Category Archives: ALL VIDEO

Bobó de Camarão – An Afro-Brazilian recipe

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Bobó is the name given to any dish thickened with mashed cassava. It’s actually quite common in west Africa where Yam is used instead of cassava. This and many other dishes made their way to Brazil in the hundreds of slave ships which transported Brazil’s main workforce during its colonization days.

Bobó de Camarão is now a firm fixture in any Typical Brazilian restaurant. It’s delicious and simple dish to prepare, the only tricky ingredient to find being cassava. But you can revert to Yam if necessary. Brazilian cooking varies up and down our vast country, so there are different versions of the dish. I now for instance that in Bahia, no tomatoes are used in the recipe. This is the recipe I learned while I lived in Rio.

For this video, I was delighted to have the participation of Gianna Toni, co-publisher of the JungleDrums magazine, whose energy and sense of humour made the recipe even more special.

The recipe:
* 8 large prawns
* 12 smaller prawns
* 4 tomatos -peeled and chopped
* 1 large onion, chopped
* 2 or 3 cloves of garlic
* 1 kg of cassava, boiled and chopped.
* 2 cups of coconut milk
* 4 cusp of shrimp stock (use the heads and skins from your prawns!)
* 2 table spoons of Palm Oil (Dendê) paste
* 1 cup of double cream
* fresh coriander
* salt and pepper

Big tasty cassava chips

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Cassava is a ‘wonder root’ planted all over Brazil (and several other developing countries). It grows very well on hot and humid climates and it’s a very resilient plant. Which makes it an ideal crop for those in need of a lot of quick starch, like developing countries. But more than just being a symptom of our under-development, cassava is now a mainstay of Brazilian cooking. Brazilians use cassava in hundreds of recipes varying from main courses to desserts and even bread, cakes and starters.

This recipe is by far the easiest thing you can use cassava for. Because of its massive starch content, cassava makes really great chunky and cracking crispy chips. But there are a few tricks to adding more taste to them.

A different Brazilian Cocktail

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Everybody knows the ‘Caipirinha’ by now. It’s the the drinks menu of not only Brazilian bars, but most modern bars of any denomination. So now that our national drink has taken over the world, I went in search of a few different options to teach you.

I visited Guanabara – London’s premiere Brazilian live music venue – and got the 2 best barman in the house to prepare us a couple of Brazilian cocktails with a difference. Check out this recipe for ‘Riotini’ (a Martini made with Passion Fruit and Cachaça) and ‘Strawberry Caipirinha’, a lighter, fruitier version of the old favourite.

Caipirinha in just over a minute (video)

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Caipirinha is Brazil’s national cocktail. Not only you can find it in any Brazilian restaurant but it also works as our most talented worldwide ambassador. The true Caipirinha uses Cachaça, Brazil’s version of Rum, distilled from the juice of the sugar cane. And the best thing about Cachaça is that it’s a name made to be pronounced when drunk! (sounds like car-sha-sir, or ka-cha-cha if your are really legless).

This is my second video on how to make a Caipirinha. The first one was one of our first videos and it looks quite a lot worse. Plus this one really shows how simple and quick the whole thing is. If you have all the ingredients to hand you can make a Caipirinha is less than 40 seconds.

Papaya Mousse / Cream

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This is a typical dessert you’d get in a Churrascaria. Papaya is known for having an enzyme called Papain (I know, scientists weren’t very imaginative there), which helps breakdown the fibers in red meat. It’s always prepared fresh, moments it’s brought to your table, so as to keep the papaya taste nice and fresh and Churrascarias will usually offer to drizzle some ‘Creme de Cassis’ liquor on it; which I personally thing it’s pushing the boat way too far. I like to keep mine nice and natural.

In praise of Argentinian beef

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Even Brazilians tend to agree that the beef from the south, where Brazil borders Argentina, a region called The Pampas, is the best one can possibly get. The sheer expanse of flat grassy planes allows cattle to graze with minimum effort. After all beef is muscle, and the less effort the cows do, the softer their meat will be. Add to that the purity of the grass and the water, not to mention the free-range the animals experience and you know you’ll have a pretty tasty and natural product.