The breathtaking Jura mountains...

My last post mainly talked about Ireland and was written from my parents’ house in France. Right now I’m writing about France, but my current location is my hometown of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Phew… after what seemed a never ending intense work cycle in January and February, we’re finally allowed to relax a bit and spend some time with our families and friends, so here I come blogging again. There’s so much to catch up here… in December we spent the holidays with my parents and brother in France. We celebrated Christmas in Geneva, Switzerland – they live right on the Swiss border – then we travelled to Paris for New Years and then we spent my birthday in Amsterdam. Needless to say, food was VERY RELEVANT during this whole trip. I might have material for a whole lot of blogs in the next days. Oh dear.

The thing is… I really, really love French food.

Now, by French food I don’t mean the unfortunate stereotype of posh restaurants and snobby waiters. Of course that French food can be very good too (although I think snobbery and food don’t fit together…). Anyway, here I’m talking about real, everyday food. Street food. Cafè food. The food you eat at your friend’s place. The recipes mothers teach their kids.

Every single time I go to France something that never ceases to impress me is the sincere passion these people put into their food. Their ability to make something as simple as a baguette so amazingly delicious. Each little detail shows how much commitment these people have towards what goes on their plates. Serious business.

So, on to the beginning: croissants and baguettes, Saint Genis Pouilly. If you ever find yourself there – only likely to happen if you’re a physicist working at the nearby CERN labs or if you’re a hopeless driver and while in Geneva took a wrong turn, then a wrong turn again and somehow ended in France, in the middle of nowhere – your bakery of choice should absolutely be Sébastien Brocard. Want to know why? Because of this:

Look at how crackly this is. And oh-so-buttery.

And this:

Chewy crumb, crackly crust... yum!

I think the pictures pretty much speak for themselves. The baguettes are truly, truly excellent, but the real star here is the croissant. There’s no way words are going to describe the subtly sweet, buttery taste of that shatteringly crackly beauty. So please, PLEASE, if you find yourself in the middle of a bunch of pastures, cows and eventually some CIA-looking bunkers – either High Energy and Particle Physics labs or cheese making factories – make sure you take another wrong turn and end up at Sébastien Brocard’s. This is the second best pâtisserie I’ve been to in all of our France trips. Next posts are gonna talk about Paris, Amsterdam and Brazil… see you later!

Guinness extra stout: even better when shared with friends.

A post continuing the story of our Irish trip is now long overdue. Since we came back I’ve been thinking about Germany, the reasons that led us here and the constant displacement we feel in this country.

Observing how similar the Irish are to Brazilians in terms of personal relationships and behavior towards others was a serious wake up call as to how we had, after a year living in Bremen, unwillingly absorbed some German manners.

Sharing is maybe the most important thing in Brazilian culture: we share food, we share drinks, burdens and happiness. If a person next to you has a problem there is nothing more natural than trying your best to help, be it giving out your seat to an old woman on the bus or helping a struggling girl carry her heavy luggage. Until moving to Germany these small, caring gestures towards strangers were something to be expected: nothing more obvious than trying to help your fellow man, right?

Wrong.

Or at least wrong if you’re in Germany. Something that caught my attention right away was how people seemed either amazingly delighted or completely ignorant when we did anything remotely nice for them. Old ladies would either refuse vehemently or thank effusively while being incredibly surprised if we tried to give them our seats on the tram; most people would pretend that nothing happened if you ever stopped to hold a door for them, passing right by you without a single thankful word. These things were extremely frustrating at first, but we hung on to our culture and kept on behaving like we always did, trying to ignore the German coldness.

However, as hard as you may try to keep behaving in a considerate way towards others, in an environment where the most important word seems to be “me” instead of “us” you will eventually absorb some of the very same behaviors that bug you so much. We realized that in Ireland, when we bought a Guinness mustard and didn’t even think about sharing it with the lovely friends who were hosting us; instead we decided to take it back home to enjoy it by ourselves. Very sad, lonely and selfish attitude. The mustard ended up being thrown in the trash by airport security scan employees, as it was stored on our hand luggage. It was a good lesson on how selfish we had unwillingly turned.

The Irish, much like Brazilians, share. Food, drinks, whatever you have, you share it. If you want to share your music you can play it on the street; if you want to share your joy you can dance. Until this trip I had no idea how much I missed this; being free to express your feelings, to say what you mean, to make jokes and bond with complete strangers, to enjoy the company of real people instead of surrounding yourself with expensive stuff.

Dublin Dublin, I love you so...

Germany, in my experience, is all about comfort and individualism. The most common attitude I observed in Germans is that “What is mine is MINE”. MY personal space. What I want. What I need.

Everything here is designed so you have to deal with other human beings as little as possible. All your basic needs will always be covered; in Germany you will always have a good house, good food and good health care, even if you’re unemployed. Most of the population, though, can afford much, much more than basic needs: big cars, fancy gadgets, the latest ipod. Homes have solid, expensive furniture. Supermarkets sell expensive delicacies from France, Italy or more exotic destinations. Kids own the most modern video game consoles available.

I can’t say that Germans are wrong. Everyone likes comfort; I know I like it a lot and it would be really hypocritical of me to condemn anyone because of that. However, what I learned in this first year here is that, as much as having money and comfort feels good, it never feels as good as it does when you can share what you have – even if it’s very little or very silly, like a joke, a song or a single beer bottle – with other people. No money in this world can pay for the pleasure of sharing.

So, in honor to that, here’s something that you NEED to try if you’re ever in Dublin, and that you will almost certainly – unless you’re a hungry beast – share: Leo Burdocks’ Traditional Fish & Chips.

Notice the size of the thing (each bag was almost as heavy as a baby) and Pedro's "challenge accepted" face

The thing is HUGE and will keep you going until the end of the day even if you eat half of it. It certainly did it for me and Pedro. Gustavo there, on the right, tried to eat his by himself, but failed miserably and left a whole bunch of delicious fries uneaten.

See what I'm talking about?

The whole thing is delicious. Delicious in a way that kinda made me want to have two stomachs, so I could eat more of it. Is that too weird?

Leo Burdocks is very well known in Dublin (the cab driver on the way to the airport talked about it too!) and from what I heard they currently have two locations; we ate at the one near Christchurch:

Leo Burdocks: 2 Werburgh Street, Christchurch, Dublin 8
http://www.burdocks.ie/

Enjoy!

first seconds in Irish soil...

We went to Ireland.

It was love at first sight when, still on the plane, the view from the window caught my eye. A beautiful emerald green patch, studded with little white curly ripples was right before my eyes. At first I thought it was a huge field, but after a few seconds I realized the little white ripples were moving… IT WAS THE SEA! I had never seen anything like that. That deep emerald green sea was one of the most beautiful views I had ever seen.

I called Pedro, who was still half asleep from rolling out of bed at 4 in the morning, and we both soaked up the view as much as we could, since our camera was stuffed inside our hand luggage and we certainly couldn’t get to it without disturbing the gentleman who was sitting in our same row. As the plane approached Dublin we realized that not only the sea was green: even though it was almost winter, that island was studded with all the most beautiful shades of green. I was already fascinated and excited like a little kid, and we hadn’t even gotten out of the plane yet.

More on the trip, fish&chips, Irish breakfast and beer soon!

pictured: eggplant, bread, Misfits tee

Grilled eggplants on crusty bread
serves 2 as a light meal or 4 as an appetizer

1 eggplant sliced about 5mm thick (choose a medium eggplant, neither tasteless like the tinier ones nor too bitter like the huge ones)
1-2 garlic cloves, sliced
fresh thyme, as much as you like
about 1 tbsp olive oil
a good glug of high quality extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste

Heat up your grill. Grill the eggplant slices on both sides until tender. If anything starts to stick just brush a bit of the olive oil on the slices. Sautée the garlic cloves on the olive oil until just golden and fragrant.
Arrange the eggplant on a plate, top with the sautéed garlic, sprinkle with salt, fresh thyme and high quality extra virgin olive oil. Serve with a nice, crusty bread and a chilled glass of wine.

I guess this would be great if sprinkled with a bit of lemon juice too. If you don’t have eggplants at hand I guess this recipe would work well with zucchini too. Just tweak it to your preferences and needs

A dash of color

Yeah, Germany. October. I’m sure you already thought of Oktoberfest. You know, that huge tourist-money-sucking festival in Munich.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for massive beer&alcohol consumption. However, I don’t like going bankrupt just to get drunk. And 9 bucks for a beer at Oktoberfest seems completely out of line, especially when you can buy the exact same beers at pretty much any supermarket for less than 1 euro. Since we’re living in Germany we kinda feel like we HAVE to go to Oktoberfest at least once while we’re here, but the beer prices really make me think twice

Fall festivals and fairs, expensive or not, indeed seem to be quite popular here in Germany. Bremen’s fair, Freimarkt, is actually the oldest one in Germany: it was first held in 1035 and has some very solid (and delicious) food and drink traditions. Freimarkt (also known as Ischa Freimaak in the local dialect) happens in the last two weeks of October and attracts people from all over Germany. The fair takes place at two areas downtown: around the Main Train Station in Bürgerweide (the fair’s main location) and on the central square of the old town (known as kleiner Freimarkt, or Small Freimarkt). I find the central square location is especially charming, as part of the tents celebrate medieval times with traditional food, drink, decoration and clothes.

This man is what AWESOMENESS is made of

… and what does traditional food and drink mean in Germany? Yeah, you got it: pork, beer, cabbage and potatoes, prepared in a million different versions. The pictured awesome gentleman and his wife were in a tent that had a little sculpture on the front, something between a wild boar and a pork. Whatever that thing was, it was so badass I decided I was gonna eat there. The tent only served one thing: altbierbraten in brötchen mit kraut und knoblauch quark. Basically a bread roll stuffed with some kind of pork meat cooked in beer – altbier, to be exact, a type of beer from Düsseldorf – with shredded cabbage and a type of garlic-fresh cheese spread. The description sounded nice, so we ordered; each sandwich cost us 4 euros. Not exactly cheap, but quite reasonable for German standards.

biting into deliciousness

This beast of a sandwich was absolutely memorable. When I saw the pieces of meat lined up in the wood oven with the bread rolls on the top basket I worried about two things: that everything would taste like smoke and that the meat would be dry. I shouldn’t have worried: the meat was extremely moist, tasty and literally falling apart. That thing tasted like it had been slowly cooked in beer for hours and finished in the wood oven just for the right amount of smokiness and caramelization that rounded up its flavor profile beautifully. The cabbage was thinly shredded and provided some refreshing crunch, while the garlic spread held together the whole thing. The bun seemed to be homemade and was studded with yellow mustard seeds that provided just the right bite. All in all a gorgeous sandwich; my only complaint is that I didn’t have enough money to eat 10 of those things (because I’m sure I would have enough space in my stomach for that).

see what I mean?

After the sandwich we decided to go for a dessert: apfeltasche and kirschtache. These taschen are fruit-stuffed, sweet dough pockets that are deep fried into deliciousness and glazed with sugar afterwards. Diet, anyone?

the beauty shot

cherry

apple

Something tells me a new trip to try out some other Ferimarkt deliciousness is in order…

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!

self explanatory, right?

ready to be transformed into delicious pizza

So Friday, as I said, we tested the cold-fermented pizza dough for the first time.

I must say it was quite a success, although the end product didn’t have the leopard-spotted crust I had envisioned. I guess that happened mostly because my broiler doesn’t get hot enough to char the pizza in the mere 1 1/2 to 4 minutes stated on the recipe, plus it was only the third day since the dough had been made. But I won’t complain either, because until 2 months ago the only oven we had was one of those teeny tiny heat-up-your-bread kinda ovens with no temperature regulation, which led to a string of tiny un-browned (and even undercooked) quiches and breads. And we only had this oven because we found it on the street (actually half of our furniture was found on the street, but that’s another story). And before that we didn’t have an oven, at all.

Now that we’re talking about our very modestly-equipped kitchen, I must also comment on the size of the pizzas. As of now, we own exactly ONE medium skillet, which was enough to make pizzas that fit perfectly into our dessert plates. In the end it looked kinda cute, and each one of us had two.

in the skillet...

The final product(s). Traditional margherita, anchovies and fresh thyme, mushrooms and spicy sausage. Pizza porn, anyone?

Anyway, the pizza was good enough to receive praise from Pedro, born and raised in São Paulo. For those who don’t know what this means, a short explanation: São Paulo is the biggest city in Brazil, privileged by a huge affluence of immigrants from all over the world during the 20th century; each immigrant bringing their own cuisine and culture with them, you can imagine the melting pot of flavors and cultures the city has become. Pizza is a dead serious subject there, as most of these immigrants came from Southern Italy – including places like Napoli and Salerno, known for their pizza tradition.

Saturday a few friends came over, and I decided to use up the leftover pizza dough. This time it was better: the dough had developed a bit more and I managed to place the oven rack really ridiculously close to the upper heat source thing, so the pies came out with a nice nice nice spotted crust and beautiful melty mozz. This time around I wasn’t quick enough – or, honestly, had the will to – bring out the camera before the pizzas were savaged. Let’s just say that it was pretty darn good.

Two days of pizza in a row, and I’m still salivating as I write this post. Is that ridiculous or what?

cold-fermented pizza dough, day 1

Tonight we’re having pizza. Simple, gorgeous, pizza napoletana: a big, puffy cornicione, a simple, fresh tomato sauce, melted mozzarella, torn basil leaves., olive oil. Does it get any better than this?

A few days ago I stumbled into this recipe on my Serious Eats feed. I knew right away I had to try this dough: that gorgeous, spotted crust always does it for me. Knowing how to make this at home would be the next step. So there I went: followed the recipe as close as I could – it calls for a stand mixer and a kitchen scale, both of which I evidently don’t own. I kneaded everything by hand and let it rest on the fridge. Today is day 3 and I guess we might start trying out the dough. I see a few days of good pizza ahead of us…

right out of the fridge. Bubbles bubbles!

brushed with olive oil and ready to rise

More on the results later!

During these ten days we didn’t eat anything really interesting: we survived mainly on chocolate bars bought at the university’s vending machine. I’m not the kind of person to prefer chocolate bars over a proper meal, but you see, apparently art schools here in Germany take the “starving artist” stereotype really seriously.

At our school, the only options for hungry students are the vending machine or Cafe Lu, a nice, cute cafe on the top floor, great for expensive and delicious hot chocolate with a dash of espresso, but terrible for food, as they only serve – also expensive – vegetarian soups that will only calm my stomach for about 5 minutes. But oh, wait, there is actually another option too: the school cafeteria, which serves food that could  be ranked right below prison food. Seriously, HOW do you screw up vegetable-filled crepes? And moreover, WHAT IS UP with slathering each and every single meal with a nasty white sauce that tastes like something in between yogurt gone bad and that medicine you hated when you were a kid? Seriously, the food is THAT bad. More than once, in a desperate fit of hunger, I have bought their meals, only to walk away seriously pissed off because I simply couldn’t swallow food that managed to be gluey, dry and still have that nauseating taste food acquires when it’s reheated too many times. Seriously nasty.

Summing it all up, the only decent food we’ve tasted this week was when we got home still with that last bit of energy necessary to cook a meal. Which didn’t happen too many times, as even at home we mostly ate sandwiches. But despair not, as there were indeed two really magic moments this week: Pedro’s premiere in the kitchen.

Yes, Pedro, actually cooked. Not only once, but twice!

For anyone who knows Pedro this will come as quite a surprise. One day, out of the blue, as we were finally getting home and deciding how to organize ourselves for a decent meal, he told me that he would begin making some pasta sauce while I was off to the supermarket to buy some emergency stuff. I was delighted and amazed – he had expressed desire to learn how to cook some dishes before, but had never taken the initiative to actually make them, much less without my supervision. I gave him some tips on how to make a simple and delicious sugo and we parted ways. When I got home with the groceries there was already a delicious smell around the house; since he’s a man who knows what he’s doing, he not only made the simple sugo, but spiked it with wonderful and juicy spanish Gordal olives and some lovely dried chili. I helped him organize the last part of the meal, but it was mainly his creation, and the results were absolutely delicious.

After experiencing his first successful attempt in the kitchen, I guess he liked the thrill of cooking something really delicious for someone he loves (my absolute favorite thing about cooking) and decided to try it again. This time around I gave absolutely no help, and the result was even better. Perfectly cooked pasta (his family is Italian, after all), juicy olives and just the right amount of heat to bring out the other flavors without overpowering them. He even added his own, really special ingredient to the sauce: a few drops of brazilian malagueta chili conserve. So there you go, the first recipe on this blog, courtesy of my darling:

too delicious to take decent pictures BEFORE tucking in

Pedro’s spicy pastasciutta

serves 2

800 gr. tinned whole tomatoes, best quality you can afford (ingredients should list tomatoes, their own juice and nothing else)

2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped

2 small dried chilies, chopped

4 Spanish Gordal olives, coarsely chopped

a few drops of malagueta chili conserve (you can find it in some Latin markets, online here if you’re in the US or here if you’re in Germany)

a small dash of balsamic vinegar

three tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil

250 gr. of good quality pasta (we used farfalle, but fusilli would have been awesome)

—-

1. Heat up the olive oil in a medium nonstick pan. Fry the chopped garlic on medium-high heat until fragrant and golden.

2. Keep the tinned tomatoes already opened, near your pan. As soon as the garlic starts to golden you should throw your tomatoes in the pan. Use up the last bits of tomato juice still in the tin by putting a small amount of water, shaking it around in the tin and adding this to the pan. Add the chopped olives. Turn heat to medium.

3. Tomatoes will be whole and plump in your pan. Crush them slightly against the sides of the pan with a wooden spoon. They will cook and soften, slightly melting; the final sauce will be thick and lovely while still keeping some bite from the tomatoes. Let the sauce slowly simmer for about 20 min, stirring occasionally. While sauce is cooking, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

5. Add the dash of balsamic vinegar and keep simmering the sauce. After about 5 min add the drops of malagueta conserve and cook for 5 more minutes. Season to taste with salt.

6. Cook your pasta according to package instructions. Drain it when it’s just al dente. Bring the pasta back to the pan and add some spoonfuls of the sauce (we were so hungry we ended up adding the whole thing).

7. Serve with a generous glug of olive oil over the pasta. Enjoy it with some good Weißbier or a nice, bitter Pils and don’t forget to scrape the last bits of tomatoey deliciousness on the plate with some good quality bread!