Municipal Market- São Paulo - Photo by Luiz Castro
The origin of the Brazilian Cuisine
Discovered in 1500 by the Portuguese, inhabited for natives of different ethnical groups, populated by African slaves with multiple origin, invaded by the French and the Dutch, dominated by the Spaniards, hosting waves of immigrants from Italy, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Austria, Japan, Lebanon and most recently Korea, Brazil is a truly melting pot. Melting races and ingredients at the same pace, the Brazilian cuisine is authentic, diversified, rich in flavor, colors and aroma. Brazil also has very well balanced day-to-day meals, composed by rice, beans, raw vegetables and animal protein. With a luxurious environment, spectacular bio diversity, this country carry unique fruit flavors, peculiar fish specimens, outstand cattle and everything a major world food producer has to offer.
Typical Family Sunday Lunch (Almoço) Meal in Brazil - Photo by Luiz Castro
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
Brazilian breakfast is lighter than in U.S., usually Brazilians start with regional fruits and juices, go to a source of pudding (mingau) or fresh home made yogurt (qualhada) and finish with black coffee, milk sugar and some toasted bread. The fruits, juices, pudding, bread and maybe some cake will vary from each season and region, but in general that is the formula.
Brazilians rarely eat lunch (a quick sandwich); the Brazilian lunch is the equivalent of the American dinner. One dish recipes are becoming more popular, especially at weekends but normally regardless of region, the daily lunch will have 4 dishes; rice, beans, salad and some source of animal protein, beef or chicken most commonly and fish, pork or lamb depending of the region. Desserts are very common at lunch time.It is normal to drink one pint beer at lunch time even if it is a business meeting. Fruit juices and guaraná (Amazon rain forest fruit pop soda) are common options.
Beef, rice, fried pastry, egg and yucca flour. Photo by Luiz Castro
Dinner is the most diversified habit in Brazil; some families will have a full meal again, with rice, beans, salad and meat while others would prefer a light meal, with soup, cheese, ham, bread, some source of cake, coffee and milk.
In most of Brazilians States pizza would be acceptable as a meal at dinner time only. At lunch time in São Paulo, most of the pizza places will remain closed.
Around the Table
Brazil's social life revolves around the table, family Sunday lunch, Churrasco parties, Feijoada parties, Caruru celebrations, it is always easy to find a food parade to get in if you have a good network of friends. These parties, commonly with 40-50 guests are the central social point for Brazilians, usualy with music, food parade, beer, caipirinha ( local coktail made with cachaça, a sugar cane liquour) and lots of desserts. Brazilians celebrate almost everything with food, Christmas, New Year, Holy Sunday, Birthdays, soccer matches ( always a good reason), Saint John's, weddings, baptism, and the list goes on and on.
Business around the dinner table is also common, usually Brazilians will spend a lot of time in restaurants while negotiating a contract and a big food parade is expected after the conclusion of the selling process to celebrate the new contract, as a rule the vendor will be responsible for the expenses and alcoholic beverages will not be excluded from. It is highly recommendable that sellers when budgeting for Brazil to pay attention to that, these dinners celebrations are usually expensive.
Regional Roots
Brazil has 26 States and the Federal District, each State has different typical dishes, but we can in a general way divide that in five principal segments, according with the region.
North – Brazilian Native Influence
At the rain forest, because of the big rivers and the Indian native influence the food is heavy in fish dishes,natural amazonic plants, and fruits. An example is the Tacacá, a kind of soup made with jambú leaf (a native plant) and tucupi (a broth made with wild yucca), as well as dry shrimp and small yellow peppers. It must be served extremely hot in deep bowl, Tacacá is not to eat, is to drink, not spoon is required, you take that directly from the bowl. The tucupi has some sort of anesthetic effect, so you can “drink” the hot soup and don’t feel the burning as well the yellow pepper hot spicy effect. Both Manaus and Belem, the forest metropolises have river front markets that are interesting and unique. Ver-o-peso market in Belem has a huge diversity in fruits and grocery articles that rarely a person form other region could ever imagine that exists. The fruits of the Amazonic region are so different that even Brazilians from the south have never seen them in Rio de Janeiro (see slideshow) or São Paulo. Some examples are cupuaçu, buriti, açai, guaraná, and pupunha.
Typical Brazilian Street Cooker - Baiana. Photo by Luiz Castro
Northeast – African Influence
The northeast region has a great diversity of foods; the most known is the African, especially in Bahia State. The other Northeast States have a quite different cuisine, the seashore is green, fertile, and abundant as well as the food, a typical party meal would encompass more the 40 dishes using several local ingredients and unique colorful and aromatic spices (not hot spice), the culinary influences of the area can be traced to a dynamic assortment of cultures: The Dutch, Spanish, Moors, Africans and Indians. Many dishes come with a delicious coconut sauce, and feature corn, yucca, fresh seafood, and native fruits. Grilled meats are also common, especially goat and beef dishes. Inland, in the drought stricken, arid cattle growing and farm lands, foods typically include ingredients like dried beef, rice, beans made at butter sauce, goat charcoal grilled, yucca and corn meal. Sarapatel is an example of African influence in the northeast regional cuisine.
Sarapatel:Pork liver, heart, lung and blood. Photo by Luiz Castro
In Bahia the predominant cuisine has African influence, which evolved from plantation cooks improvising on African, Native, and traditional Portuguese dishes using locally available ingredients.
Typical dishes include vatapá ( a shrimp cream) , seafood moqueca ( stew), and acarajé (a kind of snack made with white beans, onion and fried in palm oil (dendê) which is filled with dried shrimp, red pepper and caruru (mashed okra with ground cashew nut, smoked shrimp, onion, pepper and garlic). Salvador has a ocean front food market that is amazing, boats from a fertile region called Reconcavo Bahiano make a stop there to sell amazing fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, fishes, oysters, crab, shrimp, goat, local cheese, unique spices and much more.
Modelo market in Salvador and São José market in Recife are mandatory touristic points in Bahia and Pernambuco States.
Southeast – The Melting Pot
The Southeast is the locomotive of Brazil, three out of four States are the 1st, 2nd and 3rd economies of Brazil, being São Paulo alone, responsible for 40% of the national GDP. The culinary also varies a lot from State to State.
Espirito Santo is known by its unique seafood steam, called moqueca capixaba made on urucum sauce, a unique red spice, very tasty and aromatic.
Rio de Janeiro is the land of the Feijoada, the most traditional Brazilian dish, prepared wiith black beans, with a variety of salted cured pork and beef products such as salted pork trimmings (ears, tail, feet), bacon, smoked pork ribs, at least two types of smoked sausage and jerked beef (loin and tongue).This stew is best prepared over slow fire in a thick clay pot. The final dish has the beans and meat pieces barely covered by a dark purplish-brown broth. The taste is strong, moderately salty but not spicy, dominated by the flavors of black bean and meat stew. Should be eaten with orange, farofa, rice and bacon fried collar greens.
Churrasco ( Brazilian barbecue).Photo by Luiz Castro
Minas Gerais State Typical Kitchen. Photo by Luiz Castro
Minas Gerais is a culinary world, a typical “mineiro” self service restaurant will have more than 60 different dishes, most of them from pork, beef, chicken and local vegetables, corn and cheese are prevalent and the cheese bread is now a national snack. In Minas Gerais kitchens are rustic, smoked meat, pork and sausage usually get hanged over the stove dropping fat when heated. Traditional stove still use wood as burners producing distinctive flavors. Traditional Minas cuisine normally uses pig fat instead vegetable oil.
Feijoada - The most popular dish in Brazil. Photo by Luiz Castro
São Paulo is the cosmopolite South American metropolis, Italians and Japonese melted with the local “tropero” tradition and almost everything edible that exists everywhere, can be also found in São Paulo. A great culinary adventure is to visit the Municipal Market (see slideshow) , more informally called the Mercadão. The 135,000-square-foot space is packed with fresh fish, ripe cheese and everywhere fruits, you may try jabuticaba, a purplish-black fruit that looks like a giant grape. The market is also famous for pastéis de bacalhau, fried pastry pockets stuffed with dry cod. To better give you a panorama about São Paulo delight a new article is required and will be written in the future.
Dry beef and vegetables. Photo by Luiz Castro
Center-West – The Brazilian Style
Food in center west will vary from fish dishes at the pantanal States of Mato Grosso and South Mato Grosso to native creations at Goias, including chicken with piqui, a local palm orange colored fruit with strong perfume. In Brasilia, the capital, a great diversity of national and international cuisines can also be found. Brasilia has an interesting set of Brazilian regional restaurants like nowhere.
Barreado - Typical from Paraná State. Photo by Luiz CastroSouth – The Gaucho Style
South is the most European region of Brazil, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul are the states that received the largest contingent of immigrants, Germans, Italians, Portuguese ( Azoreans), Polish and Ukrainians came in large numbers.
The most known world wide Brazilian meal is the churrasco, (Brazilian barbecue) and comes from the southern States. Almost every big city in the US has at least one Churrascaria (Brazilian Steak House) the most knew are: Fogo de Chão, Texas de Brazil, Porcão, Brazzas, Boi na Braza and Plataforma in New York. The southern style is a food parade, with several cuts of meet circulating for the salon, pork, lamb, beef, sea food, chicken, chicken hearts, javali, crocodile, and other Brazilian animals grilled to perfection are some of the offered dishes.
Municipal Market - São Paulo, photo by Luiz Castro
Another typical meal from south Brazil is the galeto (young chicken) served with fried polenta, home made pasta and arugula salad, this kind of food received a strong Italian influence and is popular at Santa Felicidade, a gastronomic pole located in Curitiba, Paraná State. Barreado is a famous dish form the southern State of Paraná, the meat is cooked on a underground oven for 14 hours and served with banana and yucca flour.
Cheese Store at São Paulo Municipal Market. Photo by Luiz Castro
Curiosities
To have an idea about how strong is Brazilian diversity, one of the major fast food chains in Brazil is Habbib’s has a Lebanese oriented menu, Habbib's is competing side by side with global corporations like McDonalds, Burger King and Pizza Hut. Habbib’s with its kibes, sfihas, kabobs are in ever corner in São Paulo with a impressive chain of restaurants.
Brazilian churrascarias usually don't serve chickens heart outside of Brazil, some cultures would consider that a very strange food. In Brazil chicken heart is the favorite option between kids.
There are more fish specimens on the Amazon basin than in all oceans together.
Famous Brazilian Cuisine Recipes
Feijoada Completa
Serves six
Ingredients:
800 grams of black beans
250 grams of dried beef (“carne seca”)
250 grams of salted pork ribs
1 pork trotter
1 pork tail (or ear)
100 grams of smoked loin of pork
80 grams of smoked bacon
2 large pork sausages (“paio”)
1 Portuguese sausage
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 soup spoon of olive oil
2 bay leaves
1 orange
Preparation:
The night before, clean the port trotter and tail and soak them in cold water together with the already cleaned pork ribs. In a separate bowl, soak the dried beef cut into pieces. Change the water in each bowl at least four times.
Put the salted meats on the stove in a pan with plenty of water. Boil for 10 minutes, drain off the water, pour in clean water and cook. Use the same procedure for the dried beef, putting it to cook in a separate pan. When the meats are tender, but not shredded, drain off the water and cut the pork ribs into pieces. Set aside.
Cut the “paio” and Portuguese sausage into thick slices, the smoked bacon into small cubes, and the smoked pork into medium-sized cubes.
Place the bans in a large pan with a thick bottom. Add water, the bay leaves, and the orange cut in half, with the inner peel but without the outer peel. After cooking for 45 minutes, add the salted and smoked meats, the dried beef, sausage and “paio.” Leave to cook for 20 more minutes.
Remove two soup ladles of beans from the pan. Chop the onion and garlic finely. Sauté them, without letting the brown, in a skillet in the olive oil. Add the bean paste to the skillet and cook for two minutes. Return the entire mixture to the large pan, mix and taste for salt. Adjust the temperature as necessary and leave everything to cook 20 minutes more or until well cooked. Serve with white rice, sautéed kale, manioc meal. Accompanied by fresh orange slices.
The meats can vary according to individual taste. It is very important that the oily build-up on the surface be skimmed off periodically while cooking.
Food parade. Photo by Luiz Castro
Moqueca Capixaba
Serves 5
Ingredients:
2 pounds of fish (net weight, slices or fillets), preferably sea bass or other firm, white-fleshed fish (in Brazil, namorado is popular)
5 ripe tomatoes, each chopped into 8 pieces 2 medium onions, chopped in large cubes
50 ml of annatto oil (made from 1.5 ounces (50 ml) of olive oil + 1 teaspoon of crushed urucum)
3 chopped garlic cloves
1/2 cup of water
1 pinch of finely minced, fresh dedo de moça pepper or other small, hot chile
1 pinch of black pepper
A few drops of fresh lemon juice
Salt and cilantro to taste
For The Fish Purée:
1 pound (1/2 kg) fish scraps (head, tail and backbone)
1.5 ounces (50 ml) of olive oil
2 garlic cloves
1 bunch of cilantro, parsley and green onion
1/4 green pepper and 1/4 red pepper, roughly chopped
2 roughly-chopped tomatoes, de-seeded
1 onion
1 quart of water
1 pinch each of urucum powder, salt, black pepper and malagueta pepper (or hot chile powder) to taste
Yucca ( manioc) flour to thicken
A few drops of fresh lemon juice
Preparation:
Season the fish with salt, lemon and peppers. In a clay pan, heat the annatto oil and fry the garlic.
Cover the bottom of the pan with the fish slices, add the chopped tomato and onion and pour in the water. Drizzle over a small amount of annatto oil.
Cover and boil over a medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes, making sure that the vegetables remain whole and firm. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and serve the dish while still piping hot.
To Make The Urucum Oil:
Heat the olive oil mixed with annatto seeds in a pan or frying pan, and stir until the oil takes on a reddish tinge.
To Make The Fish Purée:
Season the fish with salt, lemon and black pepper. Fry the garlic in olive oil, then the tomatoes, pepper and onion. When cooked, add the annatto oil.Add the fish and cook for about 10 minutes. Add the water and bunch of cilantro, parsley and green onion. Cook until the liquid is reduced to approximately 1 quart.Strain the mixture, then place back on the heat, and adjust the seasoning with salt and malagueta pepper. When the mixture boils, add sufficient manioc flour so that it attains the consistency of a purée.
Minas Cheese. Photo by Luiz Castro
Garry Jenkins
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A Mouthwatering Knol
This is a very well presented knol. Well done.
I am married to a Brazilian and visit the country as often as possible, usually heading to the northeast and Fortaleza. I am a big fan of Feijoada, the beautiful Picanha steaks they serve in churascerias and Moqueca de Peixe. In my opinion, however, the best food in Brazil is the simple grilled fish served on the beaches. With some casava chips and a cool Antarctica beer. Perfect.
Best wishes, Garry
Anonymous
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Maria Drell de Chicago
Que maravilha! Adorei as fotos, a narrativa, voce fez um trabalho excelente. Se voce puder entrar em contato comigo, seria otimo. Eu estou organizando um festival brasileiro em Chicago e gostaria muito de colocar essa informacao sua no website do Centro Cultural Brasileiro de Chicago.
Maria Drell
mariadrell@brazilian
Heiko Grabolle
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Heiko Grabolle do Brasil
Abraços, Chefe alemão Heiko.
Nana Gyesie
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Come Voce esta?
Being an African, I am glad to see the African influences in Brazilian cuisine. I recently discovered Feijoada and I am hooked. Obrigado for the note.
Cheers,
Nana