Brazil & Its Food Terroir
Paulo A. Lima

During my last trip to Rio de Janeiro, I had the privilege to meet Teresa Corção, chef/owner of the traditional restaurant “O Navegador�. She is one of the 1000 Cooks who are attending Terra Madre 2006. Teresa is also country coordinator for IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) in Brazil and is the developer of a brilliant social initiative called “Projeto Mandioca� (more about it later on).
Teresa Corção and Manuel Carvalho produced and directed an independent documentary called The Professor of Manioc, which was selected and shown in the last Slow Food on Film in Italy.

Manioc is heavily featured in the Brazilian cuisine. “Pirão� is a thick gravy-like gruel prepared by cooking fish bits with manioc flour - “farinha de mandioca� in Portuguese. In the semblance of farofa (lightly roasted flour), manioc combines with rice and beans to make a typical daily Brazilian meal. Farofa is also a standard side dish for feijoada, the famous meat-and-black-beans stew. Boiled manioc is also made into a popular sweet pudding. Deep-fried (after boiling), it is often eaten as a snack or side dishes.

Manioc or cassava is also called mandioca, aipim, or macaxeira in Portuguese, mandio in the indigenous language Guaraní, yuca or mandioca in Spanish, singkong or ubi kayu in Indonesian, maniok in German, Danish and Czech, manyok in Haitian Creole and manioc in French.
Teresa invited me to the “O Navegador� restaurant to discuss the production realities and flavors of the Brazilian terroir. She planned a manioc flour tasting in order to experience artisan manioc flour originating from three different areas of the country – Pará, Bahia and Santa Catarina - same areas in which the documentary was based on.

BACK TO THE TASTING.
To accompany the several types of flours, Teresa prepared simple sautéed fish to ensure that the taste of the manioc would not be hidden.

The tasting began with Farinha D’Agua from Pará, in the northern region of the country. The farofa from this flour is light brown, crumbly with a rough and crunchy texture. Its exquisite flavor is unique and unlike anything else I’ve ever tasted before. It’s also mild in the palate.
The second flour is the most traditional in Brazil; it’s called Copioba and it comes from a small town next to Salvador – which is the capital of a northeast state named Bahia. Teresa made the farofa with scrambled eggs, as is usually prepared all over Brazil. This is a very fine and toasted product, with an earthy and delicate taste.
The third manioc experience, Teresa prepared Pirão with the manioc from Santa Catarina, south of Brazil. It’s a flour with a high presence of starch and therefore it’s commonly used to thickening sauces. “Its’ nutritious characteristics are similar to wheat�, she said.

Among many of the recipes we tasted that day, Teresa also served salmon with a delicious cream and sweet-sour umbu (a traditional fruit from Brazil) preserve. Umbu is a Slow Food Presidium. We have also had oysters from a farm in the south of Brazil with a light cream made with mint and lemon. The duck we tried after was outstanding and it was served with a Montenegro Tangerine Sauce (Slow Food Presidium). I cannot forget the baru nuts (Slow Food Presidium) grated on top of a delightful apple purée.

Paulo A. Lima - UNISG Student