Mrs Eat Rio and I are off to São Paulo this weekend to enjoy the culinary delights that Brazil’s largest city has to offer. Sadly the Eat Rio budget won’t stretch to D.O.M. this time, but our greedy stomachs are quivering in anticipation of a visit to the highly rated Mocotó. Speaking of food, I’ve been playing about in the kitchen myself recently and I thought I’d share my results.
While browsing in Hortifruti recently, I came across something interesting in the Weird Fruit section (the unofficial name for my favourite part of the store). These heavy, brown pods were labelled Jatobá and I was intrigued.
Jatobá – heavy, brown pods, but what’s inside?
When I got them home I did some research. The pods come from a tree known to Brazilians as a Jatobazeiro, but in other parts of its range (it is found from Brazil in the south, to the Caribbean in the north) it is called West Indian locust or Stinking Toe!
I think the ‘toe’ part of the name is clear – I discovered the ‘stinking’ part when I took the jatobás out of their packaging!
One of the things that first excited me about Brazilian food was the huge variety of fruits available here. I would stare with wide eyes at the huge lists of weird and wonderful sounding fruit in the Casas de suco (juice bars).
Hmmm, decisions decisions…
One of the fruits that I loved from my first taste is called Graviola (Annona muricata). It has a bunch of other names such as Soursop and Guanábana, but let’s stick with the name used most commonly here in Brazil. It’s quite an impressive beast – large, green and spiky!
Graviola – spiky, green, delicious!
When you cut one of these fellows open you will find white flesh and fairly large black seeds.
Blitz the flesh in a blender with some water and some sugar if you want, pour the juice through a sieve and you’ve got a a delicious drink!
So, another delicious tropical fruit – end of story, right? Well, not quite!
Brazilians’ Portuguese roots are never more obvious than when they break out the Bacalhau. Suddenly they insist on drinking vinho verde and hold strong opinions on whether the brand of azeite (olive oil) on the table is any good. At least that’s how it works in my Brazilian family!
In simple terms, bacalhau (sounds like “backal-YOW”) is cod that has been salted and dried. Way back in the days of the great Portuguese explorers, this was a vital way to preserve the fish for long journeys. Of course today we have refrigerated storage, but the drying and salting process gives the fish a distinct texture and flavour that is highly prized.
Many bacalhau dealers cut the fish across the middle to accentuate the thickness of the fish.
In Britain we call the fresh fish “cod” and the dried, salted version “salt cod” (though apparently people from the west of England refer to salt cod as “toe rag“!). As far as I can tell there is no distinction in Portuguese – both fresh and salted versions are referred to as bacalhau.
When it comes to the salted version, there are a number of different grades and varieties. The thickest part of the fish (lombo) is most expensive, costing around R$60/kg (US$30) in the supermarket. The thinner cuts from around the fins and tail are cheaper, but still a long way from cheap.
Most of the bacalhau in Brazil comes from Norway.
A British journalist who came on the Eat Rio Food Tour recently, made the point that it’s a pretty crazy situation when one of the world’s most affluent countries (Norway) is selling an endangered (=expensive) fish to a country ranked 77 places below it on the list of countries by GDP per capita.
When it comes to food, we have no rules and no restrictions – the menu reflects what we see in the market and what we feel like eating right now. It could be a Thai salad, a hamburger or a traditional dish from Alsace. And right now we feel like eating couscous.
If you buy in to national stereotypes you might be surprised to hear that those words came from a Frenchman (after all, the French made most of the rules in the first place!). But Yves de Roquemaurel, owner of Coccinelle Bistro in Centro, is happy to confound stereotypes and break bend the rules when they get in the way of his food philosophy.
Coccinelle is situated in a sweet alleyway, just around the corner from Rua do Ouvidor.
A few months ago I wrote about the wonderful cheeses of Minas. I had tasted several, but was aware that there were many more to try – Queijo Canastra, Queijo da Mantiqueira, Queijo d’Alagoa – I had read about these cheeses (and drooled over pictures) but never had the opportunity to taste them.
Luckily for me, Yves read that post and got in touch to let me know that I didn’t need to go all the way to Minas to taste the best cheeses of Brazil. He told me he bad been importing queijos de leite cru (raw milk cheeses) direct from the cheese makers in Minas for months!
Well now, this was exciting news! But hang on a minute – “Months?” I asked. Exporting raw milk cheeses out of Minas (for sale) was only made legal in August 2013. “Ah, oh yes” Yves mumbled and quickly did some mental calculations. “For one month and 3 weeks, of course…” he grinned.
Queijo Contraband? Queijos de leite cru (raw milk cheeses): Canastra, Salitre and Alagoa. Photo © Julien Geay