Wine is common, inexpensive and excellent in Chile and Argentina, while a wide variety of fresh fruit juices are available in tropical areas. Coconut is used to flavour fish and seafood, especially where there is a population of African origin such as in northeastern Brazil, the Caribbean and the northern Pacific coast of South America. Man has learned to adapt and extract food from the most diverse of environments. Potatoes are desiccated in the Bolivian altiplano to make chu o , by repeated freezing and thawing in order to squeeze out the water. A curious historical fact is that a number of today s Latin American delicacies where originally waste food, eaten by slaves and prepared from scraps that were considered unfit for general consumption.
Tamales are a good example, popular in most of the Spanish speaking countries.
They are made of corn flour with bits of chicken or meat and egg, steamed wrapped in banana or other leaves. Another example is feijoada , a Rio de Janeiro specialty and Brazil s national dish, traditionally savoured during a relaxed Saturday afternoon lunch. Entrees and snacks. Tamales as mentioned above. Humitas are similar to tamales, except that they are prepared with fresh ground corn and wrapped in the corn leaf.