If you go to Brazil and want to taste its local products and cuisine you must go to Brasil a Gosto in Sao Paulo. The chef, Ana Luiza Trajano goes to extreme lengths to bring the cooking of the various regions to the capital city and it is very successfully done. In addition to a wonderful dining room reflecting the artisanal arts of Brazil, a few times a year Chef Ana Luiza honors one of the its regions. She visits the region with a videographer and captures the locals cooking their cuisine to bring back for her menus while also filming the food harvested in its natural setting.
When I was at the restaurant earlier this month the northeast coastal region of Paraiba was being featured. On the wall videos of the region and its cooking methods were projected prominently in the dining room. Normally there would be a flat panel TV playing these images. However in a bow to aesthetics and Chef Trajano’s immaculate attention to detail, she had a wall papered with jungle vegetation, then strategically placed large rectangles where the vidoes seamlessly found a home despite being huge and projected. This makes it easy for the diners to see and quite frankly captivating to watch. It was wonderful to eat these new foods and at the same time see how they were harvested and then cooked locally. The menus themselves were handcrafted, so I could not take one to report to you all the wonderful dishes but ingredients included goat’s meat, lobster, dried beef, native cheeses and beef.
We started with the bartender’s suggestion of a jabuticaba caipirinha. The caipirinha is Brazil’s national cocktail, usually composed of cachaca (a liquor made from fermented sugarcane), sugar and lime. The jabuticaba berry was in season and we were given a plate of the walnut-sized fruit to taste. The berry’s taste was reminiscent of a tough skinned concord grape. It was a bit bitter, which proved a perfect foil to the sugary caipirinha.
The amuse plate had many fried offerings but I was captivated by the grilled native curd cheese, coalho, washed with a Brazilian molasses then speared on a skewer. The taste was so addictive, I could have made a dinner just of those!
For my main course I had to order the Amazonian fish pirarucu. It is a fresh water white fish. I commented to my Brazilian friends that it must be a huge fish because my filets were almost an inch thick. It was succulent, sweet and delcious. Yes, you should be jealous that I got to taste this delicacy.
Pirarucu
The desserts in Brazil are very sweet and very tropical. Coconut is one of the more dominent flavors. Here, we had a corn pudding flavored with tropical sugars and coconut. I can’t tell you had scrumptious it was. Obrigada Chef Ana Luiza!
And lived to type about it! Nathan Myhrvold was visiting The International Culinary Center and celebrating his masterpiece, Modernist Cuisine. He was playing around with a Vitamix, aerating wine (it works). He also gave real insights on common household products like Saran Wrap, which does no harm even when microwaved, however cheap PVC wraps do.
