Tasting Brazil: Regional Recipes and Reminiscences
Brazil is better known for its beaches, festivals and rain forests than for its food. Moreover, claims food and travel writer Harris ( Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons ), the nation's "supercosmopolitan cities, Rio and Sao Paulo . . . have been so influenced by tourism and by the tastes of the rich that it is only by staying a while and scratching the surface that the visitor can see what the food is really like." Unearthing the best from what she calls "the land of meat and potatoes" here brings rewards: such characteristically Brazilian specialties as a chili and lime sauce, and several versions of malagueta pepper sauce, serve as the complements to the grilled meats and fish that form the basis of Brazilian cooking. A selection of fancifully named, luscious sweets include avocado ice cream (in Brazil, the avocado most frequently appears as a dessert) and a confection known as "maiden's drool" because, according to the author, the dessert so tempts young girls that they "drool with delight." Fruity cocktails appear as well. Harris reflects her knowledge of both Brazilian and American markets with a lengthy list of unusual ingredients, and provides substitutions for supersaturated but taste-laden palm oil, as familiar to Brazilian cooking as the ubiquitous malagueta pepper, but repellent to health-conscious Americans.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.