RECIPE - Top-hat Rice with Curly Parma Ham (Arroz de Cartola com Pixaim de Parma)

To top off Flavors of Brazil's Rice Week, we thought we'd finish with this "Top Hat" recipe from noted Brazilian chef Madalena Albuquerque who works out of Recife's Just Madá restaurant. So far these week we've concentrated on traditional Brazilian recipes featuring rice, but it's not just in such recipes that one finds rice featured - contemporary re-imaginings and new creations coming from Brazilian chefs also highlight the importance of rice in Brazil's diet.

This recipe takes as its starting point a traditional Brazilian dessert called cartola (the word means top hat) whose main ingredients are plantain bananas, cheese and cinnamon. In this recipe these ingredients are mixed with rice. Thes rice is then plated with a cilantro confit and topped with crispy slivers of Parma cheese to create a startlingly non-dessert, decidedly savory, cartola.
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RECIPE - Top-hat Rice with Curly Parma Ham (Arroz de Cartola com Pixaim de Parma)
Serves 4

For the curly ham
1/2 lb (200 grams) thinly sliced Parma ham, cut into chiffonade

For the cilantro confit
1 small bunch cilantro, leaves only
1 small bunch green onion, green part only
1 clove garlic, finely minced
Extra-virgin olive oil
salt to taste


For the broth
2 cups (1 liter) water
2 medium onions
2 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
1 stick cinnamon, about 1 in (2 cm) long
For the rice
1 cup (200 gr) white long-grain rice
6 oz mozzarella or Monterey Jack cheese, cut into small cubes
1/3 cup cachaça
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
2 medium onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 plaintain, not overly ripe, cut into small cubes
powdered cinnamon to taste
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To prepare the ham:
Heat an oven to 350F (180C). Place the shredded ham on a cookie sheet, separating the shreds as much as possible and cook for about 20 minutes, or until the ham is browned, crispy and curly. Let cool on cookie sheet and reserve

To prepare the cilantro confit:
Mix all the ingredients in a medium mixing bowl, using as much olive oil as desired to moisten the confit. Reserve.


To prepare the rice:
First, in a saucepan or stockpot combine the ingredients for the broth, bring quickly to the boil, reduce heat and reserve, keeping at the simmering point. In another saucepan, heat the oil, then add the chopped onion and garlic and saute briefly or until the onion is transparent but not browned. Stir in the rice and continue to saute until the rice becomes mostly transparent. Add the cachaça and continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the cachaça evaporates. Add half of the broth, stir to mix completely and bring to the boil. Continue to cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat, until all the broth is absorbed, then add more broth, about 1/2 cup at a time, making sure that the broth is absorbed before adding more. When most of the broth has been added, check for doneness of the rice - add more broth only if necessary. Stir in the cubes of cheese and plaintain and the cinnamon stick. Remove from heat, cover the pan and let stand for about 5 minutes. Remove the cinnamon stick and reserve.

To plate:
In each of four deep soup plates, spread one quarter of the confit on the bottom, then mound a quarter of the rice in the centre of the plate. Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon if desired, then top with the crispy ham. Serve immediately.

Recipe translated and adapted from Prazeres da Mesa magazine.

RECIPE - Rice with Carrot and Cashew Nuts (Arroz com Cenoura e Castanha)

Rice Week races to its conclusion...

Most of the time Brazilians are quite content to eat a portion of plain boiled white rice with their mid-day meal (for Brazilians the idea of eating rice at night is rather strange). But sometimes the rice that accompanies their beans and beef or chicken is tarted up a bit - flavored with chopped or shredded vegetables, fruits or nuts. The idea is a bit like the pilafs and pullaos that are found in the great crescent from India, through Iran and Iraq and on to the Levant - the vegetables and seasoning ingredients are briefly sauteed, then the raw grains of rice are fried for a short time and finally the rice is steam-cooked in broth.

The flavor is richer and more complex than plain rice, and the nutritional profile is improved by the addition of vegetables. Vegetables that are commonly mixed with rice and treated this way are kale, broccoli, onions and, in this recipe from the tiny northeastern state of Alagoas, shredded carrots. And to make the dish even more party-fancy, cashew nuts are tossed in to provide additional crunch and a nice flavor boost.

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RECIPE - Rice with Carrot and Cashew Nuts (Arroz com Cenoura e Castanha)
Serves 8

5 cups light chicken or vegetable broth (can use water if desired)
2 Tbsp neutral vegetable oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 cup shredded or julienned carrot
2 cups long-grain white rice
1 cup roasted, unsalted cashew nuts
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Heat the broth until simmering. Reserve at simmer point.

In a large saucepan with a cover heat the oil over medium-high heat and saute the chopped onion until it's transparent but not browned. Add the rice and the shredded carrot and cook, stirring constantly just until all the rice is coated with oil and the grains are beginning to turn transparent. Stir in the cashew nuts, then add the 5 cups of hot broth.

Let the broth come to a boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover the pan tightly and cook for 10-15 minutes, or until all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender. Remove from heat, leave covered and let stand for 5 minutes.

Put the rice in a decorative serving bowl, fluff with two forks and serve immediately.

RECIPE - Rice with Crabmeat (Arroz de Caranguejo)

Moving right along with Flavors of Brazil's Rice Week...

If one thought about how to categorize the many thousands of Brazilian rice recipes (which one has been doing here at the blog) it seems that they might be grouped into four basic categories. First, there are the recipes for making white rice itself with only a small amount of other ingredients to season the grain, if any. Next would be the side-dish combinations of rice plus vegetables or beans. Third would be the richer, more complex main dishes which combine rice with meat or seafood, often with vegetables as well. And finally, sweet rices dishes and desserts, like the rice pudding featured yesterday on Flavors of Brazil.

Today's recipe for rice with crabmeat is a good example of the third category above - a mixture of rice, picked-over fresh crabmeat and a number of vegetables. It comes from the northeastern Brazilian state of Maranhão and is just one of many recipes from that state that combine rice with the bounty of the sea.

This dish, and its many cousins, are similar to Spanish paellas with their combination of rice, seafood, bell peppers, tomatoes etc., but differ from paella in that the rice is pre-cooked separately and then combined with the other ingredients in the final stages of the preparation. In Spanish paellas the rice and other ingredients are all cooked at the same time over an open flame, resulting in a more risotto-like consistency.

Feel free to play around with recipes like this one - Brazilian cooks do. If you can't get your hands on crabmeat (or can't afford it when you find it) you can substitute all kinds of other seafoods - small shrimps, clams or mussels, rings of squid - all are perfectly acceptable substitutes.

This dish is rich and satisfying without being overwhelmingly so, and with a green salad makes a great light supper or weekend lunch.
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RECIPE - Rice with Crabmeat (Arroz de Caranguejo)
Serves 4

2 cups picked-over fresh crabmeat (can substitute equal quantity canned crab or any other seafood)
3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup finely-chopped onion
1/2 cup finely-diced red or green bell pepper (or a combination)
1/2 cup tomato, peeled, seeded and finely chopped
juice of one lime
salt to taste
4 cups cooked white rice (long-grain is best)
2 Tbsp finely-chopped cilantro
2 Tbsp finely-chopped green onion (green part only)
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Rinse the crabmeat or other seafood well in fresh running water. Drain and reserve.

In a large saucepan heat the oil over medium-high heat, then add the chopped onion, bell pepper and tomato. Cook for a few minutes or until the onion is softened and transparent, the peppers are softened and the tomato begins to break up. Reduce the heat to medium, then add the crabmeat and the lime juice. Cook for another minute or so, or until the crabmeat is heated through. Season for salt.

Reduce the heat to medium-low and stir in the rice, mixing well to combine all the ingredients. Cook, stirring constantly until the rice is hot. Remove from the heat, mix in the chopped cilantro and green onion and serve immediately in a decorative serving bowl or casserole.

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

RECIPE - Rice Pudding (Arroz Doce)

To kick off the recipe posts for Flavors of Brazil's Rice Week celebration, we thought it might be fun to start with the dessert course and work our way backwards. We've already published lots of rice recipes on the blog, but up to now they've all been for savory rice dishes. The use of sweetened rice as a dessert isn't unique to Brazilian cuisine of course - for example American and British cuisines are famous for their good old-fashioned boarding school rice puddings, which seem to be one of those dishes that people either love or hate, and in Thailand they make a wonderful dessert out of black rice cooked in coconut milk and served with cubes of fresh mango. Brazilian traditional cooking, particularly home cooking, has numerous variations on the basic dessert rice formula of rice, sugar, dairy and (optionally) eggs.

This recipe, simply named arroz doce or sweet rice is from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul and is clearly part of the Portuguese heritage in Brazilian cuisine. Hallmarks are the presence of egg yolks and the high level of sweetness - these are common traits in Portuguese sweet-baking traditions and are found in most recipes inherited from convent-bakeries in the old country. The use of sweetened condensed milk marks it as a Brazilian recipe.
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RECIPE - Rice Pudding (Arroz Doce)
Serves 4

1 cup long-grain white rice
2 cups water
1/2 tsp salt
1tsp butter
1 quart (1 liter) milk
1 can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)
2 Tbsp granulated white sugar
grated peel of 1/2 lime
3 egg yolks
powdered cinnamon to taste
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In a thick-bottomed sauce pan, soak the rice in 2 cups cold water for 30 minutes. Add the salt and butter and heat over medium-low heat until the water just boils. Continue to cook the rice until enough water is absorbed to just reach the level of the rice in the pan.

Add the milk, the sweetened condensed milk, the sugar, the grated lime peel, and cinnamon to taste. Stir well to mix and continue to cook over low heat for about 20 minutes, or until the rice absorbs almost all of the milk and the mixture has a creamy consistency.

Place four serving spoonsful of rice in a medium bowl and add the yolk, one by one, mixing each in well before adding the next. Return this mixture to the pan and cook the dish for 10 more minutes.

Remove from heat, transfer the pudding to a serving bowl or dish and let cool completely. Once cooled, you can serve this immediately at room temperature, or cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate it if you wish to serve it cold. If desired, you can sprinkle additional powdered cinnamon on the dish just before serving.

Brazil as a Rice-Producing Nation - Part 2

If Discovery Channel can have a Shark Week (about one out of every five weeks, it seems) then Flavors of Brazil can certainly have a Rice Week, which is what this week appears to be turning out to be here on the blog. Rice is such an essential and central part of Brazilian food culture that it deserves detailed coverage - and lots of recipes to showcase how many different ways rice is eaten in Brazil.

In the first part of this "rice saga", published yesterday, we detailed where Brazil fits in as part of worldwide rice cultivation and consumption patterns. There are places on Earth where the population consumes more rice than Brazilians do, and there are many more where the population consumes much less. On a per capita basis, Brazilians are right in the middle in terms of rice consumption. What makes the Brazilian rice market so large, however, is the sheer size of Brazil's population. Brazil is the fifth most-populous nation in the world, with the current estimated population of just over 194 million. It is outranked only by China, India, the United States and Indonesia in terms of population. So if you take the estimated per capita consumption of 45 kgs (100 lbs) and multiply that by 200 million you've got a lot of rice.

Irrigated rice field - Rio Grande do Sul

Where is most of this rice grown? Although rice requires warm weather and adequate water to grow, large portions of Brazil are not suitable for rice cultivation. Rice cannot be cultivated in the Amazonian rain forest which covers more than half of Brazilian territory. Because of agricultural suitability, historical patterns of habitation and present-day economics rice cultivation is concentrated today in two Brazilian regions. The most important region is Brazil's far south - the two southern-most states in the country, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, where about 54% of Brazil's rice comes from. The second region is in the state of Mato Grosso, in the the Center-West Region, where about 15% of the nation's rice is grown. The balance of the crop comes from a number of regions in the South-east and North-east of the country.

Non-irrigated rice field - Mato Grosso

The two main regions for cultivating rice use very different cultivating techniques to grow rice. In the South, rice is grown on older, well-established and irrigated lands. In the Center-West, by contrast, rice is grown on non-irrigated, newly-cleared land where rice is used to prepare the land for soy and cotton production. Rice production, therefore, is much more stable in the traditional rice-growing regions in the South, where rice has a long history of cultivation and farmers have a greater investment in growing rice specifically, because of the infrastructure required for irrigation.

Ecologists and environmentalists point out that the Southern rice crop is more sustainable than the crop from the Center-West. In the Center-West rice farmers need newly-cleared land for their crop, which means that deforestation is required. In the South, rice fields have long been established and there is no present-day deforestation occurring. Unfortunately, with the way rice is marketed in Brazil, it's virtually impossible to tell where the rice one buys in the supermarket comes from. Perhaps as consumers become more demanding in terms of food security and environmental impact some smart marketer might be able to sell sustainably grown rice, even at a premium. But the Brazilian market isn't yet at that point.

Of the total rice crop in Brazil 99% is long-grain rice and only 1% short-grain. Although whole-grain (brown) rice is available in most supermarkets, it's little seen in restaurants or in home cupboards and is consumed only by a very small percentage of the population. For nearly all Brazilians their daily rice is white and long-grain. Because the daily consumption of rice is such an integral part of Brazilian eating patterns, it will probably be some time before brown rice has wide acceptance.

Starting tomorrow,  Flavors of Brazil will continue its Rice Week with some typical Brazilian recipes for this grain.

Brazil as a Rice-Producing Nation - Part 1

Flavors of Brazil is full of recipes that include rice - not surprising at all, since most Brazilians eat the grain daily and have done so since Portuguese colonial times. Rice has a role in every regional cuisine in Brazil and is eaten across all the economic and social strata of Brazilian society - the maid in an industrial magnate's villa eats her own rice after serving it to her employer and his family, the middle-class working mother eats rice during her lunch break at work while her children eat it in a school lunch program and the urban poor who inhabit the slums of Brazil's big cities often eat it and nothing else besides beans for days at a time.

All added up, that's a lot of rice. Millions of tons of it every year. Recent statistics from UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development ) tell an interesting story about the cultivation and consumption of rice in Brazil and around the world. Brazil is the ninth-largest rice producing nation in the world, and the largest producer outside the traditional West and East Asian "rice bowl", where 90% of the world's crop is planted. Brazil's total production in 2009-2010 was 10,198,900 metric tonnes which means it produced just under 2% of the world's rice crop. By way of comparison, China's crop, the world's largest, was 166,417,000 metric tonnes, accounting for 32.7% of the world's crop. Brazil is the only non-Asian country to feature in the top-ten list of rice producing countries. The amount of rice grown in the USA places it just outside the top-ten list.

These statistics show that Brazil is a significant producer of rice, but you have to look elsewhere, at statistics of per capita consumption, to get an idea of the importance of rice to the Brazilian diet. The data provided by UNCTAD divides the world into three rice consumption models, each with vastly differing numbers for per capita consumption. The first model is called  the Asian model, and in this group of countries typical annual consumption of rice, per capita, is over 80 kgs (or 175 lbs). In this group you find China with per capita consumption of 90 kgs (218 lbs), Indonesia with 150 kgs (330 lbs) and world-leader Myanmar with a staggering 200 kgs (440 lbs) annual per capita consumption. Brazil's per capita consumption is far lower, and the Brazilian model is called the Sub-tropical model by UNCTAD. Nations in this group are mostly Latin-American and African and annual consumption in the group is between 30 and 60 kilos. According to UNCTAD Brazilian consumption is 45 kgs (just about 100 lbs) annually per person, putting it in the mid-range of this group. Other examples of the Sub-tropical model are Colombia with annual consumption of 40 kgs (88 lbs) and the Ivory Coast with 60 kgs (132 lbs). The third UNCTAD model is called the Western model, and in this group annual per capita consumption is under 10 kgs (22 lbs) per year. In this group you find nations such as the USA, where people annually eat 9 kgs (20 lbs) and France, where only 4 kgs (9 lbs) of rice is consumed. The range between the models and between food cultures is colossal - residents of Myanmar, on average, eat 50 times as much rice as the French.

If you mathematically compare the size of the Brazil's annual rice crop with its annual consumption, it quickly becomes clear that Brazil doesn't produce enough rice to meet its domestic needs. About 10% of the rice consumed in Brazil every year is imported, mostly from other Latin American countries and from the USA. Today Uruguay and Argentina together supply about 85% of Brazil's imported rice. Brazil imports virtually no Asian rice, with the exception of specialty rices such as sushi rice from Japan. Although as recently as the 1980s Brazil as a rice-exporting nation, it is now firmly in the the rice-importing group of countries and accounts for 5% of total world imports.

In the next post onFlavors of Brazil, we'll look at Brazilian rice production - where it is produced, what types of cultivation models exist and what kind of rice in grown. Then we'll get back to the more culinary side of Brazilian rice, with a bunch of Brazilian recipes featuring the country's most important grain.

FILM - The Mineiro and His Cheese (O mineiro e o queijo)

 From O mineiro e o queijo

A new documentary film by Brazilian filmmaker Helvécio Ratton opened yesterday (Sep. 30) in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, and in São Paulo. The film, entitled O mineiro e o queijo,  takes as his subject the plight of artisanal cheesemakers in the state of Minas Gerais (mineiro means someone from Minas Gerais). A centuries-old tradition of cheesemaking is in danger of extinction not because there's no market for these cheeses (there is), but because producers are forbidden by law to sell their cheese to the majority of their potential customers. Due to draconian and outdated laws dating from the 1950s forbidding the interstate shipment of raw milk cheeses in Brazil, cheesemakers cannot legally ship or sell their cheeses in the largest markets in the country.

Ratton is a mineiro himself, from a region of traditional cheesemaking in Minas Gerais, and for him these raw milk cheeses are not only economically important to an impoverished region, but are also an integral part of Minas Gerais' cultural identity. In an interview with the São Paulo newspaper Folha de S. Paulo during the week of the film's premiere, Ratton recalls childhood visits with his mother to dairy farms near his home. During these visits, sampling and buying cheeses with him mother, he learned to love cheese and to appreciate its infinite varieties. While filming his documentary, he revisited many farms in the same region and in other cheesemaking regions. He interviewed cheesemakers and dairy farmers, and the interviews make up the bulk of his film.

Ratton says that these cheesemakers consider themselves guardians of a way of making cheese that dates back hundreds of years and that many of them are afraid they will be be the last generation to know how to produce cheese the way it's always been done. One of the cheesemakers told him, "For me making cheese is an honor." In their desperation to access forbidden markets outside the state of Minas Gerais, some cheesemakers have gone underground and clandestinely carry their cheese to markets in other states.

When he was asked why he made the film Ratton replied that he wanted his film to inform and to incentivize the public. First, to inform the public what the situation is for these traditional cheesemakers and for their product, and second to ask the public to think whether the current situation is justified, and if it isn't to ask them what they might do to rectify it.

The situation of these cheesemakers in Minas Gerais is not unique to Brazil - the same restrictions on interstate and interprovincial shipment of raw milk cheeses exist in the USA and Canada, and there are restrictions and limitations in the EU as well. There is a legitimate health concern with the use of unpasteurized milk in any product, and therefore there is a legitimate government interest in protecting public health. But when laws are enacted that in truth merely protect the large agri-business dairy companies and their markets, what is lost is a decent livelihood for farmers and cheese producers as well as traditional, safe and delicious cheeses for consumers. This film highlights the problems in a fair and unpolemical way.