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ovos-de-codorna

Ovos de Codorna (Quails’ Eggs)

Before I get going I just want to acknowledge an uncertainty that I’m sure you English teachers out there can help me with. I feel instinctively that it’s OK to write “quails eggs”, but part me feels that it should have an apostrophe, like this: quails’ eggs. You know, eggs belonging to multiple quails. But then I’m not really talking about possession here, it’s more like “eggs of quails” than “I took the quails’ eggs”. Help me out here people! Anyway, until I hear differently I’m going to go sans apostrophe – let’s move on!

In Portuguese, the word for quail (the bird, not the verb) is Codorna. As I’m sure you all know, these tiny little birds lay tiny little eggs.

ovos-de-codorna

Pretty aren’t they?

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cassoulet

Pig Parts and Feijoada

Every decent sized supermarket in Brazil has one – an aisle containing all the salted meats and pig parts. In the image below you can see (from the left) pigs ears, salted pork, pigs trotters, vertebrae, pigs tails, more unidentified salted meat and finally sausages!

pigs-ears, pig-parts

All the items are just piled up in the open air – there’s no need for refrigeration when the meat is salted like this.

 

Cuts such as these are traditionally used in feijoada, Brazil’s ‘national dish. The commonly told story is that feijoada was invented by slaves and made with the offcuts (ears, trotters, tails, etc) that the masters didn’t want. Although almost everyone believes and retells this story, according to various culinary historians it is almost certainly apocryphal: back in the early days of Brazil’s colonisation, not even the slave owners were rich enough to turn their noses up at certain parts of the animal.

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The invisible language barrier

After waiting in the slow-moving supermarket line for 15 minutes, I finally found myself at the check-out – this was my moment. The girl had scanned all my items and I could see from the screen that I had to pay R$65 – no problem, I had my money ready. Then: disaster! She was asking me something but I had no clue what she was saying. It was clearly a question, but what did she want? She asked it again, a little louder this time and I could sense that the people behind me were all looking over now.

Panic set in, my heart rate increased as my mind desperately tryied to formulate a response. The section of my brain marked Portuguese seemed to have shut down and so my mouth just opened and closed like a goldfish!

Extra Supermercado

The scene of many a stressy moment – the checkouts of ‘Extra’.

 

What felt like minutes was probably over in 10 seconds. She shook her head, shrugged and muttered something while taking my money. I hurriedly gathered my shopping bags, desperate to get out of the oppressive atmosphere. As I walked quickly towards the exit, she shouted to me again – by now I just wanted to run, but I looked back to see that she was waving my change at me. “Idiot!” I said to myself as I walked home, humiliated.

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Hortifruti – great store, brilliant adverts!

Sooooo, today is my last full day in Brazil for 2 months. Such mixed feelings – it’s going to be great to see my family and friends, start my new job, eat proper cheese and drink proper beer again (in that order). But I’m leaving Brazil! For 2 months! There are so many things I’ll miss that I’m trying not to think about it too much right now. Instead I’m throwing myself into last minute preparations

One of the things I need to do is harvest my beloved chillis and turn them into hot chilli sauce! This time round I’m going for a genuine Trinidadian hot pepper sauce recipe and I’m also going to experiment with a chilli infused oil in the style found in many of Rio’s snack bars and Pé Sujos.

Yesterday, in preparation for all this peppery-cookery, I took a trip over to my favourite food shop in Rio – Hortifruti.

If you can afford it, this place is great. I love it!

 

Hortifruti (sounds like ORtchee-FROOtchee) was such a revelation to me the first time wandered in. The displays of fruit and vegetables are amazing – it’s like they have some kind of beauty contest for fresh produce and only the really sexy ones get through.

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