Food and drink Archives - Page 5 of 39

Ferro e Farinha returns!

11/12/2014/4 Comments/in Food and drink

To say that Rio is not known for good pizza is a bit like saying that Manchester is not known for sunny weather (sorry Mancunians!). Cariocas have a strange habit of eating their pizza with sachets of tomato ketchup or even (gasp) mustard – that’s how bad pizza in Rio is! One of the biggest complaints about Carioca pizzas is that they are topped with way too much (bad) cheese and not enough tomato sauce (perhaps that explains the ketchup?).

I used to wonder whether perhaps Cariocas just liked their pizza that way. Perhaps they didn’t want decent pizza? Well, just over a year ago, Sei Shiroma and his Ferro e Farinha team came along and disproved that little hypothesis. I wrote about Ferro e Farinha back in September 2013 when they were just getting going and the response I had to that post (it is still one of my all time most-read posts) made me realise that people in Rio (locals and expats alike) were crying out for a better quality pizza.

Brazilian Recipes: Baião de Dois

28/10/2014/13 Comments/in Food and drink

A few of the things you’ll be needing for today’s recipe for Baião de Dois.

Today I am stepping into dangerous territory – I’m going to tell you about one of the classic recipes of Northeast Brazil. Why dangerous? Well try to imagine a beloved recipe from your hometown/region. Now imagine that some idiot from another country comes bumbling along and tries to tell everyone how to make it, but of course the bumbling idiot gets it so, so wrong. So before I get myself into trouble, I will quickly attempt to pre-empt outraged complaints by saying that this is just my way of doing it and I accept that true Nordestinos may do it differently.

OK, so with that pusillanimous pre-emptive apology out of the way, let’s get on with it shall we? Baião (sounds a bit like ‘buy-OHWN’) is a style of music and dance from Northeast Brazil (if you’d like some extra Nordestino atmosphere, why not have Luiz Gonzaga sing Baião in the background while you read the rest of the post?). So if “Baião de Dois” is a dance for two, then who are the principal protagonists in this culinary caper? You guessed it – Mr Rice and Mrs Beans:

Manguinhas – another reason to visit your local feira

18/10/2014/10 Comments/in Food and drink

Here’s a little factiod for you: while many fruits have evolved bright colours to attract birds (birds have excellent colour vision), mangoes are generally a dull greenish-red colour because they have evolved to be eaten (and therefore distributed) by fruit bats and other animals that rely more on smell than sight to find food. See? 3 years studying zoology wan’t a complete waste was it? According to my old ecology lecturer, we silly humans have spent the last 100+ years attempting to breed bright, colourful mangoes which appeal to the average human shopper.

There are mango trees (mangueiras) all over Rio. In fact here’s the view out of my window right now:

Soups and Stews in Botafogo: Feijão, Angu e Cia

08/10/2014/7 Comments/in Food and drink

A few months after I arrived in Rio, I got my first job. I was working half way along one of Botafogo’s main streets, Rua Voluntários de Pátria. Back then, life in Rio was a bit scary and bewildering, full of lessons to be learned: how to catch a bus, how to get a waiter’s attention and how to have lunch.

That last item might seem strange (what is there to learn about lunch?), but I soon found that my London lunching tradition (a quick sandwich eaten at my desk) wasn’t going to work in Brazil. The idea of eating at one’s desk seems to be rather repulsive to Brazilians, and on this question I have come to see their point. I soon realised that I needed to find somewhere outside of the office to eat. I took to the streets of Botafogo in search of something quick, convenient and delicious. Here’s what I found:

Fruits in Brazil: Sapoti and Jenipapo

18/09/2014/10 Comments/in Food and drink

One of the most exciting aspects of Brazilian food is the wide range of little known fruit. From the moment I first crossed into Brazil from Colombia, I encountered strange fruits and berries that I had never seen or even heard of before. Words like Bacurí, Muricí and Cupuaçú jumbled about in my head after a visit to a market in Manaus. Although it’s not quite so easy to get hold of the exotic Amazonian fruits here in Rio, they do show up from time to time in the street markets and whenever I see something new, I try it.

I visit Rio’s street markets at least twice a week and there is almost always this one stall, run by a rather grumpy old guy, which has the weird items. A few days ago I visited the grumpy stall and picked up two fruits that are pretty interesting: Sapoti and Jenipapo.

Sapoti (aka Sapodilla)

For all I know, I have been walking past these Sapoti (sounds like ‘sappo-chee’) fruit for years without noticing them and you can hardly blame me can you? As fruit go, these dull brown, tennis-ball sized spheres don’t exactly jump out and say ‘eat me!’ do they?

Better known as Sapodilla or Níspero in their native range of Southern Mexico and Central America, Sapoti (Manilkara zapota) grow on large, evergreen trees. The ripe fruit are firm and when cut open release a delicious sweet fragrance.

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Sapoti (aka Sapodilla)