is sweet and the fruit is highly perfumed. In the native Tupi-Guarani language which gave the fruit its name mangaba means (straightforwardly) "fruit that is good to eat." Few contemporary Brazilians would beg to differ with their native ancestors.

The tree which produces the mangaba fruit, known as the mangabeira, is related to the plumeria (or frangipani) tree which is known in places like Hawaii, Florida and Mexico for it's beautiful waxy, perfumed flowers. The mangabeira is also cultivated in Brazil for its beautiful red wood, and its latex produces a pink-hued rubber. It is also very useful in apiculture, as honey bees are attracted to its flowers and their nectar.

In Brazil, mangaba is enjoyed fresh, and also is used in the production of juice, ice cream, sweets and conserves, and in fruit wine. In Sergipe, the small northeastern state which produces the bulk of Brazilian mangaba, mangaba-flavored ice cream and pulp concentrates are the most consumed flavors of any fruit. Fresh mangaba is normally only available in the northeastern region of Brazil, as it is very perishable once ripe, but juices, ice creams and frozen pulp are available everywhere in Brazil.

Mangaba juice can be combined with cachaça to make a delicious caipifruta cocktail. Or it can be drunk as a eye-opener juice first thing in the morning. It's a very easy flavor to like, uncomplicated, sweet and delicious. Just one more Flavor of Brazil that requires a journey to Brazil to know - and it's worth the journey.

INGREDIENTS - Papaya (mamão)

Statistically, the most-commonly eaten fruit in Brazil is the banana, with average annual consumption of 75 lbs (35 kgs). I surely wouldn't dispute that number, and the mountainous displays of bananas in every supermarket and in every street market would seem to bear that statistic out. I don't have any figures, but I would guess that the total consumption for the papaya in Brazil isn't far behind. Brazil is without a doubt the world's largest producer of that fruit, and in recent years annual production of papayas has reached a staggering 1.8 million tons. That's a lot of papaya! Papaya is a valuable export crop for Brazil, and a significant percentage of the 1.8 million tons is shipped abroad, but domestic consumption is very high indeed.

The word for papaya in Brazilian Portuguese is mamão, which literally means "large breast" or a bit more vulgarly "big tit." According to etymological dictionaries, this name was given to the fruit because of the resemblance between the shape of a papaya and a human breast. I have a feeling that the name was nostalgically applied by the early Portuguese explorers of Brazil, who were often restricted to all-male company in the early years of colonization.

The fruit itself is a New World species, and botanical paleontologists think that it probably originated in Mexico. It had spread throughout the American tropics, however, long before the arrival of Europeans. It thrives today in almost every tropical area of the world, but only there, as it is highly sensitive to frost. The tree-like plant on which it grows has both male and female individuals, and both are required for fertilization.

mamão formosa

In Brazil, there are two main varieties of papaya - the mamão formosa (beautiful papaya) and the mamão papaia ("papaya" papaya). Both are available year-round, like the other "champion fruit" of Brazil, the banana. The larger of the two, the mamão formosa is elongated and shaped like a rounded-off log. It is green when immature turning golden-red when ripe. It's flesh is a bright reddish-orange, often attaining a vermilion color. It often has a limited number of the papaya's characteristic caviar-like glossy seeds. The mamão papaia is smaller, often capable of being held in the palm of a hand, and much more pear-shaped. It's skin, when ripe, is more yellow than red, and the flesh is a yellowish-orange rather than a reddish one. It often has a much larger percentage of its interior given over to seeds than does the .

Normally the mamão formosa is much cheaper than mamão papaia, at least in my home city of Fortaleza. Compared to North America, where papaya is an exotic and high-priced fruit, all papayas are cheap in Brazil, but the mamão formosa is especially so. For most of the year it's price in the local supermarket is about R$0.80 to $R1.00/kg. That works out to approximately USD $0.50 to $0.60/kg or somewhere between 22 and 27 cents per pound. The mamão papaia is usually about 2.5 or 3 times more expensive, but at that price it's still below a dollar per pound.

mamão papaia

Eating papaya is primarily associated with breakfast in Brazil, and it's as much a part of breakfast as is coffee or bread. I rarely start the day without a large piece of papaya. It keeps well in the fridge for up to a week once it's ripe, and preparing a simple piece of the fruit, with a wedge of lime to sprinkle over, is quick and easy and can be done by the time the water is boiling for the coffee. There are some specific Brazilian recipes for the fruit, however, and the next couple of posts on Flavors of Brazil will feature the papaya. You can find an earlier papaya recipe from this blog by clicking here.

INGREDIENTS - Gilo (Jiló)

These small, green, egg-shaped cousins of the tomato and the eggplant (all members of the Solanaceae family) are a common sight in the markets and supermarkets of Brazil. In English it's known variously as Gilo, Scarlet Eggplant, and in West Africa where it originated, it's often called "garden egg." In Portuguese, they're called jiló. As with so many other foods, it was carried to the New World by slaves being transported to the sugar cane plantations and the gold mines of Brazil.

Whenever I've seen jiló in the market, it's always been a brilliant kelly green, and I assumed that was the mature color of this fruit - it is a fruit, although it's used culinarily as a vegetable, just like it's Solanaceae cousin, the tomato. It turns out, however, as I discovered while researching this piece for Flavors of Brazil, that when mature the jiló is red or yellow. The jiló that is sold commercially is unripe, and thus green. Apparently, Brazilian consumers will not accept a red or yellow jiló, and so by the time these colors appear, jiló has no commercial value.

Its immaturity might explain the primary flavor characteristic of the jiló - bitterness. If you have a taste for bitter food or drink - let's say you LOVE Campari - you're likely to enjoy jiló on the first try. If you don't, it's likely to be an acquired taste, or perhaps a taste you'll never grow to like.

Jiló is particularly associated with the cuisine of the interior Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, and with the traditional foods of descendants of slaves from that region. There is a very large number of Brazilians from Minas Gerais (mineiros) living in the state of Massachusetts, and according the the University of Massachusetts Agriculture Department, jiló can be, and is, grown successfully in Massachusetts. It seems that it can be grown in any region where eggplant cultivation is possible. Seeds are available online from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Jiló can be cooked in any number of ways - stir-fried, oven roasted, gratinéed, a la parmigiana, etc. etc. It can even be made into very nice chips. I'll add some recipes for jiló shortly.

INGREDIENTS - Sweet Potato (Batata-doce)

The lowly sweet potato (batata-doce in Portuguese) is one of the oldest-cultivated foods in the history of the world, and in the area of its origins, the high Andes of Peru, remnants of sweet potatoes have been found that date back over 8000 years. Long before Europeans even dreamed of continents on the other side of the Atlantic, Native Americans passed techniques for cultivating sweet potatoes along trade routes between the heights of the Andes and the tropical forests of Brazil, and the sweet potato became a primary nutritional source for many native populations in the areas that today constitute Brazil. It also spread elsewhere in the New World, including the rest of South America and throughout the Caribbean islands, which is where Columbus was introduced to this tuber. The Spanish took the local Taino name for this plant, batata, into their own language, and later applied that name to another non-related tuber, the common potato, thus engendering linguistic confusion that exists to this day. To make linguistic matters worse, when the yellow-fleshed variety of the sweet potato was introduced into the southern sections of the United States, producers and shippers chose to differentiate it from the original white-fleshed variety by calling it "yam", which is the name of an entirely different tuber of African origin. In fact, the tubers that are sold as yams in the USA and Canada are actually yellow-fleshed sweet potatoes and are not yams at all. Because of this USDA regulations require that the label "yam" always be accompanied by the words "sweet potato", although this is often disregarded in shops and markets, at least in my personal experience.

In most of Brazil, the yellow-fleshed sweet potato, the one that is mislabeled yam in the USA and Canada, doesn't appear at all in markets and supermarkets. The sweet potatoes I've seen in this country are invariably purple skinned and with a greenish white flesh. Yams (inhame) are also eaten in Brazil, having been brought from Africa with slave populations, but there's none of the confusion that exists in English between these two tubers.

Sweet potatoes are highly nutritious, and a valuable addition to the Brazilian diet. In 1992, the Center for Science in the Public Interest compared the nutritional value of sweet potatoes to a number of other vegetables. They looked at fiber content, complex carbohydrates, protein, vitamins A and C, iron and calcium, and the sweet potato scored highest of all the vegetables studied, with a score of 184. The standard score, 100, represented the nutritional value of the common potato.

In traditional Brazilian cooking, the sweet potato is served in many ways and in many dishes. It can be simply boiled or mashed, it can be roasted, it can be added to soups and stews, and as in the southern US (sweet potato pie) it can be an ingredient in desserts. The sweet potato is an essential ingredient in many dishes that bear African influence, as the slaves who cooked in the great houses and shanties of sugar-cane plantations arrived in Brazil already familiar with the yam, which can be used in very similar ways.

Today, in Brazil, the sweet potato is enjoying a bit of a renaissance. Long considered a low-class and low-interest vegetable, batata-doce dishes are coming out of some of the most creative and inventive restaurant kitchens in the land. The next few posts here on Flavors of Brazil will feature a couple of the many faces of this delicious and extremely-nutritious tuber.

INGREDIENTS - Buriti, Another Superfruit from the Amazon

Anyone who cares about environmental issues and who has read anything about the environmental threat to our planet that the appearance of Homo sapiens has engendered knows that one of most essential environments, and one of the most threatened, is the tropical rain forest. The largest of these, the Amazonian forest, is found mostly in Brazil though other South American countries share in it. This environment is vital to our survival as a species because of its ability to counteract some of the worst of the causes of climate change, but is also important as a stronghold of biological diversity.

In previous posts, Flavors of Brazil has talked about some of the food products of this regions, principally fruits such as açaí and guaraná which have important cosmetic and medicinal properties in addition to their culinary importance. Such fruits, which have valuable nutritional properties, are sometimes known as "superfruits" for the multitude of beneficial properties they possess. Outside Brazil, the two fruits mentioned above are the most well known and have become nutritional buzzwords in North America and Europe.

In the same rain forest where açaí and guaraná grow there is another species of palm tree, the Mauritia flexuosa, which provides a large variety of economically, culturally and nutritionally valuable products, but which is much less known outside Brazil. It's English name is moriche palm, but it Brazil it's called buriti. This beautiful palm tree grows in swampy and flooded areas in the rain forest, and it is the source of numerous useful products:

1. The fruit of the tree. Rich in vitamins A and C with high levels of calcium, iron and protein, buriti fruit is traditionally eaten fresh, but is also turned into sweets and juices, flavors popsicles and ice cream, cooked in desserts, and is an important source of animal nutrition.
2. Oil extracted from the fruit. This oil is rich in carotene, and is used in traditional medicine as a vermifuge, to encourage healing of wounds and burns, as a source of physical energy, to tan and soften leather, and as a cosmetic, providing color and aroma to a number of creams, shampoos, and soaps. There is also anecdotal evidence that it has sun-blocking properties.
3. Palmito (hearts of palm). The buriti palm can be harvested at a young age and the growth point eaten as hearts of palm.
4. Wood. The tall tree is a good source of high-quality lumber.
4. Fibers from the fronds. These are used to make ropes, thatched roofs, hammocks, mats, baskets, toys and other artisanal products.

The fruit, which is also called buriti, is the seed of this palm and in the swampy environment in which the tree grows has the valuable property of floating, thus allowing the tree to propagate. It resembles a scaly pine-cone, and when the scales are peeled away a bright-yellow flesh is revealed. This flesh surround a hard nut, the actual seed of the plant. Sweet and creamy, with a distinctive taste and aroma, it is this flesh which flavors such a wide spectrum of foods and drinks.

In Fortaleza, my Brazilian hometown, I've never seen fresh buriti at the markets. I only know the flavor through jams and preserves, and though my personal favorite, buriti ice cream. My local ice cream store, located on the city's seafront promenade, has many, many flavors of ice cream. It's always a difficult choice for me to make when deciding on which flavor to order, but more often than not, I go back to buriti. I should probably try something new and untested, but since buriti is  delicious, AND good for you, why not?

Exotic is in the Eye of the Beholder

Even though I've been living for two years in Brazil, and had been visiting it for many years previously as a tourist, I'm still running across foods and cooking techniques that make me think, "Wow, that's something I've never seen before," or "That's really strange looking (or tasting)." These exotic ingredients are one of the things that keep writing this blog so much fun - researching what they are, how they are used, and where they came from.

This past weekend, I learned a lesson about what is or isn't exotic. It's not that things in one location or another are more or less exotic, it's just that they are more or less different from what one already knows from previous experience. One person's exotic is another's "oh no, not this again!"

On Saturday night, I had a group of Brazilian friends over for appetizers and drinks, a way of entertaining that's very popular here in Brazil. I often try to make dishes that my guests might not be familiar with, as I know that they can easily get Brazilian cooking anywhere, but some other styles of cooking are not really well known here. In preparation for the party, I visited Fortaleza's best greengrocers, called Mercadinho Japonês . It does sell Asian foods but is more of a generalized store for fruits and vegetables. I find it to have the best quality and selection in the city, and I can often find vegetables that aren't available in local supermarkets. I had decided to make a plate of raw vegetables with dips, and at the store I found a nice variety of them.

I prepared the dish when I got home, and had it on the dining table when the guests arrived. I was standing at the table when the first few guests began to sample the vegetables, and was slightly surprised when they asked me what some of the vegetables were, as they had never seen them. I of course knew the names in English but couldn't come up quickly with the names in Portuguese, so I availed myself of my bi-lingual dictionary to find the proper way to translate them into Portuguese. The response was "Oh! I've heard of these (or read about these) but have neven seen them before. I'll have to try them."

And what were these vegetables that my guests found so exotic and strange? Nothing more than these vegetables which are so common in North America that they might be considered boring or "done to death."

The radishes and celery were the talk of the party, and throughout the night guests were discussing them and comparing them to locally-available veggies. Most of the guests seemed to love most of these vegetables, though a few found their flavor to be strong and very assertive.

It just goes to show that anything can be exotic when it's out of its normal geographical range. An interesting lesson to remember.

PS. I forgot to mention the Portuguese terms I discovered for these two vegetables - celery is known as either aipo or salsão and radishes are called rabanetes.