The Cuisine - As I see it

One of the exciting aspeccts of traveling in South America is the food,or so we've always heard. Its been a mixed bag! The food in Brasil is interesting.

Breakfast is great! Breads, cheese, mortadella (a kind of ham), spreads and tons of fresh fruit. Great coffee, and juices. Who can complain!

As can be expected luch or dinner is basically a lot of beans, in dark shades of purple, in an interesting sauce, a little different from what we make in India, lots of rice or Aroz as they call it, once again just a little different from our rice. They cook it with some stuff thrown in , not just plain simple rice. Mandioca, something we have never seen is a key ingredient. Mandioca is a root, I think, looks like sweet potato, but tastes nothing like it. The Brasilian will use Mandioca in all forms in every meal. Dryed mandioca powder is always dropped on top of the rice and beans combo. I disked it because it kind of dries out the food too much and has a sand like texture...I can see my Brasilian friends waiting to have a go at me for that comment. Lots of fresh fish, meat, not too overly flavoured, but nice enough to make it great. They also eat a lot of vegetables like brocolli, spinach so all in all a nice mix. Lots of coconut in everything so I'm generally a happy man.
Before the meal you eat a starter that is a kind of pie. It is just fantastic! The one I really enjoyed was a crab meat mixed with some herbs. Really exciting flavours and texture. They also do the pastels. These are large samosas with either meat, ham, sea food, or chicken inside. Often time you have the option of adding queso or cheese, or you can get pastels that have only cheese. The cheese is pretty good too, not the same as Italy maybe but nice enough.

The best part of the Brasilian cuisine is fruit! The freshest, most exotic fruits especially in the form of Jugo or juice. The mangoes are huge, 3 times the size of the biggest mango you'll find in India, and a juice is 2 mangoes simply run through a blender, divine, and inexpensive. Sugarcane juice, or jugo de cana, is a another favourite! A tad too sweet for me but since no sugar is added, you have to respect the drink.

Desert is either portuguese as in fantastic caramel custard they call flan, or coconut based. They have this fantastic desert that is basically acai (a local very popular fruit), coconut shavings, lots of sweet syrupy stuff poured on top. Again too sweet but very very interesting.

Drinking in Brasil, is generally kept simple, Beer or Casacha. The beer really sucks except for one called Bohemia which is barely decent, and otherwise the beer our friends Ronaldo , Thiago and team brew(fantiastic beers). He will take over the beer market if he puts his beer out into the marklet. As someone with some advertising background, i have suggested the naked girl on a horse commercial (will need to get the rights from Ali G) to hit TV stations just before the world cup. Any ideas that could work better will be listened to and evaluated carefully.

Casacha is something else. They have all kinds of flavours and mixes so it is tough to really commnet on the Casacha itself. get you nice and drunk quite quicky, no hangover so thats a good drink for me. Without any mixers or falvours, I did not love it!

Oh yeah, last but not least is the Brazilian love for Chocolate milk ! Funily enough I think this love overpowers even their love for coffee. Full grown adults will drinks litres of the stuff. NESCAU is the favoured brand! So Yannick fit in completely.

Now we get to Argentianian food - meat...meat...and well, meat! Well done, very well done! Great meat by itself, the beef is the best but man its boring! No seasoning, sauce or veges to go with it, nor do they eat fruits. Pasta is their second staple, only its overcooked and the sauces are generally runny. Breakfast is sweet and basically non existant. Their all time favourite is Dulce de Leche, or a form of super sweet condensed milk. They do have an interesting biscuit/sweet called alfagor and they do make some decent empanadas or baked samosa like snacks with a filling. In Patagonia, its not beef but lamb that is favoured. Once again the meat itself is really good, but the preparations aren't very creative. Not terribly exciting but not bad! Basically the Argentinian philosophy to food is why waste space on eating anything other than meat. Exciting as a thought but very soon it gets downright boring. I believe on average an Argentinian male could easily eat 500 g of assado or grilled meat for one meal!

Not to put down Argentinian food, but it isn't something for a palate that is used to a lot of seasoning and flavour. We did have a great meal including the best steak *in terms of the quality of the meat) that I've had at DesNivel in BA that included a great provolone starter, ate great fusion food at a Effimero Festine , a friend Carolina's restaurant, but all that was not really enough for us to feel too excited about the general cuisine.