On Brazilian food

Every now and then I will write a piece on food for Works in Progress. Here is my piece on eating in Brazil:

Brazil, like most large nations, also offers multiple cuisines. For instance you can go to Minas Gerais for pork and beans. Minas beans would be my favorite of what I have sampled, surpassing Mexico. Belem serves cuisine from the Amazon region, including exotic river fish, dried shrimp, duck, and rice, with flavors from cassava, manioc, and the local fruit. You cannot get those dishes in many other places. Feijoada is of slave origins, and is often associated with Rio de Janeiro, but it has evolved into a national dish, available almost everywhere. Think rice, black beans, collard greens, orange slices, and farofa, a kind of manioc flour, with different parts of the pig mixed in. At home I cook the vegetarian version of this dish. The coolness and sweetness of the orange go well with the sandy texture of the farofa, and the meal hardly costs anything to make. Rio de Janeiro offers highly cosmopolitan options, and the city has a tradition of excellent French and Continental restaurants. The best churrascarias I have had were on the outskirts of Curitiba in the south. You can get an excellent pasta meal combined with your choice of many kinds of meat, leading to an impossibly large quantity of food at your disposal. I favored these establishments more in my youth, but if you have never tried them, you are missing something. Campo Grande, the booming agro-city in central western Brazil, has a derivative form of Okinawan soba (!) as a dining specialty. I regret that, due to a delayed flight connection, I have yet to try this apparent delicacy.

There is much more at the link, recommended.

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