Oct 30
I’ve been going through this week’s New York Times travel section featuring Latin America, specifically an awakened Chile, colonial Colombia, 36 Hours in Montevideo, Rio hot spots, Peruvian restaurants, and rejuvenated Mazatlán. Travel exhausts me but its a fun read.
I’ve resisted the temptation to repost until now, but with the excitement of Friday’s Olympic announcement I wanted to link to my favorite Carioca. I can’t wait till 2016! Click here for the complete post.
With the constant threat of rain, I did my usual food shopping this weekend under a white sky. Along with the usual Mccann’s oatmeal, baby spinach, and salmon, I’m constantly running out for more peppers, plantains, and vino seco since starting this blog, loving the colors they add. Walking through the gray today on a search for coconuts (more on that later), I couldn’t help but feel happy despite the rain. I’d wanted to post this version of Aquarela do Brasil for a few weeks and today seemed like the perfect day, even more so when I read the composer, Ary Barroso, wrote it during a thunderstorm.
Escaping from a sudden afternoon downpour this week, I found the SAS World-Wide Restaurant Cookbook at the Atlantic Book Shop. Published in 1960 and sponsored by Scandinavian Airline Systems, journalist Charlotte Adams visited 36 countries in search of the best restaurants and their favorite recipes. I haven’t had a chance to try any of the recipes just yet, but I’m already in love with her descriptions where she’s quick to point out where to go continental and where to go native. Speaking Read more
Jun 25
Most weekends, when I’ve been to the farmer’s markets, had my brunch, and caught a matinee, I find myself at Rapisarda, the Cobble Hill store owned by Brazilian designer Claudia Rapisarda. I’m not alone. There’s always someone half-shopping, half-visiting Claudia. The store itself is hard to describe. A unique collection of pieces that she both designs and brings from Brazil, it vibrates with color.
It was during one of my visits that she tried to explain how to make farofa, a dish I had been reading about and wanted to try. Claudia can’t not help someone, so she agreed to come to my apartment and show me herself. In addition to the farofa, the menu grew to include: feijoada, a black bean stew with pork (using kielbasa as a substitute for Portuguese linguiça); couve, collard greens sauteed in olive oil and garlic; fluffy white rice cooked with more garlic; sliced oranges; and, of course caipirinhas. Read more
You’ll have to excuse me for not writing about food. Yesterday, a ticket to see the American Ballet Theatre’s performance of La Sylphide at The Metropolitan Opera House fell from the sky unexpectedly, and I’m feeling a little ethereal today. There was a magical Sylph, a Scottish reel, and a poisoned gossamer veil, but it was still not as dramatic as the Edith Wharton story I cast myself in when I realized I’d be sitting in the romantic 
boxes ringing the theater. Watching principal Herman Cornejo dance the part of James, I thought of a Today segment I’d seen earlier that day about the recent emergence of Latin American artists and performers in film and television. This has long been true at ABT. In addition to the Argentinians Cornejo and Paloma Herrera, there is the Brazilian Marcelo Gomes, and Read more
Jun 11
For months, I’ve had five untouched bags of farofa piled high on a pantry shelf. Not knowing how to use them but not wanting to throw them away either, I finally thought to ask my Brazilian friend, Claudia, for a recipe. When she started to recite the different ways it could be prepared, we decided it would be easier for her to come to my house next week to show me. She gave me a list of ingredients for our learning lunch with a warning to do no more than soak the black beans (lest I do anything to make them Cuban before she gets there). Excited, I went home to bring down the exiled farofa which was now…expired. It had obviously been trying to tell me something when it kept falling on my head each time I went into the pantry. Now that I had a plan but no farofa, I headed to Búzios in Little Brazil. Read more
May 16
I had asked my mother to bring me one bag of yucca flour from Miami but received five bags of Brazilian farofa instead. So naturally I was interested to read Seth Kugel’s New York Times article about how São Paulo’s chefs were finding inspiration in traditional ingredients writing:
…the idea that Brazilian cuisine can hold its own is slowly taking hold in São Paulo, thanks to a new generation of chefs looking outward for technique but inward for ingredients and tradition. Attuned to the necessities of presentation by their (mostly) European training and conscious that the heaviness of traditional Brazilian dishes will never pass muster with the gym-going elite, they have created a movement that has given their own nation a new sense of pride in its culinary heritage. Read more
Finalist for the 2015 James Beard Foundation Award in the International Cookbook Category for The Cuban Table
