Acarajé

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Last weekend we had a friend from London to stay. This was fun, not just because our guest was nice and not only because she brought us all kinds of yummy goodies from home, but also because her presence pushed us into doing a whole bunch of sight-seeing things that we probably wouldn’t have bothered with otherwise. We wandered around a favela, we went to see some samba and spent a fair bit of time eating and drinking in Santa Teresa. 


One of the places we ended up was Armazém São Thiago, a really nice old bar that dates back to 1919. The bar itself does pretty yummy food, but even better than that, on Sundays there is a lady just outside the bar cooking Acarajé. 

A delicious bundle of spicy goodness. I am designating acarajé as an essential food – see the others in the list by clicking the ‘essential food’ label on the right (Photo: Leonardo Martins).

 

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Lupi catches bullet

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I won’t resign and I won’t be sacked. I have the President’s full support. I guarantee it won’t happen…It will take a bullet to get me out of the ministry. And it will have to be a big bullet, because I’m a big guy. – Carlos Lupi, 8th November 2011.

Politics and corruption in Brazil appear to be intimately linked.

 

Brazil’s Labour minister, Carlos Lupi, announced his resignation yesterday. This makes him the 6th minister to resign because of corruption allegations since President Dilma Rousseff came to power (at the start of 2011). Lupi’s resignation comes after more than a month of allegations and revelations. As the quote above illustrates, this guy is quite a character. In response to the outcry to that followed the above quote, he made another statement apologising to the president:

 

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Shrimp Festival Disappointment

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The Portuguese word for shrimp is camarão (in England we use the word ‘prawn’ for big shrimps – in America it is the other way round apparently). Well regardless of the name, I love them! So you can imagine my delight the first time I went to my local kilo restaurant on a Friday and saw a sign saying “Festival de Camarão”. I love food, I love camarão – the idea of a festival dedicated to these delicious morsels of the sea set my mouth a-watering! 

 

Not the sign I saw. Not the scene that ensued.

 

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Churrasco

I Heart Churrasco

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Back in September I told you a little about the Churrasco, the Brazilian Barbecue. I was writing it coming off the back of our first ever churrasco held on our roof and I was still marvelling at the different way that they do it over here. The things that I was most struck by were the way the food was cooked so high above the coals, that the meat was so amazing, and the way that most of the meat was cut into small portions and shared amongst the group, enabling every to keep eating for hours…

Vegetarians look away now.

Well since that first barbecue, winter has turned into spring, and I’ve been to quite a few more churrascos. And recently I got to try something I had heard about but never tasted…

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"To live in Brazil is shit…

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…but it’s great.”

Who said that? None other than Antônio Carlos Jobim, also known as Tom Jobim, the godfather of bossa nova, composer of The Girl from Ipanema and one of the great Brazilians of the 20th Century. The full quote is:

“To live in other countries is great, but it’s shit. To live in Brazil is shit but it’s great.”

Tom Jobim – legend.