Minas Gerais - Gastronomic Routes

Even though Italian cooking includes such well-known regional styles of cooking as Neapolitan, Sicilian, Venetian, even Sardinian, most gastronomic historians consider the region of Emilia-Romagna to be the true heartland of traditional Italian gastronomy. Containing such gastronomic hot spots as Parma (with its ham and its cheese), Modena (home of balsamic vinegar) and Italy's food capital, Bologna, Emilia-Romagna is at the same time the cradle of traditional cooking and the location of some of the most daring and avant-garde 21st century Italian gastronomy.

In Brazil, which resembles Italy in the number and variation of its regional cuisines, the interior state of Minas Gerais, located in the south-eastern part of Brazil, holds an analogous position in Brazilian gastronomy to that of Emilia-Romagna in Italian. Not as unique as Bahian cooking with its bold mixture of African and European styles and techniques, nor as strictly-European as the cuisines of the south of Brazil, mineiro (meaning from Minas Gerais) gastronomy is to many people the true essence of Brazilian cooking.

The influences that went into the creation of mineiro cooking are those which define all Brazilian cuisine - European, particularly Portuguese, African and native Indian. In the lush highlands of mountainous Minas Gerais these influences were blended, mashed and mixed into something uniquely new and Brazilian - Minas Gerais was the crucible in which Brazilian cooking was forged.

Even today, Minas Gerais is one of the places in Brazil where food and cooking matters most. From the modern capital Belo Horizonte, through exquisitely beautiful baroque cities like Ouro Preto, Tiradentes and Diamantina, and on to the small villages and farms that dot the landscape, people care about what they eat and they honor the foods that have been a part of their diet for years, even centuries. Local cheeses, long-cooked stews, sweets and desserts whose recipes date back to the convents of medieval Portugal - they all play a part in mineiro gastronomy.

Because so much of what makes mineiro cooking such a marvel comes from small towns and villages throughout the state, we at Flavors of Brazil were thrilled to recently come across a website called Sabores de Minas (Flavors of Minas Gerais) and its 69 different gastronomic routes through the state. Each route concentrates on a particular region or a particular speciality of this enormous state (slightly larger than France). For example, route number 32 concentrates of the baroque cities of the 17th Century mineiro gold rush, number 22 is focused on the relatively-unpopulated north of the state, and number 44 on coffee and sweets. For each route, the website publishes a map and a list of 15-18 suggested stops. A stop might be a farm that produces cheese, it might be a long-established local restaurant, or it might even be the home of a cook whose fame has spread beyond her family to include her whole village. Each stop is described in detail, with personal stories of the cooks and producers involved and each includes a recipe.

The site is a treasure-trove for anyone interested in traditional Brazilian gastronomy, and a powerful inducement to book a flight to Belo Horizonte, grab a rental car and head for the hills in search of the soul of mineiro cooking. And the 700+ recipes are enough to keep any amateur cook happy for months in the kitchen at home.

For most non-Brazilians there is one significant problem with the website - it's in Portuguese only. Although Google will offer to translate the page in most browsers, its translator is not yet sufficiently sophisticated to correctly translate this site. Because of that language difficulty, and because of the importance of mineiro cooking to Brazilian gastronomy, tomorrow  Flavors of Brazil will publish the first of s series of occasional reviews/translations of some of the best of Sabores de Minas. We hope it will open some eyes to the beauty of the state and the quality of its food products and cooking.

A Dish Called Kaol

The counter at Café Palhares

In Belo Horizonte's bustling downtown sits a small diner by the name of Café Palhares. It's a small place, just  twenty seats around a U-shaped counter. Nothing much has changed since the diner was opened in 1938 by brothers Antônio e Nilton Palhares Dini. At lunchtime during the week, the diner's busiest time, a wait for a seat is inevitable, but no one lingers over a meal at Café Palhares, so the wait isn't normally too long. Most of those waiting to eat already know what they're going to order - exactly what most of those who are in the middle of their meal are eating - a dish called Kaol. There's a large sign on the diner's wall that states it quite simply: Ser mineiro é comer um Kaol. Translated into English it means "To be a mineiro (a resident of the state of Minas Gerais) is to eat Kaol.

Kaol doesn't look like a typical Portuguese word. In fact, until a few years ago, the official Portuguese alphabet didn't even have a K. But this dish is definitely Kaol with a K. It was baptized by a noted local bohemian and radical, and frequenter of Café Palhares, named Rômulo Paes. He created an acronym for the ingredients which make up the dish, starting with pre-meal aperitif, cachaça. Because he was a radical bohemian, he substituted K for the initial letter of cachaça, C. Next came A for arroz (rice), O for ovos (eggs) and finally L for lingüiça, a traditional Brazilian sausage. Cachaça, rice, eggs and sausage - Kaol.

Since the dish was first created at Café Palhares and baptized by Rômulo Paes it has become more elaborate, though the name hasn't changed at all. In the 1970s manioc farinha and a side of sauteed kale were added, and in the 1980s the kitchen began to throw on a piece or two of fried pork rind (torresmo). Today, the restaurant allows customers to swap lingüiça for other cuts of meat, such as roast pork, or even fried fish. Traditionalists will have none of that though, and swear by the original dish with its lingüiça.

The shot of cachaça is to be downed in one gulp before the arrival of the plate from the kitchen, but to accompany Kaol, a glass of icy-cold draft beer (chope) is traditional. Most diners don't find room for dessert after a full plate of Kaol, but there are a variety on offer.

The clientele at Café Palhares, to this day, is primarily downtown office workers and shoppers, though the fame of Kaol, and the growing number of gastronomic tourists in Brazil, mean that from time to time non-mineiros make their way into the diner. They may be non-mineiros when they arrive, but by the time they've finished their plate of Kaol, they've become mineiros at heart.

Jericoacoara - A Step Back in Time

The small beachfront town of Jericoacoara (or Jeri as it's most commonly known) is located on the north coast of Ceará, about 200 miles (290 km) from Fortaleza. It's not that far as the crow flies, but even by car or express-bus the trip from the capital to Jeri takes a good part of the day. Why? The reason is that the road to Jeri ends about 12 miles (20 km) from Jeri itself in a place called Jijoca. From there to Jeri you can only  travel by dune buggy or by specially modified open-air minibus - from Jijoca to Jeri the road is nothing more than a path in the sand, first on the dunes, then along the beach. Jeri is not accessible by paved road, nor even gravel road. To travel the 12 miles across the sand to Jeri takes well over an hour.

And when you arrive there, the streets of Jeri are not paved, nor even gravelled either. They're sand as well  - the entire village of Jeri perches on the beach. High heels will do you no good here - to walk on the sand streets of Jeri you need tennis shoes, flipflops, or nothing (barefoot works very well). Jeri is casual and laid-back, at times seeming to be in a time-warp. In Jeri it can still seem like the 60s - the hippies that founded the village are still there in force, it's just that they're now third-generation hippies.

Jericoacoara is in an area of environmental protection, and a road to it will hopefully never be built. It's the village's isolation and beauty that draw the tourists that drive the local economy. Jeri is so isolated that it didn't have electricity until 1989, and even today there are no streetlights at night - just the lanterns and lamps of small shops, bars, restaurants and inns to brighten the darkness a bit.

Today Jeri has sophisticated boutique hotels and gourmet restaurants, but it hasn't lost its hippie past - most of the accommodation in the village is in small inns and pousadas, and most of the restaurants serve basic local fare, with emphasis on seafood. At night, many of the bars have live music and all serve cheap and potent cocktails, most of them based on cachaça and local fruit juices. Local "herbal" intoxicants remain popular too - another vestige of Jeri's hippie era.

Because of its location on the northernmost stretches of Ceará coastline, Jeri is one of the very few places in Brazil where it's possible to see the sun set into the sea. A popular ritual, for locals and visitors alike is to climb the 200 foot high sand dune that dominates the village at about 5 pm and watch the sun set in the sea from the dune's windy heights.

Jericoacoara is a popular weekend get-away for residents of Fortaleza, but because of the travel time involved isn't really worth visiting unless you can afford to spend at least two nights there - any shorter amount of time and you'll spend more time traveling to and from Jeri than you will relaxing and enjoying it.

Our next few posts on Flavors of Brazil will feature a couple of local signature dishes from Jericoacoara. A taste of Jeri, as it were.

The Other Brazil: Minas Gerais

The New York Times Travel Magazine published yesterday an all-Latin American edition of their Travel Magazine. Included in the issue was a very interesting and informative article by Seth Kugel on travel to the historic mining towns of the the Brazilian state called Minas Gerais (English: General Mines). I've travelled to many of the places mentioned in the article, and towns like Ouro Preto and Tiradentes are colonial gems - baroque art and architecture in a stunning mountain landscape. The complete article can be found by clicking here.

Besides art, architecture, history and landscape, Brazilians consider gastronomy to be one of Minas Gerais' gifts to the nation. As a landlocked state, but an incredibly lush and fertile one, Minas Gerais' food is substantial, homey and comforting - based on meats, stews, baking and sweets. It's not sophisticated, it's simple and full of concentrated flavors.

One of the most well-known and well-loved dishes from this state is Kale Mineira (Portuguese: couve mineira). Mineira means "in the style of Minas Gerais" A recipe follows, in the next post.