Something rather strange is going on around here right now. Everyone is taking about tomatoes! Specifically, everyone is talking about how the price of tomatoes in Brazil has gone through the roof! Here’s an example:
Precious crop. “I was going to buy you a diamond ring, but preferred to buy you a tomato.”
And this was the situation in a supermarket in Rio last night:
R$12.79/kg tomatoes. This converts to US $6.43/kg or approx $3 for a pound of tomatoes.
I’m feeling pretty excited today – not only is it Friday, but I’ve just discovered the existence of Cachaça de Jambú! We looked at jambú before when I told you about Tacacá, the soup from the Amazon that makes your lips and tongue go numb (surely one of Brazil’s weirdest dishes).
Jambú is an Amazonian herb that gives tacacá its anaesthetic property. It looks rather like a weed, with straggly stems and strange yellow/red pom-pom flowers.
The Jambú plant in flower.
In Brazil’s northern states (such as Pará and Amazonas) the leaves and flowers of this plant are added to soups and stews. It has quite a nice flavour actually but it’s the strong numbing, tingly effect that really sets it apart from other greens.
And now they’re putting it in cachaça! I should be clear here, I haven’t tried it yet but you can be sure i’ll be doing my best to hunt it down at the earliest opportunity!
I heard about cachaça de jambú from this article in Folho de São Paulo. To be honest I don’t know much about it – is the practice of adding jambú to cachaça a new thing or have people been doing it for years? From what I can tell it is made by simply infusing regular cachaça with jambú leaves.
Mmmm, Cachaça de Jambú. Image from Folha de São Paulo.
When I think of Brazilian food, the dishes that spring to mind are feijoada, moqueca, pão de queijo, picanha, farofa and I’d better stop before I start drooling on the keyboard. But if you asked someone else they might provide an alternative list: doce de leite, beijinhos de coco, pudim, kindim, pão de mel, creme de papaia com cassis and (of course) brigadeiro.
Brazilian cuisine provides plenty of satisfaction for savoury food people like me, but it also has a lot for you glucophiles. Today’s Brazilian brand falls squarely into the latter category – something this sweet was sure to be successful in Brazil wasn’t it?
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Name: Toddy / Toddynho (sounds like Todgey and Todge-EEN-yo respectively).
Product: Chocolate powder / chocolate milk.
Background: In 1916 Pedro Erasmo Santiago, a Spanish immigrant in Puerto Rico, lost his entire Cacau plantation in a hurricane. He moved to the USA where he worked his way up from toilet cleaner to prosperous businessman in the food industry.
In 1928 he bought the rights to the brand name “Toddy” for all of South America. Prior to this, “Toddy” was the name of a Scottish drink made of blended whisky, sugar/honey and spices, served hot. However, Pedro’s product, a sweetened cocoa powder to be made into a chocolate drink, was just as often served cold.
In 1933 Pedro Santiago was granted permission to market Toddy in Brazil. He set up a factory in Lapa and set about marketting his product with innovative publicity stunts, such as using planes to write the name of his product in smoke in the skies over Rio.
In the following decades, Toddy became a hugely popular drink across Brazil. Although Toddy was the first chocolate powder in Brazil, other brands soon followed, notably Nescau made by evil Swiss company Nestlé.
If you were to ask me about the beach vendors of Rio, I would tell you about good guys with cool-boxes full of icy cold beers slung over their shoulders and a sack of Biscoito Globo in hand. I would describe people dressed in Arab style clothes selling esfiha and kibe, and the vendors laden with beach-balls, bikinis and cangas. I’d tell you about the shouts of “Alô mate! Alô limão!” from the orange clad ice-tea sellers and the clanking of the ice cubes in their twin metal barrels.
Here’s another thing I’d mention: Queijo Coalho (sounds like: KAY-zho KWAH-lyo). “Queijo” is Portuguese for “cheese” and the word coalhado means something like curdled or clotted. The first time I tried this firm, white cheese I had no idea how best to eat it. I had bought it in a supermarket and when I got home I cut it into chunky slices and put it in a sandwich. The result was not good – it was very salty, dense and generally quite disappointing.
Some weeks later Mrs Eat Rio and I were at the beach and a guy wandered past with a small metal tripod suspended above a stout wooden handle. When I was told that he was selling grilled queijo coalho I decided it was time to give this cheese another chance.
Back in the good old days, queijo coalho na brasa (grilled queijo coalho) was a favourite beach treat!
When grilled over hot coals, this cheese is transformed! It is quite similar to halloumi – it has a salty bite and squeaks against your teeth as you eat it! Before getting started, the vendor asks if you’d like oregano which is optionally sprinkled over the cheese before the grilling. A block of cheese is then mounted on a skewer and turned slowly over the glowing coals until it is browned and crisp on all sides. The end result is perfect for the hunger that develops over the course of a day relaxing on the beach:
Brazilian Brands is back! Before we get going I should explain a little about the word bala. If you type this word into Google Translate, the first translation it returns is “bullet”. However, we aren’t going to be looking at some special brand of Brazilian ammunition! We’ll be looking at the other meaning of bala: “candy” (or “sweets” as we say in the UK).
I’m guessing that the ‘bullet’ meaning dates back to the days when ammunition was a spherical ball of lead that was pushed down into a musket. Then when candies became popular, they were similarly shaped and so took the same name. Or could it be the other way round? Does musket shot pre-date candy?
Regardless of how the word and its meaning originated, you should know that the term bala perdida means “lost bullet” (literally), but a better translation would be “stray bullet”. Sadly this term is in the news quite regularly in Rio (and many other Brazilian states), when people are hit by stray bullets.
The ‘lost bullet’ looks at a picture which says “You are here”.
Anyway, today we’re talking about the tasty, sugary balas, so let’s get on with it!
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Name: Balas Tamarindo Marllon.
Product: Balas de Tamarido (Tamarind flavoured candy).
Description: The manufacturer is called ‘Balas Marllon’ and is based on the other side of Guanabara bay in a town called São Gonçalo. They make a variety of other candies, but these Tamarind flavoured are the best known and most widely sold. Inside the colourful wrapper you will find a dark brown, slightly sticky ball.
Although the Tamarind tree is native to Africa, it was introduced into Central and South America in the 16th Century and has become a common ingredient in Brazilian cuisine, particularly in the north where it is made into a refreshing drink.