Feed Me: Brazilian Cuisine

Food. Unlike anything else, it is the one part of your life that will inevitably change when living abroad. Theoretically, you could lock yourself in a room, ignore all other people and refuse to speak the language or experience the culture. The wonders of the Internet mean you could spend your time watching British television and talking with friends and relatives via Skype. As I’m sure you would agree, it would be a pathetic existence.

Food, however, is something that even the Internet cannot replace. Sure, I always take Marmite and Earl Grey tea bags with me, but am hard pushed to find the perfect butter and milk to complement them. It has been a year particularly lacking in good cheese and sausages, but filling my suitcase with Messrs Cathedral City Extra Mature and Cumberland Pork would have perhaps been misjudged. What this means of course, is that you must venture into local supermarkets and eateries in order to find food and stay alive. I am pleased to report that Brazil has some promising results.

Some English treats

The first thing to say about Brazilians’ attitude to food is that they like it; and then some. Portions are enormous. In the canteen at work, I receive double what I would expect to receive in England. Two large pieces of meat over a plateful of rice and beans with a smattering of salad on the side tends to be the order of the day. ‘All you can eat’ buffets and restaurants that serve by the kilo are everywhere. Given the quantity and variety of food on offer, these are extraordinarily good value as well.

Meat features heavily in these establishments, ranging from tender beef and grilled chicken to fried cod and shrimp. Rice is the carbohydrate of choice, comfortably preferred to either pasta or potatoes. Black or brown beans provide the sauce for what becomes a fairly enjoyable culinary treat. It is beans and meat that form the base of Brazil’s signature dish: the ‘feijoada’: a ‘black bean stew’ with various bits of beef and pork thrown in. Many people add ‘farofa’, a powdery substance, which has a similar flavour and texture to sawdust. It is the one culinary preference that has perplexed me. Nevertheless, from what I can tell, the ‘feijoada’ is enjoyed at lunchtime, mainly by the working class, presumably to replenish one’s strength.

the 'feijoada'

And if that isn’t enough to keep you going, you will struggle to avoid the temptation of the ‘salgado’. At open-fronted snack bars, called ‘lanchonetes’, which are all over the country, a large assortment of snack-sized nibbles drag you in from the street. The ‘coxinha’ is my favourite: some sort of fried dough, filled with chicken and catipury, a Brazilian creamy cheese. Heavenly would be a good way to describe these. They fill that hunger void magnificently, yet barely trouble your wallet. Other ‘salgados’ are similarly fantastic. There are cheese balls and calzone-type pastries as well as sweet variants, the ‘brigadeiro’ taking many of the sweet-toothed plaudits with its creamy melted chocolate surrounded by more chocolate.

a salgado selection

It would be a crime for me not to mention beverages. Fruit juices and coffee are naturally found in abundance. There are ‘normal’ fruits like pineapple, peach and mango; and then there are the weird ones: caju, guarana, jaboticaba and carambola to name but a few fruits that I have never seen or tasted before. Drinking the juice out of a coconut is another popular, refreshing alternative.

what are these things?

If it isn’t fruit, it’s coffee. Brazil produces considerably more coffee than any other country and there is definitely a coffee-drinking culture. But not the commercialised coffees that Starbucks and various other chains serve. Just a bog standard shot of coffee, which most Brazilians ruin (in my view) by adding unthinkable amounts of sugar or sweetener. But then, Brazil does also produces considerably more sugar than any other country. However, putting four teaspoons of sugar in an espresso can never be justifiable, no matter how much sugar you have. 

Of course, I don’t eat out every day. The supermarket provides most of the food I eat, but coxinhas and kilo restaurants are a nice treat. Meat is much cheaper over here, so homemade steaks are frequent. The heavy, flavoursome food on offer is mostly delicious, but can thwart all attempts to fine-tune the beach bod. Such are the problems I face…