Turkey

Here in the US, it's Thanksgiving. This is our first Thanksgiving in the States since 2003. One year ago today we were exploring Macchu Picchu, Peru. Perhaps ironically, "peru" in Portuguese means turkey.

Two years ago, we celebrated Thanksgiving at our home in Sao Jose dos Campos. For probably the first time in my career, I was working on Thanksgiving day. I followed the Brazilian holiday schedule while working there of course, which turns out to me more lucrative in terms of days out of the office compared to the US schedule. My Brazilian co-workers often refered to Thanksgiving as "the most important holiday for the US". It's hard to say if it's the most important, but certainly does signify a time where familes and friends get together, eat copious amounts of food, and generally enjoy a few days off from work.

We were able to have a mostly authentic Thanksgiving day dinner in Brazil - the only table standard we were not able to find was cranberry sauce. There are no cranberries in Brazil as far as I was able to ascertain. (Blueberries were equally hard to come by, although someone did once tell me they spotted them in Sao Paulo) Beyond this realitively minor setback, we had just about everything else you probably had, or are going to have, today.

As for the turkey, we cooked what is known in Brazil as a "chester", which is either the same as turkey or some subspecies of turkey, I could never quite figure that out. But, it tastes like turkey nonetheless. Regular turkey is called "peru", but this bird they called "chester". Either way, it was tasty, and when cooked just right, comes out looking like this.
We had all the other standards: mashed potatoes, corn and other assorted veggies; I made some bread in our "Breadman" bread maker; salad; and a good bottle of Chilean wine.


Happy Thanksgiving.

Rio 22 - Restaurant Review

It's time for a new feature of Formerly Live from Brazil: Restaurant Reviews. In particular, you guessed it, Brazilian-themed restaurants. This past weekend, we found out about a Brazilian BBQ-style restaurant that recently opened up in Union NJ, off of Route 22. It's called Rio 22. Having been to quite a few authentic Brazilian BBQ restaurants (I've been meaning to post about these churrascaria restaurants as a topic here on FLFB, but haven't had the chance yet), my review will be based on comparing this restaurant to the real thing.

Atmosphere: Rio 22 has an upscale setting, very comfortable, clearly the kind of place to which you can bring a bunch friends, family, or co-workers and not have to worry about being too loud. This is similar to the ones I remember from Brazil. In some ways, it reminded me of "Porcão" from Rio de Janeiro, so I guess their name fits. Rio22 even had the red/green coasters on the tables to alert your waiter about your receptiveness to more meat.

Salad Bar: Conceptually, very similar. In fact, the layout of the salad bar was nearly identical, with various salads and plates of side-dishes arrayed around the circumference of a large table. The majority of the dishes were not the same as in Brazil, they were more reflective of local favorites. They did have a few fish-dishes (cod fish salad, and something with little octopuses), rice and beans, and chicken strogonoff which can be found in every Brazilian BBQ. I missed the sushi rolls, although Rio 22 has an entire Sushi bar to choose from - just not included with the salad bar (at least that I saw).

Appetizers: Every Brazilian BBQ lays out some appetizers on the table to go with the meal, typically fried bananas, Pão de queijo , french fries, bread, yams, small salgados stuffed with meat, and rice. Rio 22 had similar - french fries, onion rings, fried bananas, and I was happy to see pão de queijo . Very authentic pao de qeuijo, I might add. I hadn't had one of these in a while. Yum.

Drinks: They had imported Brahma. (See "Cervejas" below). I had a couple, but not a bucket. We didn't get any caipirinhas, but I imagine you could get a good one here.

Meat: Mmmmm. Meat. That about says it all. The never-ending, table-served meat included: top sirloin, filet mignon wrapped in bacon, roast beef, flank steak, chicken, lamb, and picanha. A real Atkins lover's dream, and your cardiologist's nightmare. I have been craving picanha ever since my BBQ post. I even stopped in at a local butchershop to ask for it, and they looked at me like I was from Mars. I just saw on Wikipedia that it's called "rump cover" in the US, so maybe I'll try that next time, although, if that's not what it's called, I'll get strange looks asking for that too. Rio 22's was a real treat, and it was excellent. It was really, really good to have this again. Another authentic touch was having farofa and vinaigrette salsa at the table for dipping or topping the meat, respectively.

Coffee: I had a good expresso after the meal, which tasted authentic.

Price. This is the most noteable difference. In Brazil, dinner for two at the local Rodizio always wound up costing about R$100 - including drinks and dessert. (roughly US$35 - US$50, depending on the exchange rate at the time). Here, it was about that much for 1 person. So, roughly 2x-3x the price. It's a bit of an unfair comparison though since meat, fish, and the going rate for cooks and waiters is less expensive in Brazil. For the price, the value you get is more than comparable to a night out at a good restaurant, if not more so given that it's all you can eat.

Recommendation: If you are curious about Brazilian BBQ, definately check Rio 22 out. If you know me, and would like to go, let me know and we'll plan a night. We went on a Sunday afternoon, so I didn't experience the nightlife. I have the feeling Friday or Saturday night would be a fun time to go, judging at least by the size and layout of the bar, and the drink specials.

If you go, let me know if you agree with my recommendation.

Cervejas

While in Brazil, I was fortunate enough to sample some of the local brews. Well, "sample" might be understating it. Brazilian beer is good. Really good, in fact. The beer is always served at the perfect beer temperature - just to the point when little ice-crystals start floating around in the glass. Refreshing, crisp, and delicious.

My favorite local bar was "Dekave", just around the corner from our house. I would say about once a month or so, when we had had just about enough of work for the week, a good friend and his wife, and Sweetie and I would head over to Dekave for a few "baldes de cerveja" (Buckets or beer). Picture this...a shiny aluminum bucket, filled with ice; and nestled snugglely in the middle of their ice blanket are 4 or 5 cold, cold beers. The waiter pours the beer into your glass with skill to leave the perfect head on top. Drink. Repeat. The waiters have this style there of instinctively knowing when your glass is about 1/3 empty, and as if on autopilot, come over to top of your glass. By the time this has happened a half a dozen times, you have no idea how many bottles of beer you have consumed. Oh, well. When the bill comes, you'll have some idea, if you can still perform long division at that point. We all had a lot of fun at Dekave, and although I don't remember every night, some of my fondest memories from Brazil are of those good times, just letting the hours drift by with just the right mix of friends, conversation, and beer. Sadly, Dekave closed her doors a few months before we left Brazil, but given our friends had left Brazil as well, it wasn't the same anyways.

The beer we drank was mostly Bohemia. It's one of the most popular beers in Brazil. Brazil doesn't seem to have the limitless variety of micro beers you can find here, but you won't be disappointed by their mass produced varieties. All are much better in my opinion than beers like Budweiser, Miller, or Coors. I would say the lowest on my Brazil list would be akin to an Amstel Light in quality. I'm not a beer classifying expert, but I believe they were all lagers. Also, there is no such thing as a "light" beer in Brazil. "Light" and "Dark" only refer to the color, not calorie count.

My list of favorites:
1. Bohemia - best taste, generally slightly more pricey than the rest, but worth it.
2. Antartica - great taste, seemed to have more of a "kick" than the others.
3. Brahma
4. Skol - at first I didn't like this one, but it grew on me. It's one of the cheaper beers too.
5. Honorable mention: Xingu. Xingu ("Shin-goo") is a dark beer, almost sweet in flavor, it's not one to drink if you plan on drink more than a few in a night, but once in a while it hit the spot.

"Imports" in Brazil are not as popular. You could find imported Budweiser at Wal*Mart, but since I won't touch the stuff here, I couldn't imagine drinking it there. Heineken could also be found, and actually for cheaper than you can in the US (there's apparently a Heineken brewery somewhere in Brazil). There was a German beer, Erdinger , that could be found somewhat widespread in town. It was quite expensive compared to the others, but it was really the only imported beer we drank while there. (Side note, I found this beer today at the local liquor store and bought a 6-pack. Funny that a German beer would be the catalyst for this post about Brazil).

Here are some beer commercials from Brazil. TV in general is quite a bit more revealing than the US (see post on Boa Noite, Brazil), but these are tame and should not offend my more sensitive readers.

These are in Portuguese, so if you don't speak it, you may have some trouble getting the jokes. But, the visuals should be enough to give you the idea. The first two are my favorites.

Basic premise of the first one: This guy goes to eye doctor because everything he sees is square (square used as a metaphor for routine, ordinary, plain). After drinking a Skol beer, he begins to see circles everywhere - it's a miracle! The lovely eye doctor's assistant says "no...not again...he's cured".

In the second one, another guy, hearing about the good fortune of his buddy, tries his luck at the eye doctor's, pretending not to see circles. However, the lovely assistant is on vacation, so a different assistant is on duty. Hilarity ensues. At the end, he says to the lovely model, "Dona Carminha, come back from vacation, for the good of science!" Well, maybe it looses something in translation...

Enjoy.

BBQ, Part II

The last time I posted the picanha had just hit the BBQ, and was cooking nicely. As you can tell from some of the pictures, the BBQ itself is much different than the propane grill type we are accustomed to. It's more similar to a pit-type BBQ.
Behind the grill area, is a wall of bricks with 21 holes each across their face. These holes form a grid-like pattern, and with a couple of adjustable height cross-bars in front, you have the ability to easily adjust the food's location with respect to the heat. This is why there are do many different types of skewers, to accommodate how to best support and position the food. I was better able to control the cooking with this setup, versus my propane grill in NJ.

Now that you know the secret to how the meat was cooked, here are the rest of the details on the picanha. After it chars on both sides a bit, take the meat off the fire and scrape the excess salt off (this is a trick that Pupio, the butcher from the butchershop I mentioned previously, taught me). Then, back to the flame. It took about 45 minutes or so to thoroughly cook a big picanha like this one - but worth every minute of the wait.

The taste of the picanha was really moist, tender, and flavorful. The natural taste of the meat - remember, no fancy sauces here. Can you really tell the difference in taste based on where the beef was from? Absolutely. The meat from Brazil was great, don't get me wrong. Brazil is known for their beef, and I can see why. But, the Argentinian was really special.

So, there you have it. That was a typical Sunday night in Brazil. I usually fired the BBQ up around 4pm, and we'd sit outside and have some quality time by the pool, maybe drinking some Bohemia's or Caipirinhas (look for these in other posts), just soaking it all in.

To bring it all together, here's a quick video.



Click here for FULL SCREEN.

Backyard BBQ

As I started back on Atkins again this week after putting on the "Re-Patriation 10", I've been eating a lot of beef lately. Beef - they say that Americans eat too much meat...obviously "they" have never been to Brazil. Brazilians have some very strong meat-related traditions, and the preferred style is BBQ. I'm sure in another post I'll deal with "Churrascarias", the Brazilian BBQ restaurants. (You've probably seen ads for ones in Dallas while perusing through the magazine conveniently provided in the seat back in front of you.) In this post, I'm going to guide you through what became a near weekly ritual for us - cooking BBQ in the beautiful BBQ pit on our gorgeous indoor/outdoor back patio.

This photo only shows the BBQ pit area, which was great in itself; I'll have to find some more pictures of the whole patio area. It really was my favorite room in the house. On weekend mornings, I would often just sit out there, relaxing, watching the hummingbirds stick their darty-beaks into the Bird of Paradise plants, and thinking "You don't see that in Jersey". I miss it.

Back to the BBQ routine...

A very popular cut of beef in Brazil is called "picanha" (pee-con-nhya). It's a cut you don't get at the ShopRite here, but, hey, it's all from the same beast. This particular cut comes from somewhere near the back end, I won't get too specific. Follow the link. I used to buy Argentinian beef from this great butcher shop in town. Good quality meats are about 1/3 of the price of here, much more than that if you consider that I got TOP quality beef at unbelievable prices. The piece like the one below probably set me back about R$25 - roughly $10. Imagine.

1. First Step: Buy the essentials. The Meat and coarse salt. And, of course, charcoal made from eucalyptus trees.



2. Fill the BBQ pit with the charcoal, and light. Usually the lighting involved copious amounts of alcohol-gel to get it going. In reality, if I had the patience, I could have used one bottle per year of the stuff vs. the bottle that went up in flames every two weekends.

3. Prepare the meat. The style here is minimalistic - no fancy BBQ sauces, no spicy rubs, or "secret" sauces - just meat and salt. Instructions. Cover meat with salt. Pat. Let stand. (for those with high BP, don't worry, the salt comes off later).





4. Choose the skewer. I had many to pick from: Single skewer, Double Skewer, or the "clam shell". I usually went with the clamshell for picanha - the skewer ones poked holes in the meat and I figured would let the moisture out. In the artsy-shot below, you can see the Bird-of-Paradise plant in the background, and our pool.


5. After clam-shelling, it's onto the pit. That's the picanha in the middle. I usually made some hotdogs for Edge, and a basket of mixed veggies, which you can see on the side.



This is getting to be a long post, and I'll admit that I am a bit frustrated with Bloggers ability to put the pictures where I want them without having to adjust the code. So, for now, I'll leave you full of anxiety as to what comes next for our dear picanha.

Coxinhas

I was thinking about the food that I miss from Brazil. For example, Brazil has a whole category of food not typically found here, at least not outside of a waiter-carried serving dish from the last wedding you went to. "Salgados". Salgados translates to little salty filled pastries, which is a good description. There are many types, generally all served warm, in all shapes and sizes, with fillings ranging from ground beef, chicken, shimp or heart-of-palm (Brazilians' love heart-of-palm, but I never acquired a taste for it). One kind in particular that I miss is called a "coxinha". A coxinha [pronounced "co-sheen-ya"]is shaped by hand to look like a pear, made of some-sort-of-potato, with shredded chicken inside then deep fried to a golden brown. Not exactly what a sane person would call healthly, but damn tasty nonetheless. The regular size ones are large enough for a between meal snack all by themselves, but there is a mini variety which can be eaten a dozen at a time. The soft potato insides gush out a bit when you bite into one, but that's part of the experience. They are sometimes also stuffed with shrimp or catupiri, Brazilian cream cheese, but I always got the chicken, aka "Coxinha de Frango".