Foods of Brazil

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Foods of Brazil

With such a colourful variety of immigrants from around the world, Brazil’s culinary traditions are both unique and diverse.

Regional Specialities

The European immigrants from Italy and Germany brought the traditions of pasta and bread to the South and Southeast regions, while the spicier foods of Africa were mixed with the Portuguese customs further north. As local culinary traditions infused with strong international influences, the Brazilian culinary experience is varied.

Because of Europe's enormous demand for sugar in the 17th century, Portugal and Holland planted large crops in the newly founded Brazil. The mistresses of the isolated plantations had an abundance of time, slave labour and sugar, and their creations are said to have established the Brazilian love of sweets and desserts. The northeast still remains a creative powerhouse for new sweet delicacies.

The slave communities which served the plantations also inadvertently provided Brazil with its most enduring and richest dish – feijoada; a spicy bean stew made from a variety of pork cuts ranging from the finest of tenderloins to ears and trotters – nearly every part of the pig may be used. This dish is traditionally served as a filling lunch on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The more fertile southern regions of Brazil helped give rise to a dairy and fruit farming tradition which provides the country with its delicate white cheeses, preserves and the variety of German and Italian breads which often accompany them.

The large Italian immigrant community in São Paulo brought with it their most famous dish from the old country – pizza. Over the years, this simple recipe has become a staple of the São Paulo diet and Paulistanas will argue that theirs is better than any found in Italy or New York.

With around 8,000 Km of coastline, fish and seafood have always been a mainstay of Brazilian cooking and perhaps its best-known exponent is the traditional moqueca, commonly served in the northeastern state of Bahia. Using ‘dende’ oil and coconut milk as a base, different fish ranging from snapper to sting-ray and fresh vegetables such as tomatoes, onions and sweet peppers are combined with coriander to make a stew. This is served with rice and pirão, a heavy sauce made from fish and manioc.

But it is the simple dish of rice and beans which dominates the tables of Brazil from north to south, and around which virtually every other food is based. The only variations are in the ingredients and spices used to flavour the rice and in the type of beans used. São Paulo tends to favour the brown bean while Rio prefers the black variety.

Washing it all down is traditionally the native soft drink Guaraná made from a fruit native to the Amazon, or an ice cold ‘chopp’ or draught beer. The sugar industry also influenced the country’s distilled-drinks traditions with thousands of versions of sugar-cane liquor (cachaça or pinga) found throughout the states. This forms the basis of Brazil’s most famous drink export – caipirinha; a mix of cachaça, lemon and sugar.

Daily Meals

In keeping with other Latin countries, breakfast is not a major event, with a bread roll or pão frances stuffed with ham or cheese and accompanied by fruit and a coffee or orange juice being probably the most common morning snack.

Lunch is by far the most important meal of the day, and as many people find it difficult to get back home at lunchtime, there are thousands of restaurants serving food for every budget. Rice and beans is commonly served, accompanied by beef or chicken and a salad, but this can be varied by visiting one of the popular kilo restaurants, a buffet-style establishment where customers serve themselves from a wide range of hot dishes and salads to create a ‘custom-made’ lunch.

For a quick meal, a traditional Portuguese boteco can be found on virtually every street corner. These simple bars often operate around the clock, serving sandwiches and juices for breakfast, a prato feito for lunch, and beers for the after work and evening crowds. Every boteco offers snacks called salgadinhos such as the famous pão de queijo (cheese bread), or coxinha (a fried rissole stuffed with shredded chicken).

Most Brazilians eat a light evening meal at home during the week with eating-out reserved for the weekends. Churrascarias are very popular on these occasions, as they operate an ‘all-you-can-eat’ policy, the waiters visiting the table with every imaginable joint of meat on enormous skewers which they slice upon request.

International Restaurants

With the second largest population of Japanese outside Japan, São Paulo has a wide choice of sushi bars spread throughout the city, but with a concentration in the Japanese quarter, Liberdade.

As the Italian population was the first of the waves of immigrants to settle the region, there is no shortage of cantinas and pasta houses, but as São Paulo considers itself the Gastronomy Capital of Latin America, Portuguese, German, Arabic, Mexican, Chinese, French, Russian and other cuisines are also readily available.

Wine

Until the expansion of the international market in the 1970s, there was little interest in wine in Brazil due to the limited distribution of imported products. With the stimulus given to the import/export industry in the 1990s, imported wines became more accessible and there was also a growing demand for a locally produced wines. Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul (RS) became the primary producer, but the industry has expanded to the São Francisco river valley in Bahia and Pernambuco states in the northeast.

Fifty percent of Brazil’s wines are produced within an area of 82 Km² in Rio Grande do Sul. The wine varieties vary from Chardonnay and sparkling wines to Burgundy. The growing northeastern wine-growing region produces tropical red wines with a fresh fruity taste.

Related Information

• AngloINFO INFOrmation page, Beers and Wines of Brazil
• The cuisine of Brazil from Wikipedia

Steve Wingrove - Food & Drink Correspondent (2009)