Brazilian cuisine

It began as most 'ethnic food movements' hacercon - with small restaurants in the neighborhoods where immigrants settled, diners and lunchrooms and tea rooms opened by those who wanted to offer a taste of home to their fellow émigrés. Chinese, Italian, Middle Eastern, Thai - from family-run bars, the cuisine spread as those outside the cultures of the 'neighborhood' they learned of the good food and the word. The latest 'new cuisine' that is spreading like wildfire is Brazilian - a delicious blend of three different cultures that comes together in dishes and delicacies that are not found anywhere else in the world.

To understand the cuisine of Brazil, one must understand a little of its history. The base of Brazilian cuisine in its native roots - the foods that maintain the native Brazilians, cassava, yams, fish and meat - but it bears the stamp of two other peoples as Portuguese who came to conquer and stayed and African slaves they brought with them to work on the sugar plantations. Brazilian cuisine today is a perfect amalgam of the three influences that interweave in a unique and totally Brazilian style.

The staples of the Brazilian diet are meat, seafood and root vegetables. Manioc, cassava derived, is the 'flour' of the region and eaten in one form or another in almost every meal. The bitter cassava is poisonous in its raw state, but when prepared properly, cassava produce farinha and tapioca, bases for many dishes of the region. The Portuguese influence shows in the rich egg bread and sweet served at almost every meal and fish dishes and seafood 'fruits de mer' mixed with coconut and other native fruits and vegetables. One of these is the national dish, bobo de camarao, a delicious blend of fresh shrimp in a puree of dried shrimp, cassava flour (cassava), coconut milk and nuts, flavored palm oil called dende.

Is the African influence is felt most, but - as is expected of those working in the kitchens. Pineapple and coconut milk, shredded coconut and palm hearts worked their way into everyday dishes, flavoring meat, shrimp, fish, vegetables and bread. Brazilian food, unlike the cuisines of many of the surrounding countries, favors the hottest sweet, and more than any other South American cuisine, it carries the flavor of tropical island breezes rather than the hot desert wind.

The most common ingredients in Brazilian cuisine are cassava, coconut, palm oil, black beans and rice. Features cod-cod - in many dishes derived from the Portuguese, but flavored with typical Brazilian insouciance with coconut cream and pistachio nuts it becomes an entirely different food. It is typical of the attitude toward food - an expression of a warm and open people to whom feeding and sharing food is the basis of the Brazilian hospitality. Brazilian cuisine is like its people - all are welcome, all are welcome and all make their mark - without ever contributions others overwhelming.