brazilian lunch on Monday 3 May 2010

Finally - John R, a very good family friend of my brother PB, managed to pin down the Gogoi family for a Brazilian meal! Notice was only given on Sunday afternoon that we needed to be available for Monday lunch. Most of the food was cooked by Joelma, John's fiancee, in brother PB's house as he can accommodate all of us around the 'dining' table without any hassle. Eventually, we just ate in the kitchen - joined up another table and all thirteen of us sat down together. John had thought that there would be all eighteen of the clan but parents and brother AB and his family went off to Spain earlier in the day for some much needed sunshine. Bitu, our cousin also 'disappeared' to university in the morning.

On arrival at PB's house, the aroma drifting out into the Kent countryside was very enticing and intriguing. Opening the door to the kitchen, I was greeted by the sight of a huge black 'cauldron' simmering away on the hob. A black clay pot!

Big black clay cauldron

Brazilian menu do dia

Feijoado - black beans, pork and sausages stew

couve a mineira (spring greens with onions and garlic)

rice

orange salad

hot sauce (molho apimentado)

farofa (toasted cassava flour)

tomato and onion salsa with lime juice

finishing with passion fruit mousse

Started with some freshly made caipirinha with cachaca and fresh limes - lethal!

squeezing limes for caipirinha

Feijoado

Feijoado, the national Brazilian dish, is a stew made with black beans and many different cuts of pork and a variety of sausages. The cauldron had been simmering away from early morning and the meat was butter tender. Most of the ingredients were sourced from a Brazilian shop in Brixton in London. A variety of sausages - fresh, dried and smoked went into the pot together with different cuts of pork - spare ribs, shoulder and belly. About five kilos of meat apart from the sausages! Daresay the addition of bones and the long slow simmering accounted for the delicious gravy. Joelma was unable to give me exact quantities but enough was made for twenty people!!!

Recipe for Feijoada

Ingredients (for about twenty people)

about 2 kilos black beans, soaked for at least 24 hours and then drained

5 kilos pork meat - a mixture of pork spare ribs, shoulder meat and belly pork cut into large pieces

a variety of sausages - smoked, dried and fresh - all chopped up into pieces

a few onions, peeled and chopped roughly

a few cloves of garlic, chopped

a few bay leaves

a huge pot to fit in all the beans and meat and sausages

a sauté pan

Method

• Put the beans in a large pan, cover with cold water so that it remains submerged under at least four inches of water and bring it to the boil. Boil for about ten minutes.
• Add the meat and sausages to the pan together with the bay leaves. Bring to the boil and simmer for about two hours. Keep stirring from time to time and check the level of water, adding more as needed to keep the beans covered.
• Heat some oil in the sauté pan.
• Add the onion and garlic and cook until the onions are golden brown. Turn off the heat.
• Add about a cupful of the cooking beans to the onions and mash them up so that you get a thickish paste. Put this back into the big pot and simmer for another hour at least, adding more water as necessary. The mashed beans will thicken the gravy and the consistency will be very creamy.
• Taste for seasoning as the sausages are sometimes quite salty and will have released a lot of flavour into the stew. Remove the bay leaves.
• Serve with the accompaniments.

Couve a mineira - spring greens Brazilian style

Joelma rolled up some spring green leaves, and sliced through the 'sausage' for finely shredded spring greens for the couve a mineira which is normally made with collard greens. Ah well, adaptation. Not sure where in England one could get collard greens. But to the untrained palate, I guess there is not much difference between the two green vegetables. I watched Joelma as she cooked this at the last minute - once all the other dishes were ready. No measuring but cooks intuition which is why the recipes have leeway for adjustment to family liking.

Recipe for Couve a mineira - spring greens Brazilian style

Ingredients for many

bunch of spring greens, 'ribs' removed, washed and shredded finely into long spaghetti strips

1 onion, roughly chopped

2 cloves of garlic, mashed up in the pestle and mortar with a little sea salt

2 tbsp sunflower oil

salt to taste

Method

• Warm up the oil in a sauté pan. Add the onions and fry the onions for a few minutes until it becomes translucent.
• Add the garlic and stir it around for a few seconds.
• Add the spring greens and stir it around for a few seconds. The amount of greens will collapse as it wilts. Cover and cook for about ten minutes, stirring every few minutes.
• Add salt to taste.
• Remove from heat and tip into a serving bowl.

Recipe for tomato and spring onion salsa

vine ripened tomatoes

onion - red or white can be used

bunch of coriander, washed and chopped

glug of extra virgin olive oil

lime juice

sea salt to taste

freshly ground black pepper

No fixed quantities!!

Method

• Cut the tomatoes in half horizontally and deseed them. Chop into tiny cubes.
• Peel and chop the onion; red onion is good too.
• Mix the coriander with the chopped tomatoes and onions.
• Add the olive oil and lime juice with salt and pepper to taste.
• Mix well - a few rounds with the hand (clean one) ensures a good mixing.
• Tip into a serving bowl and there you have a freshly made salsa.

How different is this dish from an Assamese style salsa? Same ingredients but the olive oil is replaced by a pungent mustard oil and of course a couple of freshly chopped chillies is thrown into the melange.

Orange salad always reminds me of my childhood in Shillong and the winter holidays with my grandparents in Namti, Sibsagarh. We descended from Shillong to Assam mainly in winter as the weather in Assam was warmer than in Shillong. Grandparents had a wonderful orchard - a variety of fruit trees which bore fruit all year round. Of course, they grew these satsumas as well - called them 'humthiya' tenga. To save the oranges for us from the fruit eating bats and other predators, grandmother would protect the fruits by tying pieces of fine cotton cloth around each fruit!! I think that those satsumas were and are the best tasting in the world. In Shillong, they were bought in bamboo 'cages' and we would eat them with a voracious appetite. I can still picture me sitting on a 'murha' - a bamboo stool - out in the mid-day sun with a basketful of these fruits and some salt on a banana leaf and an Enid Blyton book or James Hadley Chase book ( does anyone still read these crime books nowadays? I have never seen them for sale in England). The oranges would be peeled ever so slowly as it was a challenge to peel without breaking off pieces of the skin. Father would peel his even more artistically - into a flower shape. The number of segments would be counted and if brothers or friends were around, we would count as to who ended up with the most number of segments in their orange treasure trove. Then each segment would have its skin removed so that the juice sacs were exposed. This precious segment would be dipped into the salt pot to be transferred slowly to the dribbling mouth. Heaven! One could make an orange last an awful long time this way. I still eat satsumas, clementines and oranges this way but with a sprinkling of sea salt flakes. Other citrus fruits found in Assam and the North-east of India specially the robab- tenga or pomelo taste fabulous this way with a sprinkling of finely chopped chillies - an explosion of tastes with the sweetness and the tartness of the fruit and the salt and chillies.

Recipe for orange salad, Brazilian style

oranges, peeled and sliced into rounds or half moons

sea salt

Arrange the slices on a serving plate and sprinkle with some salt just before serving. The most simple and wonderful tasting salad in the world. If you wish, drizzle some olive oil over the orange slices for a Mediterranean touch

dishing out the feijoado

In our family, we normally put the rice on the plate first followed by the other accompaniments. John told me that in Brazil it is considered unlucky to put the rice first on the plate - said that if you follow that procedure, one will never be wealthy. Hmmmm, now I know why I cannot retire to that lonely island in the sun or that remote village fenced in by the snow capped peaks of the Himalaya. . He started off with the feijoado then followed it by the rice. The plate was then given a good sprinkling of the farofa - toasted cassava flour. I tasted it - very nutty not unlike our Assamese handoi guri - toasted and ground rice!!! Only we do not normally sprinkle it on food - we eat it for breakfast with hot or cold milk and a good sprinkling of gur - jaggery - unprocessed cane sugar which looks like fudge!

The grand finale : Brazilian Passion fruit mousse

Egg free and gelatine free!!! not vegan though. And I am not endorsing any of the products - only meant to show the ingredients used and the quantity!! Method as interpreted by me on oral rendition by Joelma.

Ingredients for the mousse

evaporated milk - 1 can

passion fruit extract : 1 can equivalent, measured with the same can size as the evaporated milk

thick cream - 2 cans

Method

• Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.
• Chill in the fridge for a several hours.
• Serve

here's one that Joelma made earlier!

I suppose one could chill it out in individual portions - choice is yours. This is how Joelma did it. And I have been promised a bottle of the passion fruit extract on my next trip to London / Kent as I have never seen this product on sale in Yorkshire. Looking forward to it - got loads of ideas already buzzing around to experiment with this new found culinary gem.

Thank you John and Joelma for a fantastic lunch.

John and Joelma are getting married in a few days time. Congratulations! We will be celebrating together again when the reception is organised some time in July this year when John's sister and niece visit him all the way from Italy.