Serves: 5

Brazil became my husband’s love when he was just a young man. He had served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when he was just twenty years old. When he told me he was returning to Brazil with his company shortly after we were married, I prayed I would somehow learn to understand his deep affection for this giant country and her gentle people. I couldn’t imagine I would someday actually share his feeling for them.

Caring for Brazil is more than simply liking what you see and hear. It is a vivid country and a people that blend unfamiliar colors and sounds—of tastes and smells. Brazil is a total experience, where everyday the senses are exposed to something new and fresh. The visitor or newcomer doesn’t understand it by observing or thinking about it. Brazil is something you experience and absorb—it saturates the senses in ways that can’t be forgotten. Scientists such as Darwin and Humboldt, great writers as Zweig and Sartre, and artists such as Debret have struggled to capture the many faces of this beautiful country.

Just after our arrival in Brazil, one of my husband’s old Brazilian friends took me by the hand, as if he fully understood my bewilderment at being so far from home, and said, “Once you drink Brazilian water, you will always return.”

Our first home in São Paulo was like an antique painting. Built at the turn of the century, it typified the unique flavor of this interesting land. The old home had faded yellow walls, but the stained glass, Portuguese blue tile, and wrought iron grill-work gave it a majesty I immediately loved. As I looked at my new home that bright morning, I saw Brazil itself unfold in the lush tropical garden that surrounded the house. Age-old bougainvillea had climbed over the roof in purple splendor, and twined itself down across the back patio where delicate orchids hung from the latticework and mixed with white roses, orange and white hibiscus. Flowers clung to the walls streaked with rain and stains of pale green moss. In front of the house was a large camellia bush—covered with snow-white blossoms.

There was a high iron fence all along the front yard and around the garden. In the center of this fence was a large grilled gate where the street vendors often stood clapping their hands to let us know they were there. These vendors brought me my first experience with Brazilian food. They would come, one after another, with their wares. There was a vegetable man, with his baskets of fresh and sometimes odoriferous vegetables carried from a long pole across his shoulders. And the fruit vendor, the fish peddler, the chicken man, each with his particular street call, his own type of basket and always a friendly smile. There was also the knifesharpener, the scissors-grinder, and the lace and hammock maker from the North and the trinket vendors. But, always the food interested me most.

It wasn’t long before I discovered in Brazil there is always a birthday or a baptism to celebrate and this could never be observed properly without a fat chicken or two, roasted Carioca style, with plenty of toasted mandioca meal (farofa); heaping platters of delicate pastas, thick pieces of Brazilian-style roast beef and a broad variety of the famous Brazilian doces (sweets).

Being from a family of food caterers, I was fascinated at the wide variety of tasty Brazilian dishes and the care with which they were prepared. I discovered early that there was no such thing as “fast food” in Brazil, and our maid, Maria, would spend hours marinating, resting, chilling, warming and basting our nightly family meal.

There is a saying in Brazil that the blacker the cook, the better the food. This goes back to the early days of slavery in Brazil, when African men and women were considered the finest cooks in the land. They introduced many African recipes into the Portuguese diet and today they are an important part of the Brazilian fare.

Later came the Europeans—the Italians with their pastas, the French with their sauces and gravies, the German’s with their smoked and roasted meats, and finally, the Asians with their vegetables and fish. From this great mix of culinary delights emerged a true Brazilian bill of fare, and my enthusiasm for learning more about how to prepare these dishes was only matched by my burning desire to learn the Portuguese language and more about this fascinating country and her people.

I remember the morning I decided to learn how to cook the Brazilian way. I went into the kitchen, and told Maria, in my “kitchen Portuguese”, that I had come to learn how to cook like a Brazilian. She giggled, and told me to just watch and I would learn.

Actually, it was probably our two young sons—John and David—who inspired me to learn as much as anyone. They were already great fans of Maria and one of their favorite pastimes was to be in the kitchen about dinner-time while Maria spoiled them with delicious tastes of this and that. I went to the kitchen almost every morning to watch, and eventually to experiment myself. I learned to cook by feel like the Brazilians do. Never did Maria give me any exact measurements. It was always an adventure and a miracle to me to see the ingredients come together into a delicacy that my proud husband and children would hungrily devour.

As my Portuguese improved and my confidence increased, Brazilian cooking became more and more of a challenge to me. Our dear friends, knowing of my interest in their country and their cooking, would save a special recipe for weeks to be able to hand it to me personally and explain any questions that I might have. There was Aunt Lourdes’s Shrimp in a Pumpkin, Uncle Luiz Menezes’ rock salt barbecue, Cousin Marina’s Orange Coconut Pudding. I soon came to the conclusion that if our old Brazilian friend was right about drinking Brazilian water, and we think he was—it must also be true about Brazilian food.

As part of my husband’s responsibility as a correspondent for United Press International, we had the unique opportunity to travel extensively throughout Brazil. I discovered what my husband already knew—that Brazilian food, in its great variety and contrast, is not unlike the country and the Brazilian people themselves. They say you can tell a great deal about people from what and how they eat, their way of life, even some of their hopes and dreams. If we have grown to love Brazilian cuisine over the past forty-three years, it is partly because we have developed such a deep affection for the Brazilian people. I suppose it could even be the other way around.

All Brazilians love a party. If no reason can be found for a celebration, Brazilians will manage to invent one. As part of the Brazilian story could be told through an understanding of her food and culinary customs, so could part of it be told in knowing and understanding her music. The “samba,” like Brazilian food, was born of innovation. It is an important part of the rich to mix, as is the famous Brazilian Carnival and so many other popular feasts and celebrations in this country. The happy spirit of the Brazilians seems to stimulate them in everything they do, and not even their recent surge toward industrialization can seem to kill this almost primitive force—this great joy of living, which is shared in Brazil by rich and poor alike.

I suppose it would be impossible to trace the origins of this unique approach to life—to living, as Brazilians represent nearly every race, creed and people. But, one thing is certain; it is highly contagious. The most serious minded European emigrant will become “Brazilianized” after only a few months in the country.

The Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500 to find Native Americans that occupied the country for thousands of years. Then Africans were brought over as slaves. Then came the French and the Dutch—both attracted by Brazil’s climate. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, emigrants from many different European and Asian nations had chosen Brazil as their new home. All of them merged and fused in Brazil. The African became less African, the Indian less Indian, the European less European, the Asian less Asian. But, they all became more Brazilian, and thus, a new nation was born, with all of her unclassifiable racial, social and cultural characteristics.

Most of our family living time in Brazil was spent in São Paulo, where the great mix is most evident. But, we never tire in traveling throughout the country—north and south—east and west—, in what has become our family’s Brazilian obsession to learn more and more about our adopted country and her people.

Although now, in much of Brazil, the restful rustle of sugar cane and the soft murmur of a wild forest are drowned out by the roar of truck convoys, and bulldozers, there is still so much there which will really never change. In fact, there is timelessness about certain aspects of Brazilian life. No matter how busy things become, Brazilians always seem to have time for things they care about—good talk with friends, family gatherings, weekends and vacations in the country or at the beach, and, of course, always great food. Even Brazil’s poor seem to have this unusual knack for living. Just when things become intolerable for them, Carnival appears, or a soccer championship, or a family marriage or baptism, and its time again to celebrate and live.

Between the thriving cities of the coastal areas and the vast Amazon basin at the base of the Andes, there are still vast stretches of hinterland where the old, traditional way is still the only way. We have learned to love this. So many times we have traveled through the rain-drenched countryside, smelling so sweet and fresh—or in the mist of the blue-green jungle mountains, or along the banks of winding, ponderous rivers—or across grassy plains. How often have we walked hand in hand down silver-sand beaches in the flaming sunset of the Brazilian autumn? This too is Brazil to us. It is the Brazil we will always remember, and as I now think back on these priceless moments, I am sometimes overwhelmed with saudades—the Brazilian word for deep nostalgia.

There is the Japanese emigrant farmer who came to Brazil barely a dozen years ago, selling his lush produce at the São Paulo midnight market. There is the son of the Italian emigrant, tall, self-assured, in the Italian cut suit on his way to a business meeting to discuss financing for another 5,000 homes to be built somewhere in the interior of the state. There is the traditional Portuguese-Brazilian shopkeeper whose forefathers came to São Paulo with the founding Bandeirantes. There is the Samaritan Hospital, where our children were born. This fine old hospital, was founded by Dr. Job Lane, a direct descendent of the Confederate colonists who came to Brazil following the Civil War.

We found and continued to patronize good restaurants everywhere. La Papote was at the top of our list with its superb French-Brazilian fare. There we spent so many quiet evenings with good friends, dining on incredible dishes, discussing Brazilian politics, maids, each other’s children and food.

I had the fortunate experience to be carefully led by the hand and heart, by a loving husband, into this new and fascinating world of Brazil. It is our humble desire to lead you into this same world, a step at a time, a recipe at a time.

Since I first traveled to Brazil, in 1958 with my husband of only sixteen months, and my new five-month-old son, and lived there for seven years, we have returned once or twice a year to Brazil. Our daughter, her husband and one of our granddaughters will accompany us this time. Each trip we take a couple of family members so that they can renew their love for Brazil, or get to know it for the first time. Once again, we will have the opportunity to meet with old friends, gather new information, search out new recipes and refine old ones, and just plain luxuriate in the exotic ambient of our Brazil.

If what the Brazilians say is true, that “God is a Brazilian, and the angels speak Portuguese.” I wonder if there might not be something to this, then maybe He also had something to do with teaching them how to live—and, even more specifically, how to cook.

More Recipes from the A Taste of Brazil Cookbook:
Acknowledgments
An Adventure In Brazilian Cooking
Brazilian Ingredients
The Authors: Rose Maurine Neeleman
The Authors: Gary John Neeleman