Brazilian cuisine, like Brazil itself, varies greatly by region. The natural crops available in each region add to their singularity.
Brazilian cooking, while it has many similarities with that of its South American neighbors, is distinct. Stretching from the Amazon in the north, through the fertile plantations of the central coast and on to the southern pampas, the food of Brazil spans a unique mix of cultures and cuisines. The original population contributed popular ingredients like cassava and guaraná. African slaves influenced the cuisine of the coastal states, especially Bahia. And around the country, a Portuguese heritage is reflected in a variety of dishes.
Root vegetables such as cassava (locally known as mandioca, aipim, or macaxeira), yams, and peanuts, and fruits like açaí, cupuaçu, mango, papaya, guava, orange, passionfruit, pineapple, and hog plum are among the local ingredients used in cooking. Brazilian pine nuts (pinhão) grow in a tree (Araucaria angustifolia) that is abundant in the southern part of Brazil, and are a popular national snack, as well as a lucrative export. Rice and beans are an extremely common dish, as are fish, beef and pork.
Some typical dishes are caruru, which consists of okra, onion, dried shrimp and toasted nuts (peanuts and/or cashews) cooked with palm oil until a spread-like consistency is reached; feijoada, a simmered bean-and-meat dish; tutu de feijão, a paste of beans and cassava flour; moqueca capixaba, consisting of slow-cooked fish, tomato, onion and garlic topped with cilantro; and chouriço, a mildly spicy sausage. Salgadinhos, cheese buns, pastéis and coxinha are common finger foods, while cuscuz branco, milled tapioca, is a popular dessert. Brazil is also known for cachaça, a popular native liquor used in the caipirinha.
The European immigrants (primarily from Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Portugal) were accustomed to a wheat-based diet, and introduced wine, leaf vegetables, and dairy products into Brazilian cuisine. When potatoes were not available they discovered how to use the native sweet manioc as a replacement.[1] Lasagna, gnocchi, yakisoba and other pasta dishes are also very popular.
Contents |
The Southeastern, consisting of the states of Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, is the industrial heart of Brazil, and is home to several distinctive cooking styles for which Brazil is probably best-known.
In Minas Gerais the regional dishes include corn, pork, beans, chicken (including the very typical dish frango com quiabo, or "chicken with okra") and local soft ripened traditional cheeses. In Rio, São Paulo and Minas Gerais, feijoada (a black bean and meat stew rooted), is popular especially as a Wednesday or Saturday lunch. Also consumed frequently is picadinho (literally, minced meat) and feijão com arroz, or rice and beans.
Traditionally, black beans are prepared in Rio de Janeiro, rajadinho or carioquinha (brown) beans in São Paulo, and either in Minas Gerais, but personal tastes reflect which common bean variety will be consumed in each region. Another typical food in São Paulo is the Virado à Paulista, that consists of rice, tutu de feijão (a paste of beans and manioc flour;some times made of corn flour, in order to be drier than the manioc flour one), sautéed collard greens (couve) and pork chops, typically bisteca, the pork equivalent of the T-bone steak. It is usually accompanied by pork rind, bits of sausage, a fried egg and a fried banana. The cuisine of São Paulo shows the influence of European and Middle Eastern immigrants.
The majority of immigrants in São Paulo arrived from Italy, along with many from Portugal, Japan, Lebanon, Spain, Germany and other nations. Hence, it is possible to find a wide array of cuisines. In the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, pizza is a popular dish, and sushi has entered the mainstream and can be found in regular, non-Japanese restaurants.
In Espírito Santo, there is significant Italian and German influence in local dishes, both savory and sweet. The state dish, though, is of Amerindian origin, and is called moqueca capixaba (a tomato and fish stew prepared in a clay pot). The cuisine of Minas Gerais is also strongly influential there, with many restaurants serving that fare. Farofa (a dish of toasted manioc flour with small amounts of flavoring ingredients such as pork, onions, hard boiled eggs or different vegetables), polenta, couve (collard greens), chouriço (a type of sausage that is less spicy than its cousin chorizo), tutu à mineira (a paste of beans and manioc flour) and fried bananas are examples of popular dishes from Minas Gerais.
The cuisine of this region, which includes the states of Acre, Amazonas, Amapá, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, and Tocantins, is heavily influenced by indigenous cuisine. In state of Pará there are several typical dishes:
Pato no tucupi (Duck in tucupi) – one of the most famous dishes from Pará. It is associated to the Círio de Nazaré, a great local Christian celebration. The dish is made with tucupi (yellow broth extracted from cassava, after the fermentation process of the broth remained after the starch had been taken off, from the raw ground manioc root, pressed by a cloth, with some water. If adding maniva, the manioc ground up external part, that is poison because of the cianic acid, must be cooked for one week long), the duck, after cooking, is cut into pieces and boiled in tucupi, where is the sauce for some time. The jambu is boiled in water with salt, drained and put on the duck. It is served with white rice and manioc flour.
Tacacá: this dish is based on tucupi with shrimp, jambu/jambo fruit (pronounced [ʒɐ̃ˈbu] or [ˈʒɐ̃bu], Acmella oleracea) and, also, garlic and chilli pepper. The dish is sold by street vendors called tacacazeiros (or tacacazeiras), very common in Belém do Pará.
Caruru: made with okra, dried shrimp, alfavaca (some Ocimum species in distinction to others said to be more sublime, called manjericão) and chicory, dry and fine flour and oil from palm (dendê). After the boiled okra, the green sauce and shrimp in the water, is added to the flour and make itself homogeneous. After that, add it to the okras well drained, the shrimp already mixed with all seasoning and finally, the oil palm.
Vatapá: this is a dish also made in Bahia, but in the State of Pará does not take fish or peanuts, or Cashew nut. When the broth cooking the heads and the shells of shrimp with salt scented alfavaca, chicory, garlic and green smell, add up wheat flour and / or rice, resulting in a mess. Furthermore, if the pure coconut milk, and boiled shrimp has palm oil.
Maniçoba: the dish looks doubtful, takes at least a week to be done, as the leaf of maniva (of the cassava plant), after ground, should be boiled for at least four days with the intent to remove the hydrocyanic acid that contains. After that is added charqui, fat, tripe, calf's foot jelly, ear, foot and salted pork ribs, sausages, sausages and bunkers, basically the same ingredients of a feijoada completa. It is served with white rice, flour water and hot peppers to taste.
Several kinds of fish and seafood that citizens usually eat in their meals: Pirarucu, Arapaima, Tambaqui, Tamuatá, Acará (Pterophyllum), Tucunaré (Cichla), Gurijuba, Dourada, Pescada, Aracu, Tilápia, Gó, Pratiqueira, Sarda, Piramutaba, Filhote, Traíra, Pacu, Piranha, Mapará, and Acari.
The Northeast, or the states of Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Maranhão, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe, comprises geographically of a narrow, fertile coastal plain with abundant rainfall where much of the population is found, an equally narrow transition zone called the Agreste, and a large semiarid region called the Sertão, which is dominated by large cattle ranches, and the Meio-Norte (literally, mid-North) common for its abundance in palm trees and a climate which is not so harsh as in the Sertão. All kinds of tropical produce common in Brazil can grow on the coastal plain, with sugarcane and cacao being particularly abundant.
Within Bahia the predominant cuisine is Afro-Bahian, which evolved from plantation cooks improvising on African, Amerindian, and traditional Portuguese dishes using locally available ingredients.
Typical dishes include vatapá, moqueca (both having seafood and palm oil), and acarajé (a salted muffin made with white beans, onion and fried in palm oil (azeite de dendê) which is filled with dried shrimp, red pepper and caruru (mashed okra with ground cashew nut, smoked shrimp, onion, pepper and garlic). The main staple is a plate of white rice and black beans but other common foods include farofa, paçoca, canjica, pamonha and quibeibe.
In the remainder of the coastal plains there is less African influence on the food, but seafood, shellfish, coconut and tropical fruits are menu staples. Commonly eaten tropical fruits in the Northeast include mango, papaya, guava, orange, passionfruit, pineapple, ambarella (called cajá-manga), other species of hog plum, sweetsop, soursop, and cashew (both the fruit and the nut).
Also noteworthy are:
Breakfast: Every region has its typical breakfast. It is common to find tropical fruits, typical cakes, tapioca, cuscuz, grilled ham-and-cheese-sandwiches, bread and butter, mortadella, ham, cheese, requeijão, ham and cheese, ham and requeijão, smoked turkey and cheese, smoked turkey and requeijão or jam, and the drink can be sweetened coffee, juice, hot chocolate, café com leite or sweetened tea.
Lunch: Normally the lunch is the biggest meal. Rice-and-beans are a staple of the Brazilian diet. They are usually eaten with some kind of protein, farofa (a toasted flour of manioc or corn), salads and/or cooked vegetables.
Afternoon snack (literally, "lanche da tarde"): It is a meal had between lunch and dinner, and basically everything people eat in the breakfast, they also eat in the afternoon snack. Nevertheless, fruits are less common.
Dinner: For most Brazilians dinner is a light affair. Soups, salads, pasta, rice-and-beans are the most common dishes.
A simple and usually inexpensive option, which is also advisable for vegetarians, is comida à quilo or comida por quilo restaurants (literally "food by kilo value"), a buffet where food is paid for by weight. Another common style is the all-you-can-eat restaurant where customers pay a prix fixe. In both types (known collectively as "self-services") customers usually assemble the dishes of their choice from a large buffet.
Rodízio is a common style of service, in which a prix fixe is paid, and servers circulate with food. This is common in churrascarias, resulting in an all-you-can-eat meat barbecue.
The regular restaurant where there is a specific price for each meal is called "restaurante a la carte".
Although many traditional dishes are prepared with meat or fish, it is not difficult to live on vegetarian food as well, at least in the mid-sized and larger cities of Brazil. There is a rich supply of all kinds of fruits and vegetables, and on city streets one can find cheese buns (pão de queijo); in some cities even the version made of soy.
In the 2000s, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre have gained several vegetarian and vegan restaurants.[2] However outside big metropolises, vegetarianism is not very common in the country. Not every restaurant will provide vegetarian dishes and some seemingly vegetarian meals may turn out to include unwanted ingredients. Commonly "meat" is understood to mean "red meat," so some people might assume a vegetarian eats fish and chicken. Comida por quilo and all-you-can eat restaurants prepare a wide range of fresh dishes. Diners can more easily find food in such restaurants that satisfies dietary restrictions.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||