The assortment of unheard of fresh fruits, vegetables and roots that the indigenous people incorporated into their meals astonished the first of the Portuguese colonists arriving to Brazil in the early 16th Century. But the most widely used of these exotic foods was the yuca. The yuca was used to make a kind of flour which was then mixed with water and a stock to make a paste called 'el pirão', which was used to thicken various dishes. They also used yuca to make 'tortillas de beijus' - tapioca tortillas - similar to the ones we serve in our Tapioka Brazilian restaurant Barcelona today, with the addition of mozzarella cheese, ham or pumpkin flowers.
Game meats were the other prominent feature of the diet, especially pork, venison and cuts from smaller animals such as pacas and antas. Fishing - for fish, mollusk, and crustaceans was done using a bow and arrow from a short distance. With its own ingredients and techniques, the indigenous cuisine formed the root of Brazilian cooking and passed on authenticity with the yuca as the primary ingredient that is included in most of the dishes.
With the arrival of the slaves from Africa, they added their ingredients to the food such as palm oil and couscous, fruits, fish, game, sweetcorn, potato and other vegetables. During the nineteenth and twentieth Century, large amounts of immigrants from Europe and Japan settled in Brazil and they too added elements from their cuisine, giving the diet even more variety.
With the incorporation of so many diverse elements, Brazilian cookery became recognized as being among the world's best. The techniques used in the preparation of the most commonly used ingredients are naturally of indigenous origin and suffered adaptations by the slaves and the Portuguese. These adjustments were made to the traditional dishes by substituting any missing ingredients with local ingredients that were easier to obtain. The traditional Brazilian meat and bean stew 'feijoada' is an example of this.
This most Brazilian dish has its exact origin in the sugar mills where the slaves took advantage of the parts of the pig which were not used by the Portuguese masters. They added them to their black bean soup creating the very tasty and nutritious feijoada. Additionally, 'Cachaca' a rum made from sugar cane was also created by the slaves during their work to process the sugar canes. Noticing that steam from the heaters would condense and drip - pingava - from the ceiling, they applied their creativity and produced alcohol. Hence the popular name 'Ping' as the Cachaca is known in Brazil.
Originally from Brasilia, Eduardo Maritim Oliveira is the owner of Tapioka restaurante Brasileño Barcelona. He has a passion for Brazilian cooking and is delighted to be sharing its diverse, exciting flavors in his chic Brazilian restaurant in Barcelona, Spain.
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