Pão de Queijo (Brazilian Cheese Bread)

This is a great little recipe! Brazilians mostly eat it for breakfast or as a snack. The only ingredient that might be hard to find is the sour cassava flour (which we learned about during our trip to the Amazon).  You can order it on www.amazon.com and you may even find it in a Latin grocery store.  Find it.  It's worth it.  Oh, and for those of you that avoid gluten, it's gluten free!

Sour Cassava Flour

These few things are transformed into amazing pão de queijo

The cheese called for in this recipe is Quejo Minas Fresco (fresh cheese traditionally produced in Minas Garais in Brazil). You can definitely substitute other cheeses for it.  I will be experimenting with some different combinations of cheese the next time I make this bread.

Pão de Queijo (Brazilian cheese bread)

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups sour cassava flour

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups Minas cheese (can substitute parmesan or other cheese)

Ready to be portioned and put in the oven

Preheat oven to 350. Grease or line pan with parchment paper.  Put oil, milk and salt in a pan over medium heat and whisk  just until it starts to bubble.  Remove from heat and immediately add the cassava flour and mix well. Put the dough in the bowl of a mixer and (use paddle attachment) beat on med until dough smooths and it's cool enough to touch. Whisk eggs in a bowl and then slowly add them to the mixer while it's running. Add the cheese and continue mixing until incorporated.  The dough is going to be very sticky.  I use two spoons to portion and place on the baking sheet. You can also use an ice cream scoop (probably easier).  I also saw a recipe where the dough was placed in a mini muffin pan to cook.  Whatever works for you. Bake until the outsides are dry and they get a little color on them.  My oven is terrible and I had to cook them for almost an hour.  I imagine if I had a good oven, it would probably be closer to 30 minutes.

 Let cool a few minutes and enjoy.

When I made these, I made one baking sheet of them and portioned the rest of the dough onto another baking sheet and let freeze.  Once they were frozen, I transferred them to a freezer bag and threw them back in the freezer.  That way I can easily pull out a few to bake when the mood strikes me. They are really best served warmed, right after coming out of the oven.

Ready for the freezer

Amazon Trip Part Two

Amazon trip - Part Two (for part one, click here)

Native home visit

I loved this visit!  The natives gave us a demonstration on processing manioc/yuca/cassava.  Manioc is abundant in the Amazon and they use it for everything.  There are two types  – bitter and sweet.  The sweet manioc they just cook and eat.  The bitter manioc has poison in the juice and they have to process it to make it edible. First they have to extract the juice then they have to drain it (using something like a cheesecloth).  Next they let the flesh dry out then sift it, resulting in a coarse powder they can use for cooking. If they boil the liquid, it can also be used as a condiment or in cooking too.

one of the tools they use to use to extract the liquid

giving the 'new' extraction equipment a whirl 

sifting the manioc

sifting the dried manioc

Our guide told us that people would fry the powder and carry it around on long journeys so they could just mix the powder with water for a meal - it expands in the stomach to make you feel
full (without actually providing any nutrients).  They made some tapioca pancakes for us to sample (yummy) and also let us sample some Brazilian nuts.

preparing tapioca pancakes for us

The powder is also fried and mixed with different things (for example smoked meats, nuts, and fruits) to make farofa.  Everyone has their own special recipe for farofa and they eat it with just about everything.  The first time I tried it, I was not impressed, but I now eat it regularly over salad and with grilled meats.  It adds a little flavor and a really nice texture to dishes.  The powder is also used to make the ever popular pão de queijo (cheese bread) which I will eventually try to make (and blog about).

the finished product - yummy tapioca pancakes

Native village tour

The village was really cool.  There are about a hundred residents there on a large plot of land. Through  hunting and fishing they are able to remain self sufficient with the exception of a few items traded for in the city of Manaus.

We were also given a demonstration on how rubber was historically harvested from the trees.  First, they make a diagonal slash in the tree and allow the milk/sap to drip into a container. After it solidifies (coagulates), they heat it and pour it onto a pipe over a small fire oven.  It hardens into a ball (seen below). They would then sell the rubber in large balls.  

Rubber became the economic star of the Amazon in the early nineteen hundreds.  The nearby city of Manaus became the center of the Brazilian economy.  Eventually, someone smuggled rubber tree seeds out of the Amazon and replanted in areas with similar soil/climates that were more convenient to major ports (like Malaysia and Singapore).  The proximity of the new rubber trees to the ports resulted in decreased prices which resulted in a significant decrease in demand for the Amazon rubber.

Holding a rubber ball

This trip was so wonderful.  It was a unique experience, fun, and educational.  I really loved our time there and will always treasure the memories we have of the river, the jungle, the wildlife, and the people.

Hello Rio!

Our first Brazilian dinner...happy girls!

It has been a very eventful first week here in Rio! We have gone to the beach, the lake, shopping, running, house hunting, visited a weekend market, gone to church, walked all over Ipanema and Leblon and (of course) eaten tons of delicious foods!

We have had some really delicious foods here!  First of all, we get breakfast included with our room at the hotel and it is really good.  Lots of yummy fresh fruits like mangoes, pineapples, bananas,  honey dews, watermelons, plums, apples, starfruits, kiwis, papaya, passion fruit, and strawberries.  There is also yogurt, a selection of cheeses and meats, the addictive little bread called Pão de Queijo (cheese bread), hot sausages and eggs (although the eggs look a little scary to me and I haven't eaten them) and a huge selection of pastries and breads.  Needless to say, I could probably eat this breakfast for several months without tiring of it.

We've also eaten a lot of great food for lunch and dinner.  Most often it's grilled meat or seafood ( sausages, pork cutlets, chicken, beef, salmon, shrimp, octopus) which is served with fluffy white rice and beans, some type of greens and salad. We also had german for a snack and sushi for dinner  it was fantastic!  There are lots of other types of restaurants here too- I've seen Italian, Thai, Turkish, and an Irish pub.

Dinner at Brasilerinho, a great restaurant next to our hotel; grilled pork, greens, rice and beans

The beer I've tried here has been, well, sad.  The popular beer on tap is called Brahms, and being the beer snob that I am, I think it tastes like Budweiser.  No thanks, I'll pass. The wine (especially the Malbec) is good and I'll probably stick to that.  Even though I don't drink mixed drinks, I did leave my comfort zone and try the local drink, a caipirinha, just so I could tell you about it.  First of all, it was really strong!!  They are very generous with the liquor here!  Wow!  I ordered a strawberry caipirinha (they have several fruit flavors - strawberry, tangerine, lemon, lime, and some others that I can't remember) and it was filled with strawberry chunks and rum.  If I liked rum, I probably would have loved it but I'm a beer/wine kind of lady, so I just ate the strawberries out of it and made my husband drink it.

The national drink of Brazil - the caipirinha

the glass my husbands sake was served in...it was quite comical watching him try to drink this without spilling