Eating 'Feijoada' in Boston
Brazzil , News Feature, Jenny E. Martinez Nocito, Posted: Apr 04, 2004
If you are a Bostonian already familiar with your neighborhood taquería, you will be ready for the ambiance of most local Brazilian cafés: a few posters on the wall from South America depicting lush green mountains or long tropical beaches, dim lighting and tables reminiscent of yesterday's coffee shops—plain chipping linoleum, sometimes covered with a plastic tablecloth.
But what these little cafés lack in atmosphere they make up for in flavor. Brazil's cuisine is becoming some of the trendiest in Boston for good reason: it's delicious.
Of course, we're talking about a country only a smidgen smaller than the United States, where there is enough variety from different regions to please any diner. Six years ago, most restaurants in Boston only served the cuisine typical to the area the proprietors came from, which was primarily the central state of Minas Gerais. These immigrants were accustomed to a diet heavy on beans, rice and meat.
Now the menus have broadened considerably to reflect the different backgrounds of Brazilian immigrants. Brazil is a country as varied as the United States in food traditions and customs. Much of this is dictated by geography—foods are raised and consumed locally—and, historically, by poverty as well. Methods of food preservation were created without the benefit of refrigeration in a hot climate, and preparation was dictated by ingredients that were cheap and available.
In recent years, Brazilian immigration has grown at such a pace that it has helped Portuguese, the national language of Brazil, vie with Spanish as the second most widely spoken language in Massachusetts. While many people move here as families, huge numbers are men who come alone, working to send money home to their wives and children. Since cooking isn't traditionally the man's role, most don't know how to prepare the foods they are used to eating, so they turn to the restaurants that have sprouted up in many cities and towns.
Many people native to Brazil will tell you that some of the tastes are not the same in this country as they are "at home." Meat is a prime example of this phenomenon, primarily because of the differences in raising animals and curing meat between the two nations.
In Brazil, the states of Mato Grosso and Goiás are largely open ranches, and meat is always sold fresh—excepting a method of sun-curing meat practiced in the Northeast. In the United States, a much smaller percentage of meat is free-range, and it is often frozen before sale. But the preparation of Brazilian food in this country remains traditional, and the results are consistently delicious.
This is a boon to the rest of us, who get to savor the many flavors of Brazil without needing to travel further then a few miles. Here is a short list of some of the more uniquely Brazilian fare you may want to try.
Feijoada: Brazil's national dish. Buteco, Boston's oldest Brazilian restaurant, is known for their delicious and traditional preparation of this heavy, meaty dish that is rich and filling: South American comfort food.
Eduardo Modesto, a local Brazilian, describes it as "delicious and intensely flavorful. It is hard to separate the tastes of the individual ingredients," because they are cooked together for so long that they take on each others' earthy flavors of salt, meat, and black beans. It is usually served in layers with rice on the bottom and topped with pieces of meat (traditionally fresh pork and carne seca, or "dried meat"). It is served with farofa, manioc or cassava flour that is fried with butter and salt, and typically eaten every day in the north, northeast, and southeast regions of the country.
The story behind feijoada is that it evolved from a dish created by African slaves who were given the "undesirable" pig parts like ears, tails, and feet to make their meals (though, generally speaking, more commonly eaten cuts of meat are used these days). Rarely made at home because of the amount of time and work it requires, this dish is served in almost every restaurant.
Churrasco: The Midwest Grill in Cambridge serves up a fabulous Brazilian BBQ in a style modeled after the churrascarias ("BBQ joints") in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with steak, chicken, pork, and sausage cooked on a spit, or rodízio.
Mandioca com Carne de Sol: Oasis Restaurant in Medford offers this salty dish, made from a type of beef produced in the northeast of Brazil where there is typically very little refrigeration. To preserve the meat, pieces are cured with heavy salting and left out in the sun to dry; hence the name, carne de sol, or "meat of the sun." The dish is a combination of this meat and fried cassava (mandioca)—salty and delicious. A Brazilian favorite.
Couve: Kale, but as perhaps you have never seen it before. Allston's Café Brazil prepares it in the traditional manner: sliced into thin ribbons and sautéed with garlic, oil, and seasonings that can include bacon fat, sometimes topped with thin slices of orange. It tastes like a mouthful of garlicky, crunchy ribbons.
Suco: Juice. If the café you choose has fresh squeezed juices, be sure to try at least one. In Brazil almost all juices are fresh—canned or bottled versions are rare. Exotic choices include mango, cashew, passion fruit, and guava.
Maria Alice Smolka, a local Brazilian, notes that in Boston, Brazilian food is "very in fashion now; people are recognizing it as something new, reasonably priced, and delicious." So for your next Saturday night out, gather a group of friends at your local Brazilian restaurant and order a fabulous feijoada.
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