Something about Brazil

When you hear the word “Brazil,” two words immediately come to mind: football and the carnival. For the readers who are concerned with wild life and ecosystems, you add a third word, the Amazon (rain forest). For your favorite food columnist, the concern is the cuisine of Brazil; unfortunately, I have very little knowledge about it. I have to depend on documentaries on the indigenous people of the Amazon, videos about the food of the cowboys (gaucho) of Brazil, my humble collection of cook books and the information highway.

Fortunately, we have friends like Plantation Bay GM Efren Belarmino (http://plantationbay.com/ phone 340-5900) who extended an invitation to join the grand launch of the Brazilian Fever last Jan. 31, 2009 with the theme “hot and tempting…. and that’s just the food.” Very difficult gyud to resist this business of continuing education program!

Brazil (República Federativa do Brasil) is a country that occupies about half of South America; it was a colony of Portugal from 1500 to 1822. At that time, there were about 3 million Amerindians living in that area. My beloved readers who have earned high marks in World History do remember the Treaty of Tordesillas to divide the “newly discovered” lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal and the lands to the east belongs to Portugal while the west goes to Spain.

Fast forward to 1808, the Portugese court retreated from the French (Napoleon) and was relocated in the city of Rio de Janeiro and it became the seat of the entire Portugese Empire! This is the main reason why Portugese culture has greatly influenced Brazil, from language to religion, making it the largest Catholic country in the world. Even the Brazilian Carnival, an annual festival held four days before Ash Wednesday has religious significance; the word “carnival” comes from carnelevare, which means “to remove meat or abstain from meat.”

With regards to the cuisine of Brazil, it is food of a population that is a sum of the various nationalities that has settled in it. You have the Portuguese, Amerindians, Africans, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Lebanese and even Japanese. Such diversity however does create a “national cooking style marked by the preservation of regional differences.”

The national dish is Feijoada, a stew of beans (black turtle beans) with pork and beef, both salted and smoked, with two types of sausages. Origin of the dish is definitely Portuguese; like the cozidos of Minho and Duoro Litoral, the beans (white or red kidney) and meats (pork or beef).

Some of the dishes during the “Brazilian Fever” are shown here. After a few rounds of Brazilian Empanadas (my kind of comfort food during student days in U.P. Diliman), I went to taste the Picadinho De Milho (patties of beef and corn) with Feijao Tropeiro (Brazilian cowboy beans) and the Vermelho Recheado com Farofa (baked red snapper with salsa on the side). I also tried the Camarao Ao Catupiry (Shrimp with Cheese and Heart of Palm), Executive Chef Vinz Karlsen’s version of the Feijoada (stew of black beans with pork, beef and sausages) and finally the Mixed Grill and the Grilled Chunks of Beef.

I do agree with most Brazilians that vegetarians would lead such a difficult life in Brazil! And behaving like a true food connoisseur was certainly most demanding, excuse me, while watching the Plantation Bay Resort and Spa Samba School perform the dance which has made Rio de Janeiro the carnival capital of the World.