Culinary Edition

The food here has been amazing, and I'd like to touch on some of my favorite dishes that I've had the pleasure of enjoying since I've been down here:

1. Acai (pronounced AS-AI-EE) Smoothy
The best cure for a hangover is heroin—a little known fact you won't find in a reader's digest—but second to that, an Acai-smoothy does the trick equally as well. Purple, sweet but pungent, one of these bad-boys contains 1000 calories and does a very good job indeed of counteracting inhuman amounts of alcohol consumed during the previous night. Stains your teeth a bit, but after a night of hard drinking, who really gives a shit what your teeth look like?

2. Bolinhos de Bacalhau
Sort of like a crab cake, except with cod instead of crab. These guys are fried, crunchy, and delicious. While I believe this is the most popular incarnation, I've also had Bolinhos with risotto in the middle, and some with meat within the rissoto, almost similar to an Arancini. As Flavia has told me, there's a lot of Italian influence here in Sao Paulo, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Bolinho is the Brazilian take on that classic sicilian dish. Great snack.

3. Coxinhas
The fried balls I spoke of previously. These are very popular and you can find them in almost every restaurant as well as in street-vendor carts and little bloqados. A thigh cut of shredded chicken mixed with the Brazilian cheese Catupiry and various other herbs and spices, wrapped in potato and deep-fried. I'm not really a fan of catupiry, but when it's in the context of one of these guys, I love it. Crunchy, savory, and very filling.


4. Escondidinho
Sort of like a casserole, but not really, this is another staple of Brazilian diet. Shredded meat of any variety (but usually beef or pork) with other herbs and tomato baked with a layer of mashed potato on top. This was the last thing that I ate at the Mercado Municipal the other day, and on top of everything else, it damn near made my stomach burst. Still, like a bingeing bulimic, I couldn't help but gobble up every last bite on my plate. Delicious.

5. Bobo de Camerao
Sort of a hybrid of shrimp curry and gumbo, it's cooked in a big special pot with garlic and onions being sautéed in palm oil and olive oil, then tomato puree is added with cilantro and other herbs I couldn't figure out, then the shrimp, and finally topped off with a couple quarts of coconut milk. It simmers for a while, and is then served with rice and uncooked farina (sort of a cornmeal-textured wheat product) with plantains. Very similar to Vatapa, except without manioc and bread. Absolutely incredible! I had it home-cooked on a sunday, and ate so much I was full for two days afterwards.

6. Pastel
The ubiquitous street food, you can find these guys anywhere. A sheet of pastry wrapped around any kind of food—you can get it with plain cheese, with beef, with shrimp, with chicken, with pork, with mozzarella tomato and basel....anything, really—and then deep-fried to perfection (have you noticed a lot of this food is fried?)Almost like a wonton, except more savory. The meat in the first pastel I had here literally melted in my mouth, and I was hooked, although I've found out since then that they tend to be of varying degrees of quality, depending on where you're eating. Still: strongly recommended.

7. Temaki
There's a large Japanese population here, and the Brazilians are very proud of their sushi-game and say it's the best in the world (to which, as a Californian proud of our own sushi game, I might have to disagree...I have yet to see sea-urchin on any menu here. How can you have the best sushi-game when you don't even have sea urchin?) Still, they get points for the Temaki. Sort of a sushi-burrito, temaki's have any filling you'd like—most Brazilians opt for shrimp or salmon—wrapped up like....well, you see the picture. These things are dank, and there are little places called Temakierias that strictly serve these; apparently, they're the preferred late-night drunken-munchie food. Back in the states, I usually had to settle for burgers or hot-dogs after a night of drinking....it would be awesome if there was some affordable variation of sushi for us degenerates out at late hours. America: Get on this!

8. Quindim
Little candies made out of egg yolks and coconut. They even look like the yolk portion of an egg! The top is sort of custardy but at the bottom there's a crunchy cookie-like base. Great texture, sweet, and very nice with coffee after a meal. I'd love to talk about the more widely known Brigadeiros (condensed milk—almost like dolce de leche—cooked with chocolate and rolled into balls), but honestly I haven't even had one here yet! Definitely on my to-do list, but in the meantime, if you ever get a chance, try a Quindim. Tasty.

and, of course:

9. Feijoada!
The most chronic of all the chronic meals you can have down here. Wednesday and saturday are feijoada days, and most restaurants serve it as a sort of special. Basically beans and different cuts of meat stewed for hours with other goodies like onion, bone marrow, whatever, until the meat dissolves in your mouth. Served with rice. The place where I had it here had a system set up with a whole regiment of pots, each containing feijoada with a different kind of meat (linguisa, pork shoulder, beef shanks, etc.) so you could go down the line and pick what sorts of meat you wanted on your plate. Like the best dishes, this one originated from poor people trying to make something great out of nothing (rice, beans, and the left-over, undesirable parts of pigs and cows), and has evolved into probably the best-known dish of Brazil. For good reason too...I could sit here and wax poetic on Feijoada all day, but the simpler solution is for you to just go eat some. Seriously, go get some. I don't care where you are, go track down a brazilian, make him/her take you to their grandmother, and force her to cook it for you....at gunpoint, if need be. This dish is God's blessing to this country, and it's really the most important comestible item that you should sample if you ever come down here. VIVA FEIJOADA!
~

With all that being said, theres so much more to write about. I went to my first soccer game the other day (Vai Corinthians...or as I like to say, 'Corinthians or No-rinthians'), and it was dope. I'm leaving to kick it in Buenos Aires for a week on monday, so maybe I'll have something to say about wine, steak, and tango when I get back. Hashtag, so international. Hashtag, step your life up. Hashtag, John Downey out.
-JD