pictured: crunchy goodness
It’s interesting to notice that most of the posts I’ve published so far mainly focus on Italian food, considering that my official nationality is Brazilian. That kinda got me thinking about my gastronomical – and cultural – roots.
Our family moved from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Torino, Italy, when I was 6 and my brother was 3. I do have some interesting food memories that come from before the big move, like begging my mom for carrot soufflè (really, I LOVED carrots as a kid and still love them today) and telling my mom I might be getting a cold soon just to get to drink my grandma’s medicinal honey-guaco syrup.
My brightest childhood food memories, however, are from the years we spent in Italy. There my taste buds found a whole new exciting world waiting to be explored. I have fond memories of vitello tonnato (roasted veal, thinly sliced and covered with a creamy mayo-like sauce, flavored with anchovies, lemon, cayenne and tuna), roast rabbit, salmon ravioloni from our favorite handmade pasta shop downtown, artichokes, asparagus, porcini mushrooms, eggplants, bagna càuda (a typical Piemontese dish, consisting of a thick and richly flavored garlic, olive oil, butter and anchovies paste, served and consumed like fondue, with a wide variety of raw and cooked vegetables for dipping) and much, much more.
However, I also have many fond memories of our yearly trips to Brazil for Christmas and New Years: palm hearts, guaraná, my grandma’s perfect pudim de leite (a brazilian version of crème caramel), green coconut water, the abundant seafood, pão de queijo, coxinha and most of all the huge huge huge Christmas and New Years dinners at grandma’s place, where each one of my aunts and uncles brought a different, delicious, home-cooked dish.
Had we not moved to Italy I would probably have a very different – and maybe less adventurous – taste in food. Maybe I wouldn’t like change that much. Maybe after my college graduation I wouldn’t have felt the urge to live in a different country that eventually brought me to Germany. Maybe.
I’ll always be torn between Italy and Brazil. This post’s recipe is a really really simple brazilian side dish that, in my food memories, binds together my two countries: farofa. While living in Italy all of us, but especially my mom and dad, craved brazilian food badly. Finding south american food in Italy during the 90′s wasn’t such an easy task (no online shops!), but eventually they found a small african grocery downtown that sold most of the food they missed.
Cassava flour was one of the Brazilian specialties sold at the shop, and the main ingredient for farofa. Its slightly sour taste and crunchy texture makes it quite unique, and its flexibility makes it a staple even in a country as big and diverse as Brazil. It’s a traditional side dish for wet preparations such as bean stews, like feijoada. It’s great eaten with steak, as the flour mixes itself up with the meat juices, resulting in a beefy, crunchy side. Prepared with chopped raisins, bananas and nuts – especially Brazil nuts or cashew nuts – it can be used as stuffing for roast poultry (it will surely impress your guests on Thanksgiving!). Starting from a simple base of toasted manioc flour, you can pretty much do anything with it. More than a recipe, this is just a set of loose guidelines that you can tweak as you please, according to your tastes and needs.
UPDATE: if you’re in the US you can easily buy manioc flour from Amigo Foods (available both plain and toasted). In Germany also plain and toasted flours are available through Vicios Brasileiros. I usually go for plain as I think it’s more flexible.
Farofa
serves 4 as a side. Gluten free.
400 gr. of manioc flour (I like the coarse type better, but others are fine too)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 onion, thinly sliced (I tend to omit this part because Pedro hates onions)
cubed bacon or thinly sliced smoked sausage (optional: for a vegetarian version just omit this part)
about 4 tbsp of olive oil or butter
salt to taste
Heat up the oil or butter in a large skillet or wok. Add the sausage or bacon and let the fat render a bit on low-medium heat, then let it crisp up and brown a bit to develop all those lovely flavors. Add the onion and sauté on medium heat until slightly caramelized. Add the garlic and sauté until golden brown. Turn up the heat to high, add the flour and stir continuously until it’s slightly browned and crunchy. Add salt to taste.
Additional flavorings:
A basic farofa is nothing more than manioc flour, lightly toasted in some kind of fat (hmmm… must try duck fat). With this in mind, you can substitute the ingredients above or add some more flavorings. The most popular ones are:
Toasted nuts, especially Brazil and cashew (a personal favorite!)
Slices of banana (added after cooking)
Raisins
Scrambled eggs
Prunes (great with bacon farofa)
Sliced olives
… and whatever tickles your fancy. Enjoy!
