Alemeda dos Acarás, 23

I miss our house in Brazil. As you can see in the pictures, it was a good looking place, and the perfect size for the three of us. Actually, it was spacious for us - it had 4 bedrooms, 4-1/2 baths with a jacuzzi in the master bath, large den, huge kitchen, maid's quarters, pool, sauna, deck, attached patio BBQ area (my favorite spot in the house), and was easily 3x as large as our house here. The details were top of the line too - exotic hardwood floors and tons of closet space. The living room had slider doors to the deck, and with the doors open, it had a great "bringing the outdoors in" feeling.


Like all the other houses in the development, it was walled off on three sides, the only open side was to the street. This gave the backyard a more private feel, but considering the house next door had bedroom windows that directly overlooked our pool area, and the incessant barking of their pack of dogs, you couldn't completely block out the rest of the world. We were lucky though to have no neighbors behind us - behind us was the common park, tennis courts, BBQ area, and playground - so I believe it was one of the best locations in the development.

The pool and sauna were great. My wife took care of the pool cleaning and chlorinating duties; she liked the challenge. There were plenty of palm trees and other exotic flora around to make the backyard a great place to hang out. In the mornings, hummingbirds were usually drinking from the birds-of-paradise plants. Little lizards were everywhere.





Other houses in the neighborhood were just as nice. Our friends lived across the street in this house. We spent a lot of time over there, enjoying some of Brazil, Chile, and Austria's finest beverages.


Having a comfortable house to live in made the Brazilian expat experience all the more enjoyable for us.

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.