Christmas itself is generally blah - all the leadup is great, but the actual day itself results in somewhat of a disappointment. Not this year - not only did I have a wonderful time, I got to eat great food, and picked up a new fun cookbook to boot! The book is Brazil; A cook's tour, by Christopher Idone. Although the layout is ghastly, with recipes sprinkled throughout in a somewhat willy-nilly fashion (they only hint at falling along regional lines... sort of), I was able to tag tasty-looking recipes with some removeable, colored Post-it tabs (color-coded by ingredients, of course: green for vegetarian dishes, yellow for poultry, etc.).
Although we only had the following five recipes from the book so far, I am a fan. We had a friend over for dinner, who was kind enough to be a guniea pig for this and a couple of other items - like Japanese prickly ash, which we didn't tell her makes your tongue numb until after she tried it. But, the dinner turned out surprisingly well, considering the simplicity. We started cooking the black beans in the afternoon, but otherwise took about an hour for the whole meal, including our somewhat imperfect version of chatting while hosting. For just us it would have taken about 30-40 minutes.
Brazilian, Take I
Couve (sauteed kale)
Banana Frita (fried ripe baby bananas)
Simple Farofa (uh - like dry breadcrumbs... kind of)
Tutu à Mineira (mashed beans)
Arroz (boiled white rice)
The menu was just about perfect, especially since all these are commonly served, normally together. Kale, which I think of as a cold-weather vegetable, is apparently a very common side dish to Brazilian beans and rice. It blended perfectly with the thick black beans and buttery rice, and the fried banana really tied everything together with a tang of sweetness.
The meal was missing at least one or two components. The hot sauce I missed - the meat I did not. Most of the recipes in this book involve meat, so that will likely happen soon, or we'll try to make a veg version of them. The following is what I would serve at a dinner with 6-8 people, if I had actually planned ahead for it.
Brazilian, Take II
Limonada Suissa (limeade)
Pão de Queijo (Brazilian cheezy-poofs)
Arroz (boiled white rice)
Couve (sauteed kale)
Banana Frita (fried ripe baby bananas)
Simple Farofa (uh - like dry breadcrumbs... kind of)
Malagueta Pepper Sauce (the national hot sauce)
Tutu à Mineira (mashed beans)
side of pork sausages and/or some exotic meat dish
dessert: banana butter, coconut sweets, Brazil nuts dipped in chocolate, or something
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