Tag Archives: Cassava

A tip for BBQ’ing at a friend’s house

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Tip for BBQ’ing at a friend’s house:

When summertime hits London the supermarkets start stacking their shelves with BBQ tat and all manner of self-lighting lumpwood charcoal. Almost immediately after invitations for little impromptu BBQ parties start to pour into my email inbox.

Most Brits would just happily turn up sporting a Tesco bag with the odd pack of sausages or burgers, but not me – no! no! Given half a chance I’d turn up with a huge chuck of Brazilian rump steak (Picanha) and roasted it on a spit in proper Brazilian Churrasco fashion, but when going to a friend’s house I have to live with the fact they might not be as well equipped in the grill department as I am. So I have learned to adjust my expectations.

My tip is: buy regular supermarket rump steaks (with as big a layer of fat as you can find), chop them up into rectangles and make little kebab-style skewers with some green and red peppers and some red onions.

The skewers will grill really well on even the most modest of grills; they will be easy to eat (just bite the chunks straight off the skewer) and the combined price tag is fairly low. But oh so much better than burgers or cheap sausages!

A few points to look out for:

  • Spiced with the basic Brazilian condiments: a rub made with black pepper, salt and garlic.
  • Make sure you cut all the parts to the same height so the vegetables aren’t taller than the meat or they will scorch the edges rather than cooking in the meat juices.
  • Try to ensure every skewer has a few fatty pieces of rump to keep the whole thing nice and moist.

And by the way: if you really want to be remembered by one and all, take some Brazilian Cheesy Dough Balls!

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.