The Salty Cod

Wedding Photography

2011-07-26T19:57:00.010+02:00

My First Wedding

So it's been a long time. May, June and July. Yikes. i suppose that means i'm not a real blogger anymore. I guess life happens to everyone. In June this blog turned 4 years old; the midlife crisis age in the blog world. In July this photographer turned 25 years old; the quarter century crisis age in the human world. Unfortunately i must report that i am not experiencing any crisis. No, the only crisis i experience on a daily basis is readjusting back into life in Brazil. I took my first trip back to the US in June. Three weeks visiting my family, three small weeks after nearly 18 months away. It was nice. On top of it all what made it even nicer was the culminating event i spent the last year preparing myself for--my first wedding photography job. Not meaning to exagerate, but photographing your first wedding is painful in preparation. If you have ever dreamt of entering the competitive field of wedding photography then you have probably spent mindless hours (days) browsing the web looking for advice, inspiration and other encouraging words from the professionals in the field. And if so, then chances are you didn't find any. One of the strangest things i came across during my study (yes, i consider it a study as i did it everyday) was the resentment from professional photographers toward new ones. Comment after comment on chat and message boards warning newbies to "go home and let the pros do the wedding, do you really want to be responsible for ruining such a special event?" Fortunately there are some very kind and helpful people in the business who stand out from these jealous old timers who actually do encourage and help. So my idea going into my first wedding was, well, he's right, i could mess the whole thing up. But on the other hand, we all have to start somewhere don't we? I also got pretty lucky on the fact that i not only got a beautiful couple for my first gig but also a beautiful setting. The backdrop was so stunning that you would have to be one fool of a photographer to mess it up.

I think it went pretty well. And my 25 year old spine was ready for the chiropractor by 10pm. The day started with the prep shots at the salon. The bride and bridemaides had rented out the whole salon for their hair and makeup. Unfortunatley the salon thought only two employees were necessary and the event took around four hours. By the time we got out of there and back up to the spa (wedding location) a bit of chaos errupted. The bride and groom are serious diy'ers (which showed in the delightful personal quality of the whole event) and so things were running behind schedule, including the cakes. As the wedding party scrambled to get the final details arranged, i found myself aiding the mother of the bride in cake decorating. yes. 7 three layer cakes needed to be assembled and decorated and there just wasn't enough time. If you know what's good for you; hire a wedding photographer who can be used in other areas as well including cake decorating, therapy and even manual labor. It all made me realize that the photographer isn't just the "artist on the scene" no-they are there as your employee and they are helping as much as anyone to get the show on the road. pretty great feeling. The fast pace of it all, the blink and you miss it. The pressure. the running. where are my shoes? Meeting the family members of both the bride and groom and having them clap you on the back with a big "oh you will do great, i can't wait to see them!" is sure to increase your nerves ten fold. The pressure helps though. Not gonna lie, as a perfectionist i loved the control. I would add a small suggestion however which probably would have helped me; EAT during the day.

The wedding took place at a lovely secluded spa in the middle of pea and wheat fields in Walla Walla, Washington, a city about four hours drive south east of Seattle. The bride and groom were not strangers to me, on the contrary the bride is my only lasting friend from those far off high school years. She was there when i got my first real camera and as my co-valedictorian (viking pride!) she knew that my obsessive perfectionism would surely result in suitable photographs. I couldn't have been happier to give her this gift (and to have done it successfully) and at the same time i am honored that she trusted me enough to give me the chance to be a wedding photographer. This has been something that has been lurking in my head for years, and i am ecstatic that it is finally ready to come out. I am now enterring the Brazilian wedding photography market in the areas of Indaiatuba, Campinas and the general São Paulo area and i couldn't be happier. i have a great way to come in photography as does every photographer, but it really does feel like a dream come true.

To view more photos of the K&J wedding, please visit my friend Rita's wedding blog at Missão Casamento where she is showcasing the photos for the Brazilian audience. For any information on my photography services, please email me at mallory (dot) f (dot) ramos at gmail or visit my photography website at malloryelise.com. Estou uma fotógrafa de casamento!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-04-26T20:26:00.006+02:00

and a vacation to Ilhabela-SP

While i had planned on being part of an Easter celebration this year with eggs, chocolates and bunnies, a sort of last minute vacation got in the way. Thank god. Two weeks before the long four day weekend of Tiradentes (a holiday that celebrates a national revolutionary hero, Tiradentes, who was among the first martyrs for the cause of Brazilian independence from Portugal) that happened to fall the day before Good Friday, H and i decided to go to the beach. If you know anything about the state of São Paulo then you know that is a suicide mission. National holiday weekends on the São Paulo seashore are nightmares. Every human with the means to leave the concrete jungle will. not to mention the rest of us in the interior...so heading to the seashore with half a million cars. Brilliant! Somehow we managed to plan the trip strategically though; we left a day before the holiday started and chose a destination that while popular, is not among the destinations of the majority. Ilhabela is an Island just south of the São Paulo coast (you can see it clearly from the city of São Sebastião) and requires a ride on a small flat deck ferry to access. The long drive, ferry and extremely inflated prices of lodging, food and virtually everything on the island does not attract as many people as say the bigger and more affordable destinations such as Santos or Praia Grande. So while there were many visitors to the island during the weekend, it was nothing like Copacabana. Only a few of the island's beaches were crowded beyond our liking (we could never, ever be a carioca when the beaches turn into sheep farms.) While we did wake up at 2:30 on Sunday morning to avoid the five hour ferry wait and seven hour traffic crawl on the continet, the vacation was a wonderful decision and i didn't miss Easter at all. I can say that i have been to paradise, can you?

I really didn't take many photos while on vacation, there's something about just wanting to sit in your plastic yellow Skol chair and not do anything. at all. Well, anything other than drinking caipirinhas, rubbing on bug repellent (Ilhabela is known as mosquito Isle, and i'm still itching) and randomly getting up to jump in the deliciously blue water for a swim. We explored the island, sized up the beaches, trecked through a monkey trail for an hour to get to a hidden waterfall for an icy (dangerously slippery) swim, but in the end there was only one beach where we really wanted be--Praia do Jabaquara. The first day on the island i grabbed a map and decided that i wanted to go to Jabaquara only because it was the very last beach on the circuit that you can get to by car. All of the beaches on the eastern side of the island are only accessible by boat or by a guided jeep offroading expedition. So we drove, and drove and drove. It really is the last destination on the circuit. The drive is about an hour of long and ends on a bumpy, dangerous, dusty rock-filled dirt road that hugs the cliff on the northern side of the island. You really feel like you are never going to get there...witnessed a few cars giving up and turning around...if you are brave enough to scale the monkey trail then you end up at paradise. The beach is secluded, away from cars, roads, everything. And the distance and terrifying drive keeps the number of beach goers way down. White sand, a bar, trees, chairs and open ocean. The chairs and umbrellas belong to the only restaurant/bar on the beach, so if you sit you have to order. But it's well worth it, not just for the shade and seats but for the bathroom and shower. Buy a few drinks but bring a few of your own as well.

We liked Jabaquara so much that on the fourth day we gave up looking for another beach and just headed back with fresh fruit and a bottle of wine in tow. We did end up losing our licence plate on the difficult terrain, but that's ok. Ilhabela was truly the perfect vacation fo us. H and i are travelers and we hadn't been anywhere since Rio in July. 2011 has been extremely busy for both of us; H started a new job and continues his post grad classes and I jumped into language teaching which has taken off a lot faster than i expected. Throw in my photography and housework (yes, i consider housework a job) and it sounds like we're on turbo. I mean, i haven't even been blogging! We're too young to not slow down and do something crazy every once in a while. A little fresh perspective is helping to refuel my Salty motiviation.

We spent most of Easter in the car (from 2:30am-11am) after which we indulged in a very long nap. I realized onlythe day after Easter that neither of us had had an ounce of chocolate. sad. So last night i took out the giant 2.5 kilo bar of baking chocolate at about 9pm and could only think of doing something simple; cookies. I'm not terribly good at baking gluten free cookies, i've gotten my hand in on cakes, pizza doughs and quick breads, but my cookies always disapoint because they end up too crumbly. Tried anyway and threw in a banana in hopes that it might be sticky enough to keep the things together. They were still a bit crumbly, but once cooled they seemed like normal cookies... not something that i would really want to blog about though.

On monday we eat dinner at about 11pm because that's when H gets home. After the fire breathing curry i made for dinner, i shuffled a plate of hot cookies over to the couch. To my surprise, H was giddy; "cookies! you haven't made cookies in forever!" i suppose i haven't, and i suppose i haven't actually baked anything for us in forever either. No desserts in months. We eat no sugar! I was wondering why we were getting so skinny. I love to bake and we love to eat baked things yet i let them dry up. So like with needing vacations, i realized that we both need Salty so we can have a few sweets at least once a month! After coming to this conclusion the cookies seemed so much more regal to me; a cookie, a chocolate chip cookie. Nevermind that it has no butter and is made with whole soy, rice and quinoa flours, it still has chocolate in it. So here it is, on the blog. Nothing special yet it's what shoved me back in finally.

Having the cookies around also led to another excuse for photographing them; to try out my new lens. I shot these with my first ever prime lens, nothing special-i can't afford special, but all were taken with my new 50mm 1.8. If you don't know what a prime lens is it is simply a lens that cannot zoom; it only has one focal length. There are many advantages to a prime lense (quality advantages if you can't afford top zoom lenses like me) but also i needed something with a wider aperture. So lo and behold! $135 on Amazon and i only had to wait a month or two before the aunt of a friend in SP came for a visit from the US. Yes, that's how we buy things in Brazil....

Chocolate Chip Cookies (adapted from Tartelette)

ingredients:

1 cup rice flour

1/2 cup tapioca flour

1/4 cup soy flour

1/4 cup quinoa

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 banana

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup oil (i mixed olive and soy)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

about 1 cup chocolate chips or chunks

method:

Mix all the flours together and set aside. Beat the sugar, oil, banana, egg and vanilla together and add the flour mixture. Combine and add the chocolate. Refrigerate until stiff and form into flat disks. Do not cook round balls, this recipe doesn't flatten out very well. Let cool completely before eating or you will be in the midst of a crumbly mess. I don't have xantham gum here so binding agents are always my biggest challenge...if you have xantham gum, add 1 tsp for a better result.

Ilhabela really is a paradise. We declared it our Christmas/New Years/H's birthday/one year wedding anniversary vacation. At least that's how i see it. It's always a bit sad to go home from a vacation, leaving the hot sun (for some reason it was hotter there than farther up north...) and freedom to do whatever on a weekday is difficult. I remember crying and getting really depressed when i was a young girl every time i had to go home after a vacation at my aunt's house or a camping trip to the beach. You grow out of that but there's still a little bitterness when it's time to go home. Over the past year i've not been feeling any bitterness though, and i think it's because while i enjoyed the beach imensley, what made the trip was who i was with. I celebrated my one year wedding anniversary one month ago and i hope i never stop feeling like the luckiest girl on the planet. A friend of mine recently asked for a bit of advice about "moving in" with a boyfriend or husband- i answered with the difficulties that we all whine about, but i also mentioned that the one thing that shadows over all of the negatives is knowing that you're always either going home to someone or someone is always going home to you. Or even better--going home together to eat chocolate chip cookies.

A Few of My Favorite Things

2011-04-04T18:56:00.007+02:00

Nothing Really, Just some Chat

Yeah, feels like forever. Two months; two months is the longest i have ever gone without a post since we started nearly four years ago. Where have i been? I'm sorry to say that i've simply been right here. No crazy vacations, no getting lost in the jungle. No time, i suppose i have had time, but over all less time than before. No inspiration, no i've had quite a few delicious things sitting on my table in the past few months. What's wrong? nothing. im just not sure what kind of blog this is anymore. food blogs are starting to get really annoying, the internet seems to be suffocating with them. That doesn't mean we're done posting about food, never. Started with food will end with food. But if i have any chance of consistency, we are going to have to open the genre. And i'm starting to feel crafty.

In the past two months of Salty Cod void, i started a new chapter in my life in Brazil. work. Lots of work. I started my own language school and teach both English and French classes here in my petite ville. Who ever thought i would actually use my college degree! So i have students, lesson plans and a lot of Portuguese speaking. I teach all beginner classes in Portuguese, am i perfect in Portuguese? Hell no. So you see it is quite a challenge. English is one thing, but try teaching your second language using your third language. Quite an exercize. Next door to my new "day job" continues my photography jobs-yes i still have those. In the past few months i have been shooting for a magazine as well as a cute start up cupcake shop in Sao Paulo. On top of that, the magazine i've been working with actually let me create my own recipes. That is a first and undoubtedly is an achievement for Salty who has been making up recipes for years. Bravo us. in any case, that is the professional update.

It's April, lets forget about March shall we. We're really starting to miss pastel-style Easter. I don't know how your Easter is, but my American Easter is full of pastels, chocolate bunnies, dyed eggs and snow globes filled with delightful springy Easter motifs. The pastel Easter bonnet ham and asparagus is not exactly what we do here in Brazil. I can't remember much of Easter last year as we were in the process of moving into our house. But i believeit involved a chocolate kinder egg. yep. The Brazilian tradition is the chocolate egg rather than the chocolate bunny. Which is better? Bunny by far. I remember those cuddly chocolate bunnies in my Easter baskets from my childhood--they could be a murderous weapon if chucked in your sister's face. American chocolate bunnies are solid deadly bricks of chocolate that lasts for months, come July and you're still knawing on cottontail's midsection. In Brazil, the eggs are beautiful but are hollow. Hollow? How much did i just pay for a hollow egg? This year we are making our own eggs Martha Stewart style (filling real egg shells) as well as dyeing eggs. People don't dye eggs in Brazil. Isn't that sad? This year i'm dyeing and will make those crafty daycare style bird nest cupcakes. But how to really do Easter right without peeps, malted eggs, cadburry creams and jelly beans? insanity. We'll see how the homemade peeps turn out. Get excited.

I don't know if anyone is still out there with us, but if you are, thanks for being here. We're not dead yet, just waiting for a comeback. Now i've got to finish editing the photos of the fig, almond and olive oil financiers!

Nem Toda Brasileira é Bunda!

2011-02-05T12:41:00.002+01:00

THE ONE YEAR BRAZILIVERSARY

It's official. Today is the day of my first Braziliversary (term coined by Lindsey of Adventures of a Gringa in Brazil). One year without leaving the country; officially the longest consecutive term spent outside of the USofA. Is Brazil finally my home then? Am i a Paulista? If i'm not i pretend i am anyway. Paulista is a state of mind anyway. you'll agree when you travel state to state in this country, like mini countries thrown inside of one large gunny sack. They say (unaccredited web writers and day-job psychologists) that the first year of marriage is the most difficult. Well forget that, it's the first year of expatriatage that is. It's the marriage that saved the later! Obviously since that is the reason we are here. Either way, one year. So what is the verdict? Acclimated to the climate? Accomplish all my goals? Warm up to the wonderful humans known as Brasileiros/as? Do i do as the Romans and sigh, scratch my head and submit? Do i wear a thong on the beach yet? I've somehow accomplished quite a few things, though it did take a while. My timeline was burned to ashes and my patience exploded around the holidays, but like everything in Brazil, the paperwork took a long time to complete. Yes i have an opinion on Brazil and yes i have an opinion on Brazilians, and no i will not wear a Brazilian bikini. Doesn't America celebrate cultural diversity with a ~~crack~~ melting pot theory? American bikini is my culture,so let me be you xenophobic Brazilians!

After much, or rather little self debate with a trifle facebook poll thrown in over whether to make a cake or pão de queijo for the big day (today) i sided with the cheese as we're already scheduled to produce a cake tomorrow. Why pão de queijo? I've already posted it here at Salty, about three years ago when none of you readers were with us (other than parents and B&J) so i'm posting it again. Hey, you say, don't you also have the same recipe in a certain online compilation cookbook that no one bothered to buy? why yes, yes i do. Accompanied by a dramatic story about Brazil? yes! clever you. Moving on, i have a very personal connection to pão de queijo. yes, i am connected to a cheese bread. a soft, gooey puffy cheese bread. so naturally they are an appropriate first Braziliversary treat even though we make them every week. The first time i made them was while i lived in Paris, i posted them simply to surprise and prove to a Brazilian friend of mine that yes i was listening to the 2:00am skype conversation on biscuits and Brazilian pastries...time zones. First physical proof of my cross-continent stalking (what?) abilities. Long story short, the first time i arrived in Sao Paulo, that friend picked me up from the airport and gave me a small packet of pães de queijo. Delirious from the 19 hour plane ride i let them go cold. yes i was scolded for it. Then, the first time said friend came to the US, i made homemade pão de queijo to hand him at the airport. Then when i cam back to Brazil....you get the picture. oh ps my friend and i got married, our love of cheese breads was too great a bond to be separately.

Another reason to post is that i am quite put off by all the "recipes" for pão de queijo i come across in foodgawker. Random recipes (by Americans, Australians, Koreans, whohaveyou) that don't even mention that they are Brazilian, and worse, recipes with wheat or corn flour mixed in, and some made into a liquidous soup in a blender, gah! what blasphemy is this? these people should be ashamed of themselves. But hey, you might say, you are no Mineira, you should shut your mouth. touché. but my buns have already been Mineiro-approved so drop your nose. Yet one more reason to post about pdq is that my father discovered them at a churrascaria in Seattle and had lovely dreams about them. Unfortunately, the ones he had were not the best. The best in the world are the ones at the Rodaviaria (central bus station) in Indaiatuba. true story. my homemade recipe comes in close after. But if you truly want the best pão de queijo, you suckas have to come to Brazil.

Recipe
ingredients: 2 cups (about 250g) polvilho (cassava flour), 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup water, 1/4 cup oil, 1 tsp salt, 1 egg, cheese. try for roughly 25g cheese. you can use a mixture of any variety, even farm cheese.

method:

Bring water, milk, oil and salt to a boil. Let cool slightly.

Add the flour and stir, it will be hot and it will be ugly.

Add the cheese (about 1/2 cup cheese, Parmesan, Provolone, mozzarella, whatever you have) and combine as best you can.

Add the egg and kneed with your hands (if not too hot) until a smooth dough is formed.

Coat hands in olive oil and roll the whole dough ball in your hands. Roll small dough balls and place either in a cupcake tin or on a parchment lined tray.

Bake for about 30 minutes at 325. Do not let the bottoms burn. The insides should be gooey but not taste like raw dough.

*if you are in the US, don't buy tapioca starch. it is not the same. it won't taste the same and the texture will be much different. look for a South American imports store or a Brazilian store (there is a shop in the U district in Seattle that sells polvilho) and look for cassava flour.

*once you're a cheese bread making master, addvariety to your buns with chopped herbs, shredded chicken, diced salami, fresh cracked pepper and even apples.

The language. So after one year with zero lesson i somehow find myself able to classify myself as a Portuguese speaker. Sure i sound like an uneducated immigrant, but i am understood and once i have a caipirinha there is no shutting me up. The Portuguese just rambles out like a falling bowl of jello. Usually there are about eight percent French words accidentally added, but who is counting. I can't write worth beans (or rice, ha!) and i am reminded of that daily, particularly when facebook "chatting" with the ten year old cousin who lives down the street. It's da, you said de, that doesn't make sense. Thank you sensei, i will try harder next time. Brazilians "type laugh" by repeating the letter "K," that has never made sense to me. K doesn't even technically exist in the Portuguese alphabet. Anyway, i know it will take many more years before i am through with the offensive mistakes, and perhaps a class on how to write. But that's ok. i leernedd how to speaky yous guys, i speaky!

So Brazil... i would like to post an essay of thoughts and analysis on the ever present question,"so what do you think of Brazil?" This may take a while and if you are Brazilian, you might possibly misunderstand my view point in showing both the positive and negative aspects that stand out to me. I believe that in order to really get to know and live with someone you lave to be aware of their assets and faults and be able to either get past them or mindfully hope that it will get better and adjust your actions accordingly. A country is no different. I love Brazil, and if I still cannot prove that to you, then crawl into your crab cake with cheese and continue to label me as a misinformed hater. If you prefer not to read, scroll past the small text to the end.

The country. So how do you like Brazil? is the absolute most difficult, annoying and commonly posed question i receive. how do i like Brazil. Like every place on the planet, other than Scandinavia of course, there are things to love, things to like, things to dislike and things to hate. Let us say, as a blanket statement, that i love Brazil. Yes, i have grown to love Brazil, even though there are many things i am uncomfortable with. Brazil has a spirit, a history, a sky, a sunset, a sound, a smell, a laugh and a taste that i will never shake a desire for. I truly am happy to call this place my home and to have a loving Brazilian family all around. But the things in Brazil that i cannot let go are the great divisions between the poor and the wealthy, education, role of women and the never ending submission to the nonsensical (such as psychology exams for driver's license or three separate treasure-hunt stations to make one single purchase at a store or shop.) I get extremely flustered by the nonsensical and realize how easy many things are in the US, like going to the DOL and only the DOL to get your driver's license. Unfortunately for now, the only thing to do when faced with the nonsensical in Brazil is to simply breath and go forth with your work. And then rant about it to as many people as will listen.

A foreigner, or Brazilian, could go on for days about the severe lack in the Brazilian education system. Lack of funding in the public schools, government money poured into public colleges so that the rich kids who paid for private high school can go for free, no school buses and the utter disrespect and devaluation of educators. Public schools have no money, so their teachers get paid no money. Perhaps that makes sense even though it is not just. Private schools pay educators better. But then there are the private language schools. Private, corporate language schools. The teachers at such establishments make less than a middle-school dropout barber. Brazil, in my view as it stands, fails the majority of its people when it comes to education. And lack of education is, well, the root of all evil.

In concerns to women, many Brazilians (especially women) may be scratching their heads wondering how i could possibly find the role of women degrading here. Well i do. As an outsider, i do. I was beyond proud when the nation elected Dilma Roussef as the first female president of Brazil. But at the same time, the role and image of women in this country leaves me shaking my head. A short list: high heels, enough to permanently damage your feet for life. Hundreds and hundreds of reais on beauty and fashion even when the money is not disposable. Obsession with appearance. Obsession with impressing men. Wearing uncomfortably small clothes just to impress men; it's the wrong size, too small! no, it's suppose to look like that. Obsession with "sexy." Constantly judging out of fear of being judged. For a while i would just smile and gawk at the idea of a "beautiful" culture, but then when you think why do they do it when there are so many negatives to it, you start to realize it is for a male pleasing society. Cultural? Your bikini is cultural? Cultural for the past 50 years you mean. Who set the culture? Whose culture are you following? You like it, fine. But for what reasons? After a while, i really fail to see how nail polish is culture.

Above all the superficial "cultural" pressures put on women, the one i cannot forgive is elective cesarean section. Brazil continues to be the nation with the highest (30 percent) rate of c-section births in the world. The vast majority are performed in private hospitals. 70-93 percent of births in private hospitals are c-section. Private meaning money. This, of course is only according the the World Health Organization. Is it yet another way to distinguish the top economic class from the other or is it something else? In studies (conducted by Brazilians) when women are questioned as to why they elected to have a c-section (as in it was not necessary), the answers of avoiding pain and remaining sexually desirable to men were the most common answers (as well as bullying from doctors). The "idea" of the Brazilian woman is fierce, but in reality she is labeled as a visually appealing man-pleaser. The pressure placed on women to be attractive and sexually desirable can even trump reproductive and maternal instincts (for those who choose elective cesarean). Unacceptable and utterly disrespectful to the many women who must undergo a c-section in situations of life and death. Cesarean surgery was created for one reason; to be used in emergency situations.

The funny thing is that i don't feel pressure. That is, aside from the fact that i am put off from the idea of ever having a child in Brazil. But there are many women, particularly where i live, who don't fit the labeling above. I don't wear heels, i wear sandals to the grocery store. I prefer my nails plain and clean. I prefer to leave my ass up to the imagination rather than to the eyes. My husband once said to me that painting my nails would show that i am trying to assimilate into the culture. But why? I am assimilating into Brazil just fine, why are such superficial things like my nails part of culture? Part of the culture of a western powerhouse nation in which many women hold extremely powerful economic and political positions? To be honest, i don't view it as culture at all. It isn't. There are many, many more important, endearing and inspiring things about the Brazilian culture than trying to impress men with an ass propped up with high heels, cheap nail polish and a bare bottom in your face at the beach. Beauty gives women power? Confidence? If you feel so, then fine. Undoubtedly there are women who feed on it. I can't stereotype all Brazilian women to this profile, there are many, many beautiful, intelligent and powerful women who think along the same lines as the words written here.

In one year i have managed to make some amazing friendships, mostly with other expatriates struggling through the same issues as me, but also with some genuine Brazilians both living in and out of the country. Until you move away and start over as a silent nobody, you never really realize how important friendships are. My expat friends, who many i have never met (yet) are like an extended family, and my Brazilian friends are as wonderful of people as can be. But then there are others. I, like everyone, have an opinion on everything, an opinion that not everyone agrees on. There are many people who read this blog and dislike what i have to say. Though the negatives, or rather neutrals concerning my time in Brazil have been extremely few (maybe one? two negative posts in a year? sometimes not even negative at all, but simply a misunderstanding) i continue to receive oddly large amounts of criticism, from Brazilians. But, oh well. I will keep on anyway. There are hundreds of ways to positively describe Brazilians in general; proud, self-sufficient, humble, generally happy with life, faithful, hard-working, real, positive, gracious, conscious and patient. very patient. i wish i could be as patient as a Brazilian. On the other side, Brazilians in general are also oversensitive, submissive, unquestioning, sexist, divided, reckless (in terms of driving), undereducated and oversensitive, oh wait, did i already say that? This is, of course, merely my generalization, feel free to disagree.

So after this brief (Shakespeare brief) view on the shortcomings of Brazil, you would expect me to remark that all Brazilians are asses. No, i don't think that at all. There is a song i like to hear on the radio, when i finally translated it i said to myself all Brazilians are butts? The real translation is neither are all Brazilians (women, but i take is as Brazilians in general) asses. And i realized you could insert the word American in for Brazilian and the song would still make sense. There are many things i dislike about America and Americans, but there are more things to like. I'm still American and still love my country, not all Americans are asses. It's the same thing with Brazil. Adjusting to life in a new country means accepting that. Brazil is only part ass, and i love it for what it is, even with the ass parts. It is possible to cope, even with a laundry list of disagreeable aspects, if you are willing to cope. Somehow i've managed to feel at home here, even welcomed. So i am grateful to Brazil for that.

Here is to a fast, furious and fabulous first year! It only gets better from here on out. There is so much of Brazil to see. While driving from SP to Belo Horizonte a few weeks ago (7 hour drive) i realized how utterly beautiful this country (well, at least Minas Gerais) is to drive through. If driving on Fernão Dias wasn't a constant truck-dash to escape imminent death, it would be quite relaxing. We'll be traveling to the north in a few weeks and i've come to realize that i have already physically experienced more variety of Brazil than i have of the US. Traveling through Brazil is like crossing ten European borders, there is so much diversity and change from one region to another that i really don't think that i will ever run out of new and exciting destinations in Brazil to experience. Digressing, for now---Rainbow caipirinhas tonight!

Banana Republic

2011-01-19T12:02:00.013+01:00

Bread, Jobs, Dogs & Rain-because it's been a while

Table topic post warning. I live in the banana republic and yet i don't buy bananas. For the first time in one year we randomly bought bananas on the weekend. It's not that i don't like bananas, who doesn't like bananas. I just don't like fruit that can't keep in the refrigerator. After 1.5 days of sitting on the counter my thoughts were justified. Flies. I absolutely detest kitchen bugs. From little white worms in fresh peppers to small black beetles that drill perfect circles in dry beans, microscopic ants that appear everywhere out of nowhere and of course, fruit flies- kitchen bugs are terrible creatures. So three days of flies and im done. No one is eating these bananas. So i do what every American does, make banana bread.

Normally i would never post about a silly recipe like banana bread. Because, well it is silly. There are too many recipes for banana bread online, in books and in your head (im sure you already have your own). There are even already two old archive recipes of banana bread here at Salty; one here and one here, well that's not really a recipe. But damn that's old. Anyway, to my surprise, this was the first time H had ever had banana bread. Crazy Brazilians, well maybe it's just him. But quick breads (such as banana, zucchini, cranberry, etc) are not very prevalent in Brazil (do they exist? not sure.) And if they do exist, they would be referred to as a bolo (cake) and not bread. This recipe also happens to be gluten free and is surprisingly good. Usually when i bake simply for us, as in no photographs please, i don't use recipes. My gluten free things never turn out "splendid" just "alright, it's better than nothing" so i usually don't measure ingredients or take much note of what i'm doing. But this one surprised us, H could not believe that it was gluten free, mainly because it doesn't crumble and fall apart the second you look at it. A victory for recipe creation. Knocks all my gluten free cakes out of the water. Must be the banana. Banana banana.

The Salty Cod set out the new year with a goal to post "regularly," we even wrote about it in our last post. Unfortunately we have already messed that one up. This time, however, it wasn't because i was being lazy. This time, when i actually had the litte Salty Spirit to keep things fresh, good things started happening. Good things? When i say good things i mean jobs and friends. I am popular! no not really, but lately we've been busy on a social level that we're not quite used to. Parties, bars, dinners, getting lost in SP for an hour and a half (where my gps at) and of course a barbecue or two. At the same time the wine, cachaça and tequila (wha?) was flowing, i entered upon this new thing for me in Brazil, a thing called jobs. H and i both started the new year out with employment luck. H, the ambitious one who already had a really great job, started a new job at a French company; better position, higher salary, closer to home. What i started was a little different, what i started was -- my first photography assignments in Brazil! with an actual publication! It took one year but finally i made a small, yet significant "start" in what i had promised myself when i decided to become an expat and move to Brazil: i am going to go, but i am not going to give up what i want to do, even though it will be harder. Finally, i'm not a failure after all. Will show you the shots and name of publication when it comes out.

Second random job prospect was a call from a language school looking for a French teacher. Note this, they called me. After two visits, a few hours of speaking French (first time in over a year) they finally revealed the "compensation." Let us say now that language schools, unless they are fancy international private institutions, not just chain schools, are not worth any human effort. These places devalue education to the highest degree. Should a teacher make less than a barber? Not a hair dresser, a barber. So well, if i am going to volunteer as a language teacher, i might as well do it at a public high school where i am needed and not at a greedy corportate dime-a-dozen language school. Advice to expats thinking about teaching language here; rethink it, unless you are a skilled public advertiser and offer your own in-home private lessons as a self-employed teacher. My teaching dreams are dwindling. Better make banana bread.

Gluten Free Banana Bread- Pão de Banana

ingredients

1 cup rice flour (white or brown)

1/2 cup polvilho doce (tapioca flour)

1.5 tsp baking powder

100 g butter (about 1 US stick or 1/2 Brazilian block)

2 large eggs

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 brown sugar

4 medium-small ripe bananas

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup ground cashews (or whatever nut)

Method

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, bananas, vanilla and cinnamon. Pour all flours and bp in (no need for separate bowl) mix the flours gently on top, then incorporate thoroughly. Stir in the nuts and fill a parchment-lined bread pan. Bake for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Before we shove off for today, as this has quickly become a first-person monologue post full of personal details, i want to say a word on the tragedies that have lately fallen on Brazil. As i change the tone and topic completely, i appologize. First, a thank you to all my family, friends and readers who have expressed concern over my safety (as i am in Brazil after all) I can assure you that i am completely free of harm. The areas devasted by the landslides and heavy rain are in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro state, an area that in geography appears a world apart from where i am in the São Paulo interior.

From this tragedy, a wave of international articles, discussion, comments and opinions have surfaced that at times is a bit unjust. Aside from the fact that many Americans apparently are unaware that Rio is in fact quite distant from the Amazon (opposite sides and corners of the country) and that natural disasters don't only happen in "poor third world" nations (waht about Katrina?), one small, insignificant comment i read on a news article somewhere made me cringe; "Oh, poor dog, people in developing countries like Brazil don't value dogs like here." This comment is in reference to a photo of a dog sitting next to a grave. Is this what people think? For some reason i can't let this go. So i must write.

There is a video of a stranded woman being rescued via rope from a rooftop as water cascades around her. This clip was shown on American news channels (so i have been told) repeatedly. The heartbreak of the video is that the woman is forced to drop her dog, Beethoven, in order to hold on to the rope and save herself. Another viral image is of a dog sitting next to a grave. These images make it very clear that the floods in Rio are not simply a human tragedy, but a tragedy for every living thing in the area. To me, these images show a clear dedication and love for dogs and animals. Brazil is full of dogs, both those in the home and on the street. There are many street dogs here, however, there are many street dogs in US as well. The only difference is that the animal catchers only come if they are called. So the homeless dogs, who after a while are not really homeless but are rather residents of the streets or parks, are never taken away. One such dog has his own house on the corner of our street. He has a small bowl and the neighbors make after-dinner donations at his small door regularly. Lack of value in dogs? Perhaps Brazilians value dogs more as they realize that if they can't afford to feed them then they shouldn't take them in. An idea that many Americans would benefit from. For those that can afford, there are pet shops, cleaners and vets on virtually every corner.

Dogs are not valued in underdeveloped countries. Tell that to the homeless man who shares his small meal with his dog. The dog is man's best friend wherever you are. They make no distinction between rich or poor and love their human companion for who they are not for their class rank or lack of shoes and in return they are loved like family, and we all know what the Brazilian family is like. This is the never ending struggle against the international stereotype, the developing third world, the banana republic. Will the world ever wake up and actually see Brazil? Maybe someday when the media shows something other than crime, death and tragedy to the world. But this nation is healing itself; the people have come to the aide of the people and volunteer forces and donations are pouring into Rio from every corner of the country. So is that developing or developed?

If you have not donated already to help the mud slide survivors (and the dogs) and wish to, there are many online websites to make donations from including The Brazil Foundation, Visão Mundial and the Sao Paulo Red Cross. If you are in Brazil, you can donate items to the rescued animal fund at Animais Desabrigandos.

a bientôt

A New Year

2011-01-01T15:46:00.005+01:00

Copacomplainer? And the Year's Goals

A new year, already. 2011, Salty is getting old. Have I really already been in Brazil for one month short of a year? I'm going to miss 2010. My celebration this year was not to ring in 2011, but rather to celebrate what was 2010. Moving to Brazil, getting married, starting a different life and navigating though it. 2010 was an amazing year. 2010 was a learning year full of struggles, tears, confusion, laughter, smiles, frustration and love. And we got throught it. So if ever there was a successful year, it was 2010. Can 2011 be as good? Yeah, we think it can. 2011 is going to be the push year. 2010 was the adjustment year, and 2011 will be the push year. We know we will continue to adjust forever as long as we are in Brazil, but after a full year, a full circle around, we are a little more preapred, hardened and ready for the next year in Brazil.

2010 was an adjustment year for Salty as well. When Salty was born in 2007, he was a combination between journalistic food writing and food "discoveries" in Paris and other European cities. During the year in Paris, Salty moved slightly away from food and centered around European adventures and daily life in Paris. In other words, it was an expat and travel blog. After returning to the US, Salty mutated back into a food blog. In 2010, Salty once again altered his tone and slowly has become more personal, more "diary blog like" about my life in Brazil. That is, Salty is your average expat blog that attempts to honestly report the personal trials of life in a foreign country. The difference with Salty this time is that food is used to tell those stories through, and that is the road that Salty will be continuing down for 2011. My life, my triumphs, my hardships. Blogging is not for you, it is for me. If my writing, opinions and feelings are not to your taste, then stuble onto the next blog. There are hundreds of thousands expat and food blogs alone that you can frequent rather than mine. This being said, if you find me to be a complainer about life in Brazil, well, sometimes i am. Rarely, but sometimes. That is our disclaimer. Ninety percent of my posts are positive experiences about life in Brazil, but like life anywhere, there are some things to complain about, some things that are unpleasant and somethings that anger me, sadden me and confuse me. I will write about these things. My Brazilian Christmas was hard for me. And i will repeat the phrase that offended some; Christmas in Brazil sucked for me. What i write about in this blog applies only to me, it does not apply to you and your Brazilian family/experience. That's why you have your blog, and i have mine. So, Salty Cod 2011 is heading for a year of raw ups and downs, and we are not going to sensor it.

Our goals for 2011 are not surprising. Portuguese leads the list. Speaking Portuguese properly is the number one goal. I have improved a lot in one year. Improved meaning going from zero to intermediate level without any lessons or courses. Go me. But i need to push harder. I need to put more effort into the technical Portuguese. After Portuguese is conquering driving. I've finally learned how to drive manual transmission and in the next year will come my drivers license and city driving. After Portuguese and driving are the goals we have for every year; laugh more, smile more, love more and continue to be thankful for the wonderful life i have in Brazil. The final goal is to continue with Salty. Continue to post interesting stories and eye catching photos so that we can keep you all in our life here.

So the new year in Brazil; the second best new year's in my life. For serious. Second because nothing can surpase the bed & breakfast on the San Jaun Islands last year. We planned to go to the beach, but things came up, got in the way, too late in planning and we ended up having the casula new year with the family. But this one was pretty good even though it was nothing special. Big family gathering, but with a little less noise. Good food, good conversations, fireworks and cheap Champagne (sparkling wine) in the street, and a small, quiet New Year's morning breakfast at home with H. Perfect way to start the new years. Apricot clafoutis and lemon scones. All gluten free. My Brazilian Christmas may have been hard, but my New Year's was spectacular. As expats, we have to remind ourselves constantly why we are here. For me, i just have to look at the person next to me and i am reminded. So, 2011, bring it on. Brazil is not for beginners, but one year in, i'm not a beginner any more.

Thank you readers for your support throughout the years. Happy new year to you and your family. As always,

a bientot

Feliz Natal

2010-12-25T13:44:00.010+01:00

Merry Christmas

For a while i decided to pretend that it wasn't even Christmas time since comparing the Christmas that i know to the Christmas here is a very difficult task. I have no Christmas tree, no lights, no candles, no garlands, no fancy table settings, no fancy dinner, no Christmas music, no fireplace, no pizza on Christmas Eve, no five-star Christmas morning breakfast, no eggnog, no excited atmosphere and no family. So, if that's Christmas, then how can i compare a completely different event to it? I can't. Trying to do so is simply asking for saudades; longings.

Stepping out of your zone, moving out of your country is hard on many fronts, as we expats blog about ad nauseum. But there is something about the big holidays that are hard to handle. Particularly when you hear a Portguese "Jingle Bells" that has absolutely nothing to do with the real song. Is it wierd that it makes me angry? Aren't cultures supposed to have their own ways of celebrating? I'll admit, longing for what i know and love has made my view of the holidays here slightly bitter. Fake evergreen Christmas trees at all the stores, plastic scenes of snow critters, a Santa Clause named Papai Noel, Noel? Brazil's Santa is French? Why is there nothing Brazilian about Christmas here, what the hell is a Brazilian Christmas anyways? Grocery stores full of Italian panetonne? Brazilians eat more panetonne than Italians do. Let's breath. I wouldn't feel so bitter and mean if i didn't miss my own Christmas so much. So, i have to stop missing to see what a Brazilian Christmas is actually like. To do so i have to stop comparing, stop judging, stop scoffing and look at it as something unique. Christmas is Christmas right?

It is extremely difficult to say, "a Brazilian Christmas is like this--" It's like saying that all Americans do the same thing for Christmas, when the reality is that some Americans go to Church and have a big dinner on Christmas Eve, and some Americans go to Denny's for pancakes, some go to the movies and eat pizza, some open present on Christmas Eve, some on Christmas morning, some drink spiked eggnog and some sing Christmas carols all night at grandmas. The same thing in Brazil. I have no clue what all families do during Christmas, the reality is, however, that it depends completely on your economic class. This is what is universal around most of Brazil: panetonne. If there is one thing around Brazil that signifies "the holiday season," it's the large cardboard cubes stacked up like building bricks at every single grocery store. Mountains of panetonne, cheap panetonne. I have no idea how dry fruit-studded yeast bread became the holiday it- food, but it is as descriptive of the season as the head-size chocolate eggs are at Easter.

Aside from panetonne, other signs of Christmas include fake Christmas trees in nearly all commercial and public buildings. Christmas trees are not common in most homes due to the cost of ornaments, lights, garlands etc. And honestly, who wants a plastic smelly tree in their house? This is actually ok with me. Evergreen Chrsitmas trees don't exist because they don't grow here. Easy. So give up the fake ones, or embrace lighting a palm tree. I have not seen a single palm tree with lights, people would rather string lights from the top of a pole downward to form a light "tepee" to mimic the triangular Christmas than to put lights on a live tree. I wanted to see a damn palm tree with lights, Americans love that stuff.

My Brazilian Christmas is not the same as all Brazilian Christmases just as my American Chrsitmas is not the same as all American Christmases. There are many wealthy families in Brazil that can mimic an American Christmas quite well. The key word is wealthy. As with all things in Brazil, having access to things common to middle class America is only available to the top classes. Christmas toys, classy decorations and formal sit down with special food for the season is not really possible for the lower classes and most middle class. For our Brazilian family, Christmas Eve IS Chrsitmas. The night started with some Barbecue, yeah the every-weekend style barbecue. There was a roast chicken, and the buffet style everyday foods of rice, beans, mayonaise salad and farofa. To be honest and fair, this is how many Brazilians "celebrate," and if we are "celebrating" Christmas, why should it be much different than celebrating birthdays or other events? Another thing that effects the style of "celebrating" aside from economic status is the volume of people. No matter how much money you have there is no way you can fit 70 family members plus all of the random friends who show up to mooch around a table. Impossible. Flatware, dishes, champagne cups for all? Having an American style Christmas requirees an American-style family, meaning there has to be crowd control. My family Chrsitmas in the US is intimate, immediate family members. Only my sisters, brothers and parents. That number has grown slightly due to boyfriends and husbands, but that's it. It doesn't extend beyond that. An intimate gathering of 10-15 people allows for an American Christmas. A prom-style dance party with 70+ people to feed does not. So, who am i to compare when the logistics simply cannot compute? In the end it is cultural, and as much as i love the openness and group-style "everyone is family" aspect of the Brazilian family, i prefer the intimate closeness of the American family when it comes to gatherings. Gatherings....

One reason my Brazilian Christmas just doesn't do it for me is that i, personality wise, don't like big parties. I don't. Ask my college mates, attending beer-soaked college parties was never at the top of my fun list, and it still isn't. That is how our gatherings are here. Though obviously not a college party, a large group, lots of beer, people shouting, too many children running around and really bad music blairing as loud as the speakers can go is not my idea of a gathering. This type of party is our generic family celebration, and it works. People have a good time, everyone laughs, dances to the Macaraina (what?) and spills beer all over the floor. The problem is that it doesn't really work for me, and especially not on Christmas. The one thing that i am sublimely lucky for in this matter is that this style of celebration doesn't work for my husband either. We sit back and observe, removed from commotion sitting side by side on a rickety old bench under a knarled tree on the sidewalk thinking about a small cozy sitting room with a fireplace, classical Christmas music on the stereo, my family's annoying dogs pacing back and forth hoping for a crumb of a Christmas cookie, my dad drinking black coffee and my mom mixing together the one cocktail which will put her to sleep.

After eating we had a Secret Santa gift exchange between about 50 people. To be honest, it was slightly frightening. The whole lot were jammed into one rectangular room. The noise was indescribable. Children screaming just to make noise, jumping up and down; chaos spiked with fun. For most of the children, this is the only Christmas present this year. The only ones aside from myself who were frightened by the comotion were the younger children crying on their parents' shoulders. The excahnge took over an hour, with each person standing on a rickety wooden chair that only held-tight by the grace of god and yelling out the name of their Santa. My favorite exchanges were those with beer-in-hand. A few children lucked out with hot wheels, remote control cars and soccer balls, but a few recieved the dreaded clothing. The highlight of it all was seeing how happy the kids were; for people who don't know anything different, their tradition is everything to them.

So what's with all the cookies? There are no Christmas cookies in Brazil. I mean, there really aren't any cookies in Brazil any time of the year. So as an American, I thought it would be novel to introduce the children to the Christmas cookie. I spread it out over three days; hand cutting gingerbread men, baking the most American treats possible--brownies, chocolate chip cookies, ginger snaps, snowcaps, chocolate covered shortbread, peppermint pinwheels and jam thumbprints. Making Christmas cookies was, without a doubt, the most Christmassy event this year. H even helped out on the last day, he stirred the brownies and balled the cookie dough. The cookies were received with awe. That is, the gingerbread men were referred to as biscoitos de Shrek; Shrek biscuits. Aiai, Christmas. I have never made so many cookies at the same time before, 300+ was quite a cookie triumph. Particularly in 90 degrees. My cookie buffet has already been requested for a Christmas party next year. Go me.

So this is my Brazilian Christmas. Nothing like a Christmas i know. Today is actually the 25th, the actual day of Christmas. H and I are eating pizza, watching some old 1960's film and drinking caipirinhas. So i was right all along to not try and recreate Christmas. It's just a day after all. No decorations, no presents, the most non-commercial holiday season i have ever had. Yeah it makes me homesick for the US and my family, but i still wouldn't change my choice to live in Brazil. Brazilian Christmas sucks. But, i get a three day weekend with my husband, sun and a trip to the beach in a few days. This "holiday" season did not consist of shopping trips to the mall or decorating the house, but i finally learned how to drive and finalized my green card status. Life is different, but that's ok. I can still make cookies.

a bientot

Grape Schiacciata. Well, Sorta.

2010-11-11T20:17:00.015+01:00

Expat Down Days

Before any Italians or Italian food lovers scream hey, that's not grape schiacciata! let me assure you that i know. It's a first cousin of the bread and is gluten free, made with a hell of a lot less dough, is actually a "flat" bread, and has a bit of parmesan cheese sprinkled on. It's my interpretation of the classic baked good that i had never even heard of until last night while sitting in my bed reading my Mario Batali Italian Grill book, one of the few cookbooks that made it to Brazil with me, while annoyingly having to listen to Bon Jovi from the other room. Yeash do i live with a 45 year old woman? Our editor has strange taste (ainda te amo). This recipe came to me in a frightening dream that consisted of Jon Bon Jovi dancing through a vineyard with lambs singing it's my life and i did it my way! and so i woke up and made grape flatbread my way. So if you want a classic recipe for grape schiacciata, hit up Mr. Batali for the recipe.

The schiacciata came with a purpose, and thankfully was not accompanied by sleaveless leather.

shiver. The purpose was to aleviate an expat down day. So what's an expat down day? All of the expats that i know, or at least know through their writing, have these days and there is no real equation for predicting when they will happen or for what reason. They simply do. An expat down day is when suddenly out of the blue you feel completely lost, moronic, slow, cowardly, without a plan, without hope, and all you really want to do is sleep or take the cachaça bottle out of the freezer. I've read accounts of other expats in Brazil suggesting how they cope with the sudden burst of melancholy that can last anywhere from one to three days, and many suggest sleeping until 1pm, drinking a bottle of wine, baking cookies, watching seven straight hours of your favorite tv show (anything from Gray's Anatomy to Sex and the City or Doctor Who, yes expats are wierd) but my favorite was the "take yourself out on a date" suggestion by Lindsay of Adventures of a Gringa in Brazil. If going to the cinema didn't cost so damn much here i would probably do that, you know, Harry Potter is coming soon and a certain somebody has only seen the first or third. Tsk tsk. Might have to go alone... Redirecting, for me the only thing that gets me out of the Down Day is to go for a run until i pass out, which worked yesterday, but today we needed something stronger, and that's when i heard Bon Jovi whispering in my head, make the flat bread, post a blog! You can do it! No i can't i replied to him. I want to sit on the couch and pout while watching Jamie Oliver and Oprah interviewing the cast of the Sound of Music. But then he threatened to sing, so i gave up and went into the kitchen.

For me, the Down Days usually don't last more than one to two days. The vast majority of time i am upbeat about life in Brazil, excited about the struggles i have to go through as a foreigner knowing that they are challenges that make life more rewarding. I am finally at a mediocre Portuguese level, i finally have-quite a few actually-friends here in Brazil, and i'm reminded everyday about how lucky i am compared to the majority of people living around me. So what do i have to complain about? That's the hard part, even if things look up, these days still come nonetheless. Luckily they have started to come less frequently. I belive it is because Americans are impatient. Nine months seems like an eon to me; i should be fluent, have the job i want, drive the car that i am still afraid to drive, do errands by myself, etc. But here, nine months are not an eon, and i have to remind myself that it takes us, expatriates, years to reach the life that we imagine ourselves from the moment the plane lands. Americans have this fear of failure issue; i must be great and i must be great exactly right now.

While i'm running or while i'm photographing, i remind myself that fast food is evil, and speading up a life is just the same. Things take time, everyone tells me that and i mean everyone, particularly the ones who have been living in Brazil for many years. Yet these down days drive what they say from my head with an anvil. I remind myself that for every one bad day there are always ninety-nine good days and that tomorrow will be one of them. I'm the lucky one to be living here, to have decided my own life rather than to have kept it in the box. I guess the best lesson to remind yourself of on the down days is the one from Tom Jobim; Brazil is not for beginners. This is the lesson that our editor reminds us of every time we have a tantrum over driver's license psychology exams and school busses. What it means is, take a breath, and drink a caipirinha.

And now we can talk about the bread...i never seem to be able to talk about simply one thing at a time. Last weekend i held Portuguese conversation two days straight, and even when i'm speaking in Portguese my mind wanders to a new subject abstractly. Out at dinner a friend asks, why are you all of a sudden talking about shoes? i blink, oh, i have no idea. I am no longer afraid to make mistakes, i actually like the mistakes. Calling a lawyer a pineapple to his face is one that will go in my book of oh look, remember when... The schiacciata, undoubtedly one of the most difficult things to pronounce, is made from my basic pizza dough that consisits of yeast, water, tapioca flour, rice flour, baking powder, olive oil, egg and salt. Traditional schiacciata consists of one layer of pizza dough covered in grapes and oil followed by another layer of pizza dough covered in grapes. So a pizza dough grape sandwich. My pizza dough is not chewy like wheat dough, it's not too crisp, but not bready. It's hard to describe, but either way it is much too dense to layer on top of itself. That would be quite a mouth full. So the first alteration is to use a single flat layer of pizza dough. On top of the dough goes a layer of olive oil followed by anise seeds followed by a small sprinkling of parmesan cheese to contrast the sweetness. I read many reports on traditional schiacciata being a very sweet bread, and not everyone's cup of tea. Salty sweet is in this season anyways. Bake 20 minutes on the pizza stone and delissimo!

my pizza dough (i used half this recipe for the schiacciata pictured here)

ingredients:

1.25 cups white rice flour

0.25 cups casava flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

0.5 cups warm water

1 packet yeast

1 large egg

1/8 cup olive oil.

1 - 2 tsp anise seeds
seedless grapes, halved

olive oil

parmesan cheese

method: dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the

yeast water, oil and egg. Combine well. Work the dough for about 5 minutes. Let rise for 20 minutes. Place on a pizza stone and sprinkle the top with rice flour. Using your hands or a roller, flatten the dough to your desired thickness.

Rub with olive oil. Sprinkle with anise seeds and seedless grape halves. Sprinkle with parmesan. Bake at 400 degrees F for about 20 minutes.

I think expat down days are part of the package. Even though i hate them and they render me useless for a while, they have a certain quality for showing you the good things, especially when your soggy mood is put up with by your loved ones. I am complimented here in Brazil all the time for being upbeat, for being shiny and "simple," a word Brazilians love and Americans get offended by, but apparently simple a compliment as it means to be content and happy with the small things-that's a big step for an American! but in reality i have the days just as any other expat does, and i know i will continue to have them here and there. Luckily it passes and my teeth come back into view and the simpleness shines through. Can't help it. The truth is, i love Brazil.

a bientôt

Baby Cookies - Biscoitos de Bebê

2010-11-05T18:50:00.007+01:00

oi bebê

I know it's been a while. Is there anybody still out there? The truth is, we just haven't been inspired to post anything, and who wants to read words and see photos that are uninspiring? That's what i thought. October came and went. Brazil elected a new president; a woman. How about that. Brazil is moving forward, the U.S. seems to be moving backward. I timed my exit fairly well eh? It is now officially hot, officially spring weather. Warm rain and lightning are guaranteed nearly every day. Months don't mean anything to me anymore, i look outside and the word November is the last thing that comes to mind. I am finally after nine months at an intermediate level of Portuguese, as in i can actually hold a conversation without staring at a wall. This is attribute to surprising rise of dinner parties. Yes. Now i am no master cook, and i know we always talk about baked sweet goods, but i am probably a more creative chef than i am baker. While in the US i may simply be an average cook, here i am a chef. I never make rice and beans since i am certain that my husband eats them everyday at lunch and i know that any family meal i attend on the weekend there will be plenty. So we stick to a more international menu. As such i have gotten myself into trouble since every time we invite people over or we are invited over, i am asked to make risotto. Yes, in someone's kitchen. I am the take home chef without the accent. Well, i suppose i do have an accent don't i. Either way, i have become an entertainer and i love the control. wait, what?

On most weekends we visit family members, which is particularly easy since they all live within five minutes walking distance. Either way, this is a big family. My mother in law has nine siblings, and five of them live in the same house that their father built each with their wives and children. In the same house. Crowded and uncomfortable? The truth is they are happy though, it's like have a bunch of live-in moms and dads and about twenty siblings rather than one or two. The amount of people ensures that there is a party even without inviting guests, all you need is meet on the grill and motorcycle-delivered beer. Despite their poverty, this family contains some of the most genuine people i know. They are happy with what they have, and they've accepted me since the first day i showed up with my blond hair and oh-look-at-me-im-american-isn't-that- great? Some of my favorite peeps to talk to are the children. They seem to understand my Portuguese better than the adults. I'm a favorite among the five to seven year old girls, why i am not sure, as well as all of the thirteen and fourteen year olds who take a few days of English in public school. Unfortunately the only lessons they want from me are swear words. please don't say these things in class, ok? The sad part is that their teacher probably wouldn't even understand if they did cus in class. Public schools have the worst of everything, primarily because the individuals who actually are qualified to give lessons in English or any other subject aren't up to the idea of living in abject poverty, which is what one earns on a public school teacher's salary. Think teachers in America have it bad? As seen in the last election, public education is one of the main things that keeps Brazil in the third world. I mean, there aren't even school buses for christ's sake. Who wants to put their six year old all alone on a public city bus to school? Brazil is coming far, but it still has a lot of work ahead of it.

Moving on to these cookies. Surprise! A baby! Not my baby, but yet another cousin who is most likely going to be the last cousin born because the oldest of the cousins are already starting to have their own babies. He is the sixth child of one of the uncle families and is joining three brothers and two sisters. Being the sixth child born generally isn't anything special in a family that has so many kids and babies that there still are a few who's names i don't know. But regardless of number, a sixth baby is as fun as a first baby. I have five siblings as well, and when the sixth baby was born in my family, it was just as exciting as the fifth and fourth. Can't really remember the others...So to welcome the new baby we made teeny tiny baby blue cookies as well as green turtles. Why? Mainly because royal icing sugar cookies don't exist in Brazil so they are "new" and "exciting," i prefer homemade gifts, and i am certain that when the baby comes the "party" will be the usual meat and beer. So cookies are absolutely necessary.

I am not a big cookie decorator, i never have been. As i piped each one of these i realized that the reason was most likely because you have to be an artist to decorate cookies. If you can't paint, if you can't draw, then you can't decorate cookies to look anything better than a gingerbread man. It is difficult, it's painting with a piping bag. So my advice to new cookie decorators is to start out very simple and use a #2 tip. My sister is an artist, and after making these i realized that she needs to make more decorated cookies. Hear that R? Cookie decorating isn't really baking, it's painting. One last tip; only use egg white royal icing otherwise you are wasting your time. I will not post a recipe as the web is exploding with far too many sugar cookie recipes, tutorials and royal icing recipes. So google away.

Life is starting to become more normal in Brazil, at most times i forget that i am even "somewhere else," this normaling out, we hope, is exactly what we need in order to rehydrate Salty. Until then,

a bientôt

Grape Juice and Wine

2010-10-11T22:06:00.007+02:00

what and where to buy in Brazil

Brazil is not generally considered a country with a deep viticulture, at least not with all the sexy caipirinhas and golden sweet-water beers the land is so famous for. At least famous within the country for. But as for the continent, the wines of Argentina, Chile and even Uruguay have grown over the years in popularity among the world wine conoseurs, finding their place among those from France, Italy ann Nappa Valley. Living in South America, i have a much greater access to the wines of South America as 1) i am not distracted by the local Washington, Californian, Australian and French wines that were actually affordable to me while in the States and in France and 2) there is a much greater variety of them here to choose from. We are neighbors after all, and the import duty on South American wine appears to be lower than those from Europe and North America. So after eight months of having only (like it's a bad thing) wines from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil, i don't find myself missing French wine, Washington wine, or Australian wine at all, and i've managed a list of quite a few goodies, and baddies, for wine lovers on a middle class budget, because that's what we drink on. As for Brazil itself, drinking wine in Brazil takes skill, stealth, lots of plugged noses and a plea to Bachus for your sanity. There are two things to remember when ordering drinks in Brazil: never order a single glass of wine anywhere, and never order a latte with a flavoring. Just don't do it.

In Brazil, there is a small pea shoot of a selection that can be considered wine, the rest is suco de uva, or grape juice. In much of Brazil, wine means juice that gives you a buzz. You go to the store and you have three options: vinho seco, vinho meio-seco, or vinho sauve. Alright so you got that seco means dry and meio-seco demi-sec, but the literal Greek translation of suave is possum vomit. It's true. It's actully a bottle of Welche's mixed with a cup of sugar, a bit of acid and some type of rubbing alcohol. To top it off, it's kept in the fridge. I'm not exactly sure how it's made. The suave wine is so sickly sweet it has to have been fortified with sugar. Good heavens, you're asking yourself, when did she become such a snob?

The truth is, we're not snobs, we just like wine. The Editor makes reference often to the fact that until i showed up on the doorstep, he didn't give a care for wine. It's considered a pretentious, snobby upperclass beverage. Out of my league, he explained to me. Good thing i changed the errors of his ways. We usually spend between 10 and 15 reais per bottle of wine. Before he was born again, he too was victim to the sticky sweet grape juice that averages between 3 and 10 reais a bottle and is available at most bars, gas stations and grocery stores. Not that great of a difference in price. That is because the problem is not due to the price, the problem is in the taste. For some reason the majority of Brazilians appear to prefer sweet wine. Even the more expensive varieties of suave are displayed first among the wine setups at grocery stores, and when ordering the driest wine you have while grabbing the waiters shirt in an iron fist at a restaurant, suave is likely to be the only choice available. They actually like it. For a case study example, say i purchase a merlot from Argentina and give my mother in law a taste. To me, merlot is already one of the sweetest or rather fruity red wines in reasonble meaning of the word "sweet", yet when she tastes it her face scrunches up and she wants to add sugar. All of this goes to say that the real wine market, meaning wine for the sake of wine and not for a cool sweet grape cocktail, has a relatively small public in Brazil. However, as more and more Brazilian vineyards put out quality affordable wines, the more the Brazilian taste buds change (hopefully).

The majority of Brazilian vineyards are located in the south of the country in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The Serra Gaucha, Campanha, Sao Joaquim, Serra do Sudeste and Vale do Rio do Peixe regions predomenantly grow Bordeaux varieties of grapes and produce a huge spectrum of wines both in quality and price. Ironically, the majority of the wine we buy casually due to both price and taste, come from northern Brazil in the wine region Vale do Sao Francisco. Controlled wine production is still young in Brazil compared to many of the big contenders in the wine industry who have been regulated for centuries, but like the rest of Brazil, it's getting there and at quite a remarkable speed. It may be difficult, and expensive, to find Brazilian wines outside of Brazil now, but in a few years take another look. Or, get a visa and buy a plane ticket.

While dining at a nice restaurant or at a steak house in Brazil, you can order good wines from Argentina and Chile by the bottle for extremely steep prices. Luckily, many quality grocery stores such as Pao de Acucar stock affordable wines, affordable meaning between ten and twenty five reais. If you find yourself lost in the wine aisle of a Brazilian supermarket, look for Argentina and Chile tags. Now, Salty Cod recommendations will not match those found at the fancy pants websites of true wine experts as there is no way i can afford to feed the habit in such a way. As such, our wine list is for the common man who doesn't mind completing a bottle in one night with a pizza and a movie. There are affordable good wines. When buying in Brazil, we recomend Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from the labels Benjamin and Finca Flichman from Argentina, and Sunrise and Reservado from the Concha Y Toro valley in Chile. Brazilian labels worth looking into include Terranova and Adega do Vale from the northern Vale do Sao Fransisco wine region. If in the mood for celebrating and have a few extra bucks to throw in the bottle, look for Salton or Miolo.

So which vineyard did i go to for these shots? None. These vineyards are about fifteen minutes from my house. The Sao Paulo countryside is full of farms specializing in anything from sugar cane to potatoes to lettuce to mangoes, corn, and of course, grapes. Now to be honest, i would probably never buy a bottle of Indaiatuba wine, but i might buy a box of grape juice. It's amazing how less than two minutes outside of a small yet bustling city are sprawling rows of grapes. It's only the start of spring here so the grapes are only baby greens, but delicious looking none the less. Walking through the grape field reminded me of cutting grapes in the Loire Valley with that little terrier, those are the best kinds of deja vu.

Excuse our month long absense please, we're in the process of searching for a new direction here hopefully for the better. There's too much Brazil to report on to not.

a bientot

Ice Cream Sequilhos

2010-09-09T15:47:00.015+02:00

and a word on the São Paulo Countryside

The first time i tried to make corn tortillas here i went to the grocery market and stood in the "flour" aisle staring at the mountain of packaged powders. Wheat flour sits on the bottom shelfs packaged in its dusty little paper sack. As your eyes move up the shelf the packaging becomes a little fancier. There are tapioca and corn flours in every form imaginable. Why are there so many names for the same thing? Literally dozens of different "types" based on the size of the grind and what it is generally used for. Ok, i thought, i need corn flour, so something with milho (corn). I see flakes, nope, polenta, nope, hey this has milho in the title--amido de milho, perfect! When i got home and added the hot water to the amido de milho, to make tortillas, to my horror the whole thing turned into a pot of sticky liquid. What? I looked at the bag, i rubbed the remaining powder in the bag between my fingers, well it feels like tapioca, and tapioca usually feels like--crap. corn starch. Reminds me of when i washed my clothes in fabric softener during my whole first week in France.

At least i know what corn starch is now. I have since learned that the corn flour closest to what i need for tortillas is called fuba. Why the hell is corn flour called fuba? I never thought about corn as a top Brasilian food, I always left that one to Mexico and the rest of Latin America. But the truth is, corn has a large spot in the Brasilian diet; it's everywhere! This week i made corn tortillas with salsa, then some roasted tomato polenta, corn on the cob and now of course our feature presentation: corn starch cookies known as sequilhos made into ice cream sandwiches with corn ice cream. I hope to round the corn week off with fried polenta at Grandpa's bar (actually the name of the bar) this friday with a few caipirinhas. hint...hint....

Sequilhos are one of my favorite cookies in Brasil, probably because they are one of the only commercially made gluten free cookies, but that's beside the point. These crunchy, powdery fall-apart cookies are a Brasilian tradition, every body knows em' and you can find them in just about any confectionery or bakery shop. Usually they are quite small, the size and shape of a quarter dollar, a small square, or bent horse shoe. They cost pennies and usually make the front of whatever you happen to be wearing snow white. This is why i love to eat them in the car. Though they are a litle more genuine when coming from a bakery, you can also find them commercially made in the candy/cookie aisle of any grocery store in a large biscuit bag. As they are made of corn starch, they fall apart the second they hit liquid. Particularly fun to dip in hot tea and have it fall all over your lap.

I meant to post about these a few weeks ago when i made them for the first time, but a few things got in the way. What i mean is, my motivation was stolen by Power Ranger Azul, and i also viewed them a bit dull to post about all on their own. Last sunday was my ticket to ride, but then the floors needed to be cleaned. Then Tuesday for Independence day, but it rained. Then i talked to my mom last night about being woe-full and ready to give up photography for something practical, but then she quickly snapped me from it. Then finally today ice cream came to mind. But, then where's the story?

(the cowboy boots above are a product of my bad neighbor-stalking habit. so no we are not hicks.)

A few weeks ago when our friends C & L came to stay the weekend, we went out for quite a few ice creams. En route our guests were fascinated and enchanted by the layout of the town. I've never heard so much praise about our little city before, and from an American at that! The primary astonishment was the fact that this was Brasil. Brasil is a gigantor of a country, and probably the most diverse in every aspect of life from state to state. C had never visited the São Paulo countryside before. She'd been to most of the capitals; Rio, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte as well as the extreme no-wheres in the interior of Mato Grosso state. Ergo the most and least metoropolitan in Brasil, but never the middle. This could almost be somewhere in the US she observed quite a few times. Cute streets, neighborhoods, planned city development, parks, public recreation areas, green spaces, first Brasilian city to be one hundred percent on treated sewers, clean and kept sidewalks, small businesses, beautiful residential areas, a relatively unfrightened and trusting public accompanied by large commercial and work centers in cities but a few minutes away. Their astonishment reminded me that most people, one year ago me included, haven't a clue that places like the São Paulo countryside cities exist. Well, they do. And though they have no beach, they are rated for having the highest quality of life standard of any region in Brazil. Go us.

We live in the city of Indaiatuba (meaning land of palm trees, or something like that). If there was no such thing as traffic, we can technically consider ourselves about 45 minutes north west of São Paulo city. To the north of Indaiatuba is a series of other small cities of the same caliber leading up to São Paulo's second largest city, Campinas. One thing about the countryside cities is that you can breath. The other thing is that there can be a Toyota factory next door to miles and miles of grazing cattle and farmland. The city is quiet, i hear my birds and neighbors talking in the streets all day with kids running around with kites and calling out games to each other. Though the city is bigger than the Seattle burb of Poulsbo where i grew up, it still manages to be a community where you run into people you know all the time. At the park, the grocery store, post office--yes Mr. Rogers was here too.

Aside from Indaiatuba, my favorite cities include the neighboring Valinhos and Vinhedo with their beautiful residential areas, and to my Editor's great surprise, Itupeva, an upstart city that still seems to be covered by quite a bit of vegetation (ok this is really countryside) yet is as beautiful as any fairytale story book with a dumpy little downtown. Valinhos also happens to be the nation's fig capital, and apparently there is a fig festival every year. We will definitely be dragging the fig-hating Editor to that one. When we took C & L to the airport (to São Paulo city), we drove through the Itupeva country side. Vineyards, grazing sheep, rock valleys, orange tree groves, old men on bicycles, chickens running about, large mansions, small huts, winding roadways flanked by bright colorful vegetation--all this with the setting sun. If she wasn't on her way to Canada i'm sure she would have moved in right then. Seeing other people's reactions to this place makes me extremely grateful to live here, the unknown part of Brasil, one of the many many other unknown parts of Brasil. When you get here, Brasil will surprise you. I promise.

And so the ice cream. There are a lot of great ice cream shops here in Brasil with classic flavors you may like and a few more that you may be afraid of. One of my favorite flavors in Brasil is corn. There's that corn again. Corn is treated as a sweet quite frequently in Brasil; corn juice, corn cakes and cookies- and of course ice cream. Though odd to American taste buds (yeah i tried making it for my family, was not a very big hit) it is a popular flavor in most of South America, South East Asia and the Pacific Islands. You can find it anywhere; in the super market, ice cream shops, corn shops (for serious) and it is very rewarding to make on your own. However, i still prefer my very first taste of corn ice cream in Brasil: at the highway-side stop off known as the Corn Castle. Soft-serve in a cup prepared for you by under enthusiastic teenage women who can't believe they work in a place called the Corn Castle. It is the only road-side stop worth getting off the highway for. There is even a corn playground for the kids! The flavor grows on you, and after a while it seems more refreshing than most flavors.

This recipe for sequilhos is slightly different than traditional recipes--i needed them to be a little softer and cake-like so that they can be bit into double layered and not squeeze ice cream everywhere. So this recipe has an added 1/4 cup of medium grind corn meal to soften the cake. Leave out the corn meal if you want it crisper. These are also about 5X the size of usual sequilhos, a cookie is a cookie right? Roll them into small balls about the size of a grape for traditional sequilhos.

Sequilhos:

Ingredients: 400 g corn starch, 1/4 cup corn meal (fuba), 1/2 can of condensed milk, 1 tbsp melted butter, 1 tsp baking powder, 2 beaten eggs, 2 tbsp sugar.

Method: 1) mix together the starch, corn meal, sugar and baking powder. 2) Add the condensed milk, eggs and butter. 3) Mix until combined. You will have to use your hands as it is thick. If you want to flavor the sequilhos, add extracts, shredded coconut or even fruit puree. 4) roll small ball and press flat with a fork. 5) bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you want to make corn ice cream, i have posted the recipe already here at Salty, please go here for it.

So a sunny day in the almost-summer of the São Paulo countryside; on tuesday it rained for the first time in three months and washed the sky clear. Never before had i ever wanted it to rain so badly. Today is quite warm, making shooting ice cream extremely difficult as i enjoy using my new 8gb memory card to its fullest, however, melted puddles are not attractive. September is so different on the bottom half of the globe. But i miss the leaves and the Fall. But summer time birds and pink flowered trees, well it's a good substitute. Until then,

a bientôt

oh and ps. hi Sierra and yes i will make you these cookies next year.

Pumpkin Cakes for Robin Hood

2010-08-26T11:08:00.005+02:00

house guests and apparently quite a few photos of eggs

It's been a while that we've been away (from Salty), and trust me we apologize. No excuse making today though because quite honestly i'm not sure where the inspiration or drive went these past three weeks; out the window, down the hill and into the river. There were a few things planned, and a few kitchen failures that weren't planned. Lots of undesirable work to do, and a cold to get over. I didn't even know you could get a cold in Brazil. Lucky for us, however, the winter season is just about up, a few more weeks and it's officially spring. September bringing spring; for me September always brought fall, brought school, brought leaves and cooling weather. Now September is time for the beach! The sun is out and the trees at the park are starting to sport some beautiful but albeit bizarre fruits. This change in temperature is bringing with it a change in my mood, now i feel like i'm in Brazil again.

Exciting news folks; we've been living in our house for five whole months and we are officially having our first houseguests; refugees! No not really, but they very well soon could be. The internet, blog, social networks and all that yada have brought me more friends and people i care about than i can count. Our guests this weekend we haven't actually ever met, though maybe we have depending on the definition of "meeting someone". I met Corin (i use her name because it's plastered all over her blog) by stumbling across her Brazil blog in the city of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais--about an 8 hour drive from where i am. I love coming across other expats in Brazil, and the majority of men and women i find usually are here for the same reason as i am--married a Brazilian. However, Corin's story is quite a bit different from mine, she and her Brazilian husband are here in Brazil as exiles from the United States. Exiles? Corin is an American, Smith graduate, has lived in France, is a Fulbright Scholar with acceptance into UBC's PhD program, and she is exiled. Like Robin Hood? Sounds romantic and exciting. She technically is not the one who is exiled, her Brazilian husband who entered the United States without proper papers and remained for a significant period of time is the one exiled...for ten years. Just short of being arrested, Corin and her husband luckily escaped to Brazil where she has been building their escape pod--to Canada!

Immigration is an extremely ill-understood topic in the United States; most people know that it is an issue and that the Mexicans must be stopped before they take over the country with Latin music, Spanish speaking little girl explorers with pet monkeys, and force everyone to start eating tacos (woops, too late), but very few (very few) know anything about what immigrants have to go through to get into the land of liberty and what consequences are placed upon those that toy with the rules. Marriage to an U.S. citizen has always been the classic "Get Out of Jail" card in the immigration game, marry and get a green card, easy. Unfortunately it's not so easy. Being married to an American is only a means to getting a green card and not a green card in itself. Many immigrants who entered the country unofficially live normal lives, and from that make normal relationships. When you marry you except that to help legal status, sadly wrong again. Illegal immigrants have no rights. If caught, an illegal immigrant is deported regardless of who they are married to, whether or not they have a home, children, a yard with a white fence and a golden retriever. So what do the families of those forced to leave do? Well, they either follow or face the impossible life of staying in the U.S. alone. For this reason there are hundreds of American citizens living abroad in the world with their outlawed family members, and Corin is one of them.

I chose to move to Brazil. I keep that little cookie in my head at all times when i am flustered, screaming about injustices, angry at grocery markets, postal workers, the weather, the family everything. When youre an immigrant even the smallest things that shouldn't bother do; and my best way out of a tear-filled rant is to remember that i made this my reality because i want it. I am very much a we-make o-our-own-choice Sartre kind a person, so it's difficult to think about American exiles having to go through the same things that i am only they don't have that nugget of comfort knowing that they made the choice and planned their fate. Many people call me brave for moving to Brazil, but exiles are yet braver. I don't now how they do it, and there are many of them. Mostly in Central and South America; Brazil, Peru, Mexico--their stories are generally unheard, however, i believe that if more Americans knew what was going on with the state of their immigration problems, they would call a little more adamantly for reform. The U.S. has that edge that many countries don't, when the people are all behind it and call for change, usually change comes. This is pretty much absent in Brazil where silence and acceptance is the cultural norm, but we'll save that for another day.

The Reason Robin Hood and Little John are visiting us for the weekend is that they are technically homeless at the moment waiting on visas (one student and one dependent of a student) from the Canadian consulate for their Sunday flight (three days from the time that i am writing this) to Vancouver. That's 1.5 days to try and get visas that have been pending for three months to issue. They bought their plane tickets and applied for visas three months ago upon recieving word that Corin was accepted into the University of British Columbia's PhD program. They packed up their appartment, sold their appliances and are flying to São Paulo three days before their flight in hope that they can secure a visa from the Canucks with pouty eyes and pretty pleases. Ballsy? Sounds like Robin Hood to me. If there is no visa, there is no flight.

When i asked her about a week ago where she would be staying in São Paulo, the answer was "I dunno yet." Again with the rogue adventurer bit. So obviously the only place then for them to stay was with us, in the country side with a full size oven. With a plan so far down to the wire it's almost underground; we have no idea how it is going to play out. Realistically all H and I can do to help is act as taxi, hotel and make as many wonderful gluten free foods and sweets (she's gluten free, imagine that, finally someone to enjoy my pizza dough of perfection) as possible. If the plan doesn't work and the Sherriff of Nottingham denies--then we'll be housing refugees. But let's hope it doesn't come to that.

So, i made cakes for car snacks. Pumpkin cakes to celebrate the last week of winter. Technically i suppose these are buttercup squash muffins, however, Brazilians simply call them pumpkins. Very sweet, tiny seeds, and gluten free.

Ingrdients: 1/2 cup white rice flour, 1/2 cup tapioca flour (not starch), 1 tsp baking powder, 2 eggs, 1/4 cup oil, 1/2 sugar, 1/4 cup honey, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 cups mashed pumpkin or squash.

Method:Boil pumpkin chunks in water until soft. Drain and mash. Cream together eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla. Add flours, baking powder, and stir. Mix in the mashed pumpkin. Divide into 12 cupcake tins and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes. (you can roast the seeds inside the pumpkin and sprinkle them on top before baking).

Dealing with visas, consulates, paperwork and anything that has to do with immigration is frustrating, frightening and nerve wracking even for those who follow the book and have nothing to worry about. For those who very likely could face rejection or added complications, the stress is worsened ten fold. What is most frustrating about it all is that we did this to ourselves as humans. Immigration doesn't have to be like this. This planet is so very small, how can we expect everyone to be satisfied within borders and lines? Should humans be treated as criminals along the same lines as murders, rapists, thieves and abusers simply for moving their geographical coordinant from one spot on this planet to another?

The main argument against illegal immigration is "why can't they just do it legally and get a visa?" the reason is that they can't do it legally. U.S. imigration is a severely costly endeavor designed that way so as to keep as many as possible out. Legal immigration visas, green card and the works averages from almost $2,000-$3,000 US. Apparently i can't even afford to immigrate to my own country! Those who enter illegally risk a lot, however, for many there is no other choice. For now, all i can do is write about it right? Education is the first step, as always. But i want America to get angry, or better yet the world. The world is getting smaller and smaller yet every nation is trying harder and harder to keep people out.

In spite of it all, we are determined to have a great weekend with pizzas, quiche, wine and happy hours. After all, if everything goes as planned, this is their last weekend in Brazil!

If you are interested in reading and following up on Corin's full story, visit her blog, Corin in Exile.

a bientôt

A São Paulo Dinner Party

2010-08-02T14:15:00.016+02:00

rice flour chocolate cheese tarts with gooseberreis

So like most normal people, i try to have a social life here in Brazil aside from the daily conversation i have with my three sunflowers that have managed to grow, my facebook and the tweeter. I'm sure a psychologist would try to tell me that electronic friends are not real eh? Well, in self-placed solitude they are. The social life; so in six months i have actually managed to make my own friends here, all of whom i came in contact with through this blog. Cod fish really are social buterflies. Salty is how R, my wonderful Brasilian friend, found me by reading through my earlier posts on gringo "transition". It's interesting to hear how people stumble upon Salty, whether looking for recipes, travel descriptions, recipes for salt cod (there aren't any), or in R's case, the expat thing as she is married to an Irish gringo. After a bit of chat, we realized that we all had a lot in common aside from the fact that they live in São Paulo city (one hour away); we've been through all of the same garbage concerning the immigration (ok, marriage) trauma in Brazil, we despise the Brazilian style of "wine" that the masses prefer (cold sweet grape juice crap), we're travelers, love dessert, and can all speak English. Wow, best friends right! Though i know i need "social portuguese", my language level is not yet at that of a cocktail party, so it is a gift above any to feel normal for even just one evening every now and then. I'm determined to make it so that eventually we all drop the English during a gathering, just not yet. Friends through the blog; score one more point for Salty.

As humble youngsters living in an expensive country (you didn't think Brazil was expensive?) we decided that the last get together we had at a charming, yet overpriced French restaurant need not be repeated yet. Brazilian restaurants are very expensive, however, as is the case in most areas, cooking at home is not. Now, R doesn't cook (J is the chef of the casa), therefore to remedy the apprehensive situation, we did an in-kitchen cooking lesson on the easiest dish of them all--risotto. Brazilians love risotto, it's on the menu at nearly every medium to upscale restaurant for murderous prices. People are willing to pay top dollar for it because they have it in their brain that they can't make the same thing. eeeeh wrong. Yes i cook, and quite often, surprised? Will Salty turn into a cookery as well? who knows. But risotto is something i do extremely well. Not to be conceited, but i will say it is a Salty specialty. Digressing, whether the lesson stuck (next lesson will be about simple red sauce) or not, that was the largest pot of risotto i have ever made. I'm starting to think that i really love to "teach" or rather go in somewhere and cook for someone, whether it's for my own ego or not (no i don't want to be the next Curtis Stone) but i'm really starting to feel that Brazil needs me, whether they know it yet or not. Now to the point of this post here, chocolate cheese tarts with gooseberries.

All food bloggers out there know that when there is an event there is a post. For the non-professionals who don't have unlimited budjets and time to spend on making posts (idea, baking, photographing, editing, writing, and more editing) blogging becomes somewhat of a rare treat that neads an excuse in order to occur. I have no less passion that i did before, the only thing that is less is time and money. So when there is a reason to make something special, bingo.

I was at the grocery market purchasing a few packaged things to send in the mail to a gal in Minnesota for the Transplanted Baker's farmers market exchange (note: if you live in a country that is not the United States, don't sign up for events that require shipping food out of the country because the majority of participants will be in the U.S. and not need 3 weeks to a month for ground shipping. The customs officials already hate me, and now i'm trying to weezle them again. verse.) and i spotted, tucked off in the corner, some little golden leaves. Wait a minute, i thought, i ripped the plastic cover off of a carton, gooseberries (note: these are a different variety than their darker north american cousin). Now wait, in a country without a single raspberry, blackberry, cranberry, or blueberry (actually just spotted a few from Argentina, YES blueberries grow in Argentina), there are imported (cape) gooseberries for sale? Touché Brazil. The carton noted that they were grown in Colombia, so there we go. Colombian fuzzy gooseberries. So start importing raspberries from the north why don't you, please! A week later when thinking about desserts i could only think about the gooseberries; finally someting other than banana and guava! Who ever thought i would complain about tropical fruit. (note: the only reason i pine after berries is because i love and miss them, there are thousands of wonderful fruits in Brazil, but when you're away from everything you know, well, you want berries! Particularly the berries that used to grow in your backyard.) The plan was New York style cheese cake with the berries, the problem was lack of sour cream in this country, and to be honest, no real equivalent (it's just how it is, same thing in France and many many other places). So as to Brazilianize it, we replaced the sugar and sour cream with condensed milk, which happens to be what Martha Stewart also does in her no-bake cheesecake recipe. But that's the rule; all you have to do is put condensed milk in it and you've made it Brazilianized.

Let's see if you're like me; when i hear the word gooseberry i think of Snow White making gooseberry pies for Grumpy. You follow? They are very tart, but very distinct looking. Distinct looking is all we care about right? Right. Leaving the leaves on serves absolutely no purpose other than presentation, in my opinion, their little chapeau is quite cute. The tart crusts are made of rice flour and polvilho, which is a soft tapioca flour. The cheesecake is simply cream cheese, condensed milk and lemon juice. That's it; a simple, refreshing winter dessert made in miniatures and one large tart (6 small and 1 8-inch round). The thin tart layer of cheesecake was much more palatable than the thick 2-3 inch layers of traditional cheesecake, especially as it was more creamy and less stiff due to the condensed milk. All consumed by five people: yes.

Tart Shells (gluten free)

Ingredients: 1 cup rice flour, 1/2 cup tapioca flour, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 1/4 cup cocoa powder, 1/4 cup cooking oil or 1 stick butter (i actually used olive oil), 3 egg yolks, pinch of salt.

Method: beat powdered sugar and the butter or oil, add the yolk. Add the flours, cocoa powder and salt. Stir until combined (if not using kitchenaide mixer you will need to use your hands). Roll the dough tightly into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least one hour before pressing into your tart shells. Base at about 350F for 15-20 minutes.

CheeseCake:

Ingredients: 8oz sour cream, 1/2 can of condensed milk, 2 tbsp lemon juice, jelly or mashed gooseberries.

Method: beath the cream cheese until fluffy, add the lemon juice and condensed milk. Set aside. Spread the mashed gooseberries intot he bottom of each tart shell and pour the cheesecake mixutre over the top. Refrigerate for about two hours before serving.

When i get to this part i feel like it's the recap closing sequence; i can see Tony Bourdain ending an episode of No Reservations; looking off into the distance, saying how while the food was great, it as the people who made the experience for him, a few more sentimental life shattering comments, and then the camera bleeds out of focus and we're left to ponder the heartfelt comments. Erm, well maybe he is right. Do not undervalue your friends, because when you start again from zero, you'll remember how important they really are in a human life.

Moving on from sentimental, i really do love simply going to São Paulo. Every time we go, it's a new route and a new city. As one of the largest and most complicated city in the world, strangely enough we don't even have a road map for it. H has never printed out a map for any location, as he was born in the city he believes there to be a São Paulo gps planted in his brain at the hospital. No matter where, the weather, how late or what part of the city, we always eventually get to where we are going, somehow. Some people have it, some people don't; i still get lost in the town i grew up in. Depressing. But despite the reputation, São Paulo really isn't a terrible place for those who are lucky enough to enjoy it for what it is. While it has unending problems, areas of squalor, a smelly river, crime and misery, like Rio it has its character, and is fastly improving. Just in these past few weeks motorcycles are now prohibeted on the express lanes! One small step for man...

Obrigada R&J pela sua hospitalidade!

a bientôt

Just a Few Days in Rio

2010-07-13T14:57:00.007+02:00

The Cidade Maravilhosa

We flew into Santos Dumont airport at about 9pm on a Thursday night, less than 1 hour after leaving Campinas, SP. There's an extreme thrill to landing on a tarmack that appears to be floating in the harbor; the vision is plane surfing at top speed. What a wonderful first impression of the cidade maravilhosa. My thoughts returned to that moment three days later as we made our way via bus to the international airport, Galeão, to catch our flight back to São Paulo. If i had flown into Galeão rather than Santos, i would not have thought of the cidade maravilhosa at first impression, but rather of the cidade de deus. Who planned that one? Scenic view for the domestic flights, but a fast-dash tour above the slums on the speed way for the international visitors? Slightly humerous. Either way, my lasting impression is that Rio is in fact, the cidade maravilhosa. While our overcast stay lasted only a few days and was limited mostly to where our feet would take us, the taste was sweet, and has made a certainty of the fact that it will definately not be our last adventure in Rio.

When we decided to take a mini-trip to Rio to visit our friend M in Copacabana, one thing i knew i would be thinking about was the bad safety reputation made all the more worse by the 2016 Olympics and accusative press. So, according to many, Rio is not a safe place for the Olympics. Slums, gangs, drug trafficers, thieves. Ah man ah man. But you know, you probably won't believe it, but there are two Rios. There is the third-world Rio rife with crime that you see in films such as City of God, in video games where you shoot drug traffickers in the run down slums, and on the news when police helicopters are shot down. This Rio of suffering is unfortunately real. But there is also the upscale Rio where one can walk the streets in a bikini on the way to the beach, drink coconut water while lying in the sun, dine at upscale restaurants, take in an opera, shop through the finery, and jog along the shore. This Rio of fancy is also real. Two extremes tucked in right next to each other. As tourists, which we were, we were well contained in the later of the two cities. Was there danger? Maybe. Was i walking in the streets afraid of being shot? Not exactly. Imagine being inside of a sims video game, in a photoshoped city on your desktop, or in a lego land pink palm tree toy set. Rio is the Rio of the glamour movie unless you leave it for a reality check. Walking on the beach is, well surreal. So are the Olympics going to be hell on earth for the visiting world population? No, it is not. Rio is only hell for those who are sadly and unjustly born into it. But how can two cities, two worlds exist in the same place? I don't know. That's Rio.

So what did we manage to do in three days. Well, as we were visiting our friend, the first night was catch up talk and dinner in her 1960's apartment two blocks up from the beach in Copacabana. When i say Copacabana, i'm talking about a district. Rio is split into many district of which famous beachs that lie within also happen to maintain the same name. The whole city is first split up into zones; the historic center (downtown), the South Zone, North Zone, and West Zone. Within the zones are districts, such as Copacabana, Botafogo, Flamengo, Leblon, Ipanema--yeah you've heard of all these famous beaches, but they are named after the districts they're in. There are dozens, probably even hundreds more districts in Rio that i am unaware of. But one that i did spend a great deal of time in was the Jardim Botânico, home of the--you guessed it--botanical gardens of Rio.

As i knew we would only have a few short days in Rio, my mind was made up that i didn't want to do anything except for sit on the beach and do maybe one or two of the you must do this in Rio tourist activities. But M had a few things planned for us. The Jardim Botânico was one of them, which we managed to get to on foot from Copacabana. After walking along the shore through Ipanema and Leblon, and the 7 kilometer -around Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas (a lake), i was just about ready to pull the why couldn't we just go to the beach line, until we rounded the corner and the massive avenue of imperial palm trees came into view. damn. The botanical garden of Rio is truly a lush oasis in the middle of the city. The gardens were established during the first years of the nineteenth century (that is, while Brazil was still under Portuguese rule) as a local for growing foreign spices and exotic plants. The garden is filled with regional, national and international flora from all over the world. In a way, it is a condensed showcase of what is natural and what has come to be natural in Brazil due to importation. The imperial palm trees are the most regal aspects of the park, yet they are not native to Brazil, they were brought straigt from Central America. The jaca tree that produces jaca fruit (also known as jack fruit) runs rampant through the gardens (and much of Brazil for that matter) but was originally brought from Asia by the Portuguese. Aside from being a tranquil rest from the city, the gardens are a living lecture on natural history.

After the gardens, from which you could see the Christ way up on his little hill (Corcovado is the name of the mountain) we decided to find the way up. First step naturally was finding ice cream, and the second finding a bus. We took a city bus all the way to the bottom of Corcovado from which we were herded into the Jesus van by an overenthusiastic sales man. You speaky English my amigo americano, the man said to my husband who since arriving was mistaken as an American at every chance possible. Grrr. how much is it? he asked the man in Portuguese. You speaky a Portuguese? I thoughta you were grigo! He said in astonishment. Poor H, he is no longer Brazilian because of me. The next day i forced him to wear his São Paulo jersey to look more Brasileiro, but that only brought cat calls from Flamengo and Botafogo supporters. Ah Rio. After the bumpy van ride up the mountain, we were deposited at the ticket booth where you wait in yet another line to take yet another bus up to the top where you then go up an elevator and then an escalator. Jesus Christ (literally) it takes quite an effort to get up to see Christ the Redeemer, an icon recognized the world over. The view is unpayable, no where else in Rio can you get a view of the entire city, Atlantic, and all the neighboring hills. Just remember that if you go in the evening on a smoggy day, don't expect ideal lighting for your photos.

After spending R$100 for both of us to get up to the Christ, we decided that Sugar Loaf (Pão de Açucar) could wait until our next visit to Rio. The next two days were spent being lazy, the overcast gray sky and wind helped out on that one. We made it to a music cafe with live popular Brazilian music (that's an actual genre of music) and spent a few cold windy minutes on the beach. That's what you get for going to Rio in the winter. No matter, Sunday was a bit warmer, and awarded a few hours of beach lounging followed by the World Cup final at the "Fan Fest" on Copacabana beach. As Holland was the reason Brazil was eliminated, i can tell you that there were a great many more Spain fans in the crowd. I personally was rooting for Holland, for family reasons. Either way, the Fifa Fan Fest is an enclosed event on the sand (with a lot of security officers) with stalls, vendors, live music, and of course a really big scren on which to view the game. I couldn't imagine how crazy the place would have been if it was Brazil in the final, either way, watching the game with a thousand other people sitting in the sand was definately a once in a lifetime experience, even with the unfortunate outcome.

So Rio, to be honest i was not expecting too much. Before coming to live in Brazil, i never cared for the country or anything in it, so Rio was never one of my dreams. But after a quick glimpse, i can tell that there definately is something to Rio. I never want to live there, that's for sure, but i have no qualms with visiting again, and again and again. The service at the restaurants was extremely mediocre (ok terrible, but i was warned) and the food didn't taste as good as it does in São Paulo (i'm just saying), and the air was a bit (a lot) humid, and without visiting the beach everyday (i suppose even Cariocas have to work) life might not be so great in the city, but there is something charming about Rio, and i'm excited to get back for another visit.

All in all, i'm glad we're in São Paulo state. Cariocas may have the reputation, and the men are comfortable enough to wear Haivaianas outside of the house, but for me that's what vacations are for. I prefer to have a closed-toe shoe wearing Paulista.

Hell yeah that's a monkey.

a bientôt

For Me, A Birthday Cake

2010-07-08T18:52:00.005+02:00

chocolate orange brick cake

Today is my birthday, not Salty's, but me, the editor in chief. 24 years old. So i'm home alone today (don't feel bad for me, we're flying to Rio de Janeiro tonight) and well, it's my birthday, so i need a cake. Chocolate and orange is my personal favorite flavor combination, you know those chocolate orange balls at Christmas time that you smash on the table and the slices fall out like a flower petal. Well, as this ws a fridge-cake (absolutely nothing in the fridge) i had to scrounge. And this is what we found.

I'm flying to Rio in a few minutes (literally) so i will leave you with these brief words and way too many shots of my little cake. Ok ok, and the recipe. When we get back from our voyage, know that there will be many stories and photos to share of the cidade maravilhosa.

Ingredients: 1 cup white rice flour, 2 tbsp oil, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup orange juice, 1 tsp vanilla extract, pinch of salt, 1 egg, 1 tbsp tapioca flour, 1 tbsp milk, 1 tsp baking powder, zest of one orange, chopped chocolate.

Method: Mix the wet, mix the dry, and combine. Add the zest and chocolate and bake at 180C or 350F for about 20 minutes. Makes 6 cupcakes or 1 mini loaf.

Brazilian 4th

2010-07-04T20:57:00.005+02:00

Pão de Queijo Burgers and Apple Pie Tarts

Is it odd that i got offended when my husband said that it was completely wierd that in the United States people grill hot dogs? Confused at this point how that is wierd even in the slightest, i try to forget. But then he goes on to say it in Portuguese so now the whole damn room of mothers, grandma, aunts and whoever the hell else happens to be around (a great uncle?) all scrunch their faces at the American oddity. Say what? For a country that doesn't know how to consume meat unless it is encrusted in salt and thrown over flames, they find grilling a hot dog wierd? We boil them, never grill, H explained. This coming from a man eating chicken hearts off of a skewer... Ok, well, you are Brazilian and not American, in the U.S. people grill them. Americans (except for New Yorkers who like them floating in dirty water) boil them only when mom isn't home and dad's asleep on the couch and there's nothing else in the fridge. That's when hot dogs are boiled. In my humble opinion.

Being an expatriate makes you extremely sensitive to certain things that normally would pass over your head like a wonky boomerang. Wait a minute, do i even like hot dogs? But when you're at a barbecue surrounded by a bunch of Brazilians on a Sunday that you were particularly reserving for house cleaning and godforesaken ironing, insults to one of your national foods that are connected to innumerable social and family gatherings since the early days of childhood dig deep. And with the 4th of July just around the corner...

A few days later while driving to the gym, i tell H that the 4th of July is on Sunday and i want to make apple pies. To make up for the trauma he caused me last Sunday (yes, i was wounded) he overenthusiastically suggests...grilling hot dogs too! Now, to be honest i don't like hot dogs, and when i refer to "hot dog" i am actually talking about bratwurst for me, and a ballpark for the little brother. But that point aside, this conversation isn't about hot dogs, it's about why so many Brazilians can't seem to break out of their culinary box. American Barbecues are laughed at, yes laughed at, as hamburger meat is considered low quality and would only be consumed if all other meat had been used up. Well fine, but Americans like steak, they like ribs too, grilled chicken kabobs, etc. The reality is, however, that the majority of Americans like hamburgers, so what is wrong with eating what you like? I like American barbecues and i like Brazilian barbecues, why is it that i can like two versions but others cannot? I hate to say it, but many Brazilians are extreme followers of my way is the best way. It's proven in the restaurant makeup. Now, São Paulo has a lot of great international restaurants, but many smaller cities throughout the state severely lack. A few over-priced sushi bars...a dying $200 a night French bistro....a fast food Arab restaurant...and and....why the hell is Mexican food nonexistant here? You can't even buy ingredients at a store (unless you consider a cardboard box full of a few round tortilla chips for 15 reais Mexican food) then you're screwed. We've luckily found a tapas bar that serves an international menu with a small Mexican section. The only problem is that you're out 35 reais for two little tacos. But good tacos, i'll add. For some reason the demographic here isn't thirsty for more. Most Brazilians simply want Brazilian. I say most as there are some, usually in the newer generations, or what some like to refer to as the "global generation", that do in fact seek out new things. Allbeit a handfull of individuals, but they are there.

There's no point in dwelling on it. I can't change the way people eat. I can't change the fact that i can almost visibly see the arteries swelling in H's step-father as he yells at his wife to make the fried beef and rice and beans that he eats twice a day every day of his life. The only thing i have control over is what's in my fridge, and what i've learned after changing my completely Brazilian-palated-husband into a fan of Indian, Asian, French, German, Mexican, Italian and even American foods is that perhaps all that is needed is opportunity of "the outside" for Brazilians to widen their taste. Mexican chefs are you hearing this? It's time to start immigrating south for a change.

So today, a 4th of July sunday, we're not having hotdogs, but rather hamburgers and apple tarts. A party for two, woo. The term "4th of July" means nothing to Brazilians, well, fair is fair, does the date "7th of September" ring any bells for you? No i didn't think so. Brazilians are masters in the art of reciprocity, a skill that first must be preceded by pride.

I had never actually made a hamburger before, wierd. But it must be like a meatball, and i am a self-proclaimed master at meatballs. For the buns, i made the only error-proof gluten free bread i know of--pão de queijo. They turned out quite nice, and all i had to do was flatten the dough into a large patty shape before baking. Pão de queijo is a tapioca based cheese bread that is naturally gluten free without even trying (go Minas!) and well, burgers usually have cheese in them anyways, so why not just have it in the bun instead? I made the patties like i do my meatballs, mashed with garlic and my own dried chili peppers. Now, as i'm making "American" food, i only made enough for the occasion. That is, for two. After our "4th of July bananza lunch!!" H turned to me, there's no more? only one? sad. My international Brazilian. You see, i am having to learn how to be Brazilian, but he is having to learn how to live with an American. Which one is harder? Either way, at least there were American pie tartlettes for dessert.

For a recipe for pão de queijo i first have to persuade you to buy the cookbook that the recipe is in (yes my recipe). It's not my book, i'm merely a contributor, but it contains over fifty great recipes by other food bloggers so consider giving it a try (see the little 55 Knives button on the right-hand page column for details). For the rest, you can find the recipe here on the Salty Cod, however, i won't tell you where it is, so you'll have to do a treasure hunt for it. Don't be daft and use your brain, every post is categorized with key word labels.

As for the apple tarts, the crust recipe is a gluten free rice flour shortbread created by Aran of Cannelle and Vanilla, view the recipe here. The filling is merely diced apples mixed with a spoonfull of sugar and a squirt of lemon juice.

So the 4th of July came and went, aside from lunch i didn't hear much about it except from an over-boistrous golf television commentator who interupted me from my nap (no we don't watch golf, we accidently left the tv on). I've come to realize that American holidays are to be celebrated in America, and Brazilian in Brazil. This being said, i have decided not to attempt the seeming death defying challenge of a make-shift Thanksgiving. Well, maybe we'll get a pumpkin pie in somewhere. For now, it's when in Rome.

a bientot

A Brigadeiro Army

2010-06-26T18:56:00.012+02:00

Brazilian Truffles in Cake Form

How much do you think a brigadeiro cake costs? one of H's crazy aunts asked me last weekend. I don't know, I replied, 50 reais? I don't buy cakes at bakeries so i really don't know, but this being Brazil where everything is overpriced probably a little steap. R$50? she wrinkled her nose in a slight disappointment. Twenty minutes later i learned that that she was actually asking how much a brigadeiro cake would cost me to make. My Portuguese is still in toddler form. Ahhh, a cake order. Our first cake order in Brazil, hot dog. For how many, and when? Next saturday, she replied, for seventy people. Seventy? Oh boy I'm in trouble.

A brigadeiro is a small squishy condensed-milk based chocolate truffle covered in sprinkles. So a brigadeiro cake would be some type of cake covered in a squishy condensed-milk based chocolate coating topped off with sprinkles. Easy enough, i can do that. The first time i made brigadeiro truffles was about two years ago, and happens to be posted here on this exact blog. But a cake for seventy people...foreget it. I'll spread upward but not out; sheet cakes horrify me. Yep, can't do it. Large rounds or squared, tiered if they must be are the only type of large cakes i'll do. Plus, i don't even own a bowl yet so what makes you think i have a sheet cake pan. As a snob, the only answer to cake for large parties is cupcakes. So seventy cupcakes and a large cake to cut into and adorn with candles. Let's do it.

The cakes were done up on friday, which was also a Brazil game, so the plan was to finish baking everything before it started at 11am. One cupcake pan and three boiling pots for mixing and we did it; seventy cupcakes and a three lawyer round all before the start of the game. As this is Brazil, H came home to watch the game...2 hour work day. His excuse was that we (we actually did) had to go to the dentist right after the game. My first dentist visit in Brazil...we can talk about that later. Unfortunately, brazil tied with the colonizers. But that's ok. We had homemade pizza for lunch and a lovely trip to the dentist to follow it.

The brigadeiro army of cakes was for the birthday party of a 13 year old cousin, last weekend was the birthday party of a 7 year old cousin. Not sure yet whose birthday party is next weekend. This family is way too big. Birthday party every week. I have never made this many cakes at the same time before, not even for my graduation party a year ago. My birthday is in about two weeks... i think i will make ice cream instead.

The brigadeiro cake topping consumed four cans of condensed milk. That's a lot of caramel. The cakes are chocolate truffle cakes; meaning that they contain both actual chocolate as well as cocoa powder. Brigadeiros are about as famous as the pão de queijo is in Brazil; traditionally brigadeiro is a birthday party staple, but they can be found pretty much year round at any bakery. Or, you can spend a few pennies and make your own. Brigadeiro truffles are usually rolled into balls and then covered in chocolate sprinkles, but there is nothing wrong with simply eating it on a spoon.

Chocolate Truffle Cake (makes one dozen)

Ingredients: 2 cup flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 2/3 cup milk, 1/2 cup cocoa powder

Method: Mix together the dry ingredients. In a seperate bowl, whip the butter, eggs and sugar. Add the dry mixture and milk alternately to the wets. Pour in muffin cups and bake at 350F for 20 minutes or until done.

Brigadeiro

Ingredients: 1 can condensed milk, 1/4 cup cocoa powder, 1 1/2 tbsp butter

method: Mix all ingredients together in a pan and bring to a boil over low heat stirring constantly. Unlike in my last post where i suggested to cook the brigadeiro for 15 to 20 minutes, the number has dropped to 5, somehow. Remove from heat and stir briskly. Allow to cool for about five minutes and and then top and cupcakes or cake and top with sprinkles immediately.

The awestruck look on all the faces of my new little cousins' was enough to justify the entire day spent smothering brigadeiro on the top of seventy little cakes. Cupcakes aren't big yet in Brazil, in fact there are many who have never had a cupcake. Today we helped to fix that even if only for a few. When the kids crowded around the table H turned to me and said, now you've won the family. I replied, I thought i already did that? He, well now you have all the kids on your side.

After cake we all sat down to watch the U.S.'s last game in the world cup this year. Even though i was the only American in the room, there were no Ghana supporters. There's an American in the family now, therefore the U.S. is now ours too. The amazing thing with Brazilian families is that there is no such thing as familiar levels. It doesn't matter whether you're a first cousin, the son of a third cousin twice removed, or the foreign wife of a nephew, family is family, and here, family is everything.

a bientot

New Photography Website

2010-06-18T00:57:00.005+02:00

Exciting.

I have been working on my photography website with my web designer/developer (my sister) remotely for over a year. There's a lot of work behind what makes a website a website; a blog is easy, it's a template that's already there. A website is a bit trickier, it's built from a white page. No way in hell could i do it on my own, but having 5 sisters and brothers has it's perks; like everyone says it's good to have a doctor or lawyer in the family, well i like having a web designer and painter in mine.

As of now, the site has three galleries; food, travel and life and will be updated periodically. Soon a fourth gallery of weddings will be added. If you're outside of the US like me, give it about a minute to load as the server is stateside. I can't tell you how excited we are about this, and if you like the design and style, and want to hire a web designer and builder who can work for you completely remotely, contact my designer, Megan Elisabeth by visiting her portfolio.

Here it is! malloryelise.com!!!!!

One more photography note, we forgot to mention on our birthday that we were interviewed on the food photography site Great Food Photos owned and operated by photographer and blogger Donny Tsang. Check it out, it's full of great photos (there are other photographers interviewed, such as Aran Goyoaga) and wordy interviews.

Salty's Third Birthday

2010-06-15T12:55:00.006+02:00

a look back

I can't believe it's been three years. I could have sworn it's been ten. Has your birthday ever snuck up on you? Has your spell check ever tried to tell you that snuck is not a word? Yesterday, i was sitting here in my chair not wanting to work like every other human on a monday morning, and i realized suddenly that the following day was my blog anniversary. How could i have forgotten? Two years ago my one year anniversary celebration was planned for over a week! Invitations were sent, reservations were made, cakes were baked and a tiny bar in Paris, France, was rented out. And now, two years later, three years from the beginning of it all, i let it sneak up on me. I'm not sure if it is coincidence or not that my life started at the same time Salty did. no no, it is true, my life started three years ago and i have lived a whirlwind lifetime within that margin. Three years ago we didn't know what we wanted and didn't know what we were doing. We've figured out a few of those things as best we can within the past few years, and have a passport full of stamps, a diploma, a job resume, a marriage license, a permanent visa, a house, a pot of sunflowers and an aging blog to prove it. In three years our life and our blog has been through an awful lot. Salty's fault.

Aside from my impulsive live today as if dying tomorrow personal life outside of blogging, three years has shown a tremendous growth on my blogging abilities, well perhaps my writing is suffering (i'm not as cheeky as i used to be) but my photography has gotten a hell of a lot better. It's almost creepy to have your progress and ability in your work cataloged weekly on a blog. I look back at the old posts and my nose does that embarrassed wrinkle; i took that photo? There is nothing in the world that can prove more the notion of progress through practice than the progression of a photo portfolio (i am not being paid for this article so i can state absolutes). The thing with photography is that you can only teach yourself, and you can only teach yourself through interest, passion and practice. Very few are ever born to do anything, and i certainly was not born to photograph. But in three years i've grown to love it as if it is who i am. Plainly put, i am excited for what i will put out look after the next three years of practice as i have come to the conclusion that we can only get better.

Some before and after shots in commemoration of three years? Yes i think so. Before is on the left, after is on the right.

I recall saying in high school photography class that i never wanted and never would be a photographer. There's no money, too risky, you may go through all the trouble and nothing will come out of it other than teaching photography in a dank high school dark room (desculpe, yes i had a bit of resentment for the photography teacher...hasn't evaporated after five years?). But now, as strange as life has it, as strange as learning French in order to live my life in France and ending up in Brazil struggling to learn Portuguese is, I of course want to be a photographer. Go figure, nothing is ever as we want it to be.

Today is Salty's birthday; haven't gone grocery shopping in a while...no eggs, no planning. However, today is also the first game Brazil plays in the World Cup so it is just slight of a national holiday. Workers get the time off to race home and catch the game. Yes it's true. H is coming home early, we're going to a party to watch the game, and in the back of my mind i will be dedicating the celebration to Salty, for the fact that i'm here, doing what i'm doing, thinking what i'm thinking, and feeling what i'm feeling. Life changed with the Salty. Happy birthday buddy, we may have slowed down a bit, but we are still here more alive than ever.

a bientot

A Book - O Livro

2010-05-25T13:43:00.012+02:00

55 Knives

No not my book (don't worry we're working on it) but a book in which i happen to have a small part in (one chapter to be exact). 55 Knives; a compilation of 55 recipes and prosy personal stories from 55 different food bloggers. Now, there are assuredly more than 55 food bloggers out there, i would say there are undoubtedly more than 500 (maybe 1000, 2000?), so stating the 55 chosen as the "best" is impossible as no one can really get to know every food blog, and it would sound very conceited of me as i know of many better chefs, writers and photographers on the web. So i'm no really sure if i'm in the top of anything. The fact of the matter is that some blogs are better than others, but it depends on the category. Some food blogs are better for the food itself, some for photography, the layout, and some for the writing. So who's the best depends on what you are judging. The 55, in my opinion, are a just a random sample of what's out there.

I know many of the 55 authors behind this book, and know many food bloggers who aren't part of it but are just as if not more skilled than i am in one of the three food blogging categories. For this project, however, writing and story telling seem to be the linking thread amongst the chosen bloggers. The wordy bloggers who want to write poetry about the beauty of mushroom spores, the sound of a buttered knife as it scrapes across a nearly burnt slice of toast, or the memory of their grandma peeling garlic for 7 hours until she passed out in a bed of broccoli are the ones who are part of this project. Ah, verse. If you like that and don't mind it accompanied by full detailed recipes, then buy the book!

Nick Evans of Macheesmo, the organizer behind the project, settled on an e-book rather than a paper book as well lets face it, the publishing industry can be quite a bitch eh. If you think about it, a compilation of internet writers should be in an electronic book. You read my words on the screen already, just think of the shock you would suffer if they were actually in print. Furthermore, this book can be downloaded anywhere in the world. How long do you think it would take to come to print here in Brazil? Exactly. And at a 80% price inflation.

The book is split into appetizer, soups, salads, entrees and desserts. There are plenty of vegetarian recipes and at least one gluten free recipe that i know of (mine). So, what is my chapter on? (Brazilians, you will laugh) pão de queijo; an extremely simple little tapioca and cheese bread. When Nick contacted me for a chapter he mentioned that the recipe should be one that has a personal story attached to it (since we love our food bloggers for their wordy turn of phrase) so i knew immediately what i had to write about. (this recipe was actually already posted on Salty about 2 years ago, if you can be a scout and search it out, parabéns!!). But, in order to get the full love story (oh yeah) you have to buy the book. Actually, reading the old post and then this one back to back would be quite entertaining. I'm not sure if its gratifying or horrifying to realize that the last three years of my life are capsuled in this blog.

The price is $14 now, and then it jumps to $19 at the end of the week. But guess what; if you buy it from my link i receive 50% of the revenue. What will the profits be put toward? A weekend in Rio. Or, perhaps a mixing bowl so i can stop using my boiling pots for stirring batter and dough.

follow the link below if you would like to purchase a copy.

Click here to purchase through my feed!

Senora Cenoura,

2010-05-19T21:51:00.015+02:00

meet my friend Miss Ginger

Ginger and Carrot Rice Cake (Gluten Free)
Bolo de Arroz com Cenoura e Gengibre (Sem Glúten)

Why's it a rice cake? Guess. So in a few weeks i will have been in Brazil for four months, officially a third of a year. How is my Portuguese you ask? Am i participating in friendly banter with the locals at the corner bakery early each morning and making dentist appointments by phone? No. Strangely i am still worse off than a three year old when it comes to speaking. Writing, reading and listening i would say i am at about a third grade level (special ed third grade) but what can i say, i'm not enrolled in a class and during the weekdays my only Portuguese is television (oh wait, i meant soccer announcers) and eavesdropping on the quarblings of strangers at the gym. Of course there is the everyday use of comprehension, such as discovering that the bag of corn flour i purchased to make bread with was in fact actually corn starch (soup rather than dough alerted me to the findings). During my first week living in France i recall washing my clothes solely in fabric softener.

I've realized that i have to learn a word four and a half times before it makes any sense or has any chance of remaining inside my memory. When the word carrot (cenoura) finally stuck, i stammered, wait a minute, isn't that a Mrs.? no no, laughs my [cough] Portuguese professor (the reason i'm not enrolled in a class), that's senora, not cenoura. Eh? Where is the difference? I have a phobia of some day calling a madam a carrot. The phenomenon continues to plague me. After being asked how my parents were about six dozen times, it finally clicked that pais were parents. Oh they are fine. but wait a minute....parents are breads? the Portuguese word for bread in the multiple is pães, which sounds exactly like pais (to me). wonderful. Mrs. Carrot and my parents are breads. The list goes on, but my fingers do not. Plainly put, Portuguese is not an easy language. When Holly Golightly believed that Fred was in league with the butcher, she really didn't know what she was getting herself in to.

Carrots are fascinating creatures, i love to make cakes with them and have been known to proclaim on multiple occasions that the carrot cake is indeed my favorite. That is, if one can have a favorite cake (i don't think so because whenever i make cinnamon cake i say the same thing). So carrots; we were at the grocery store on sunday as usual (sunday is our grocery day as i am yet unable to drive and get myself anywhere on my own) and spending way too much time in the yogurt aisle as we always do. who doesn't love yogurt. H puts a yogurt in the cart, this was my favorite flavor when i was little. i look. carrot? carrot flavored yogurt? try and find me an American kid who pines after carrot flavored yogurt. how bizarre. but hey, i make cakes out of carrots so what's the difference? The yogurt escapade inspired the cake, which i have now made three times in the past two weeks to ensure to you dear readers that the recipe is perfectly flawless, so you better not screw it up.

The first and second cake (second cake was baked as cupcakes) were carrot and orange; cenoura e laranga, the orange came from the second ingredient in the carrot flavored yogurt which i couldn't taste in the yogurt. To make sure the essence came through in the cake, i used an entire orange peel (the whole thing). As i don't have a zester or food processor, i blended the carrot and orange peel together in a blender until the pieces were fine enough. The same recipe (minus the orange) was used to make the carrot ginger cake. Why ginger today? Because i'm making Japanese food tonight and have a monstrously heavy ginger root that tends to dry out if kept for too long. Ginger caipirinha is next. After tasting both the Salty preference stands at: Carrot Ginger!

You'll notice that there is no xanthan gum, gelatin, or what have you in the cake. I have yet to find xanthan gum in my grocery markets, so i have gone au-naturel. But lo and behold it rose, bound itself, and tastes good all without a mountainous list of ingredients. hmmmm.

carrot ginger/or orange rice cake- gluten free

ingredients:
1 cup white caster sugar (use 1/2 white 1/2 brown if you prefer), 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 2 large eggs, 1 cup white rice flour (wheat flour if you prefer), 1 large (extremely large, practically 2) tbsp tapioca flour or starch, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder (only 1 if using wheat flour), 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 cup finely ground or grated carrot, peel of 1 orange finely ground or 1 tbsp finely ground fresh ginger.

Method:Beat sugar, oil and eggs together in a large bowl. Add the rice flour, tapioca flour, salt, cinnamon and baking powder to the same bowl (i don't mix the wets and drys separately in this recipe) and stir until evenly incorporated.

Chop one medium carrot into small pieces and place in the blender. Add one whole orange peel removed from the orange using a paring knife or add the freshly chopped ginger. Blend the two ingredients until they are finely ground. The final product should be about one cup.

Add carrot mixture to batter and stir until incorporated. Pour into a buttered and floured 8 in round or into about 10 cupcake tins (less for wheat flour, about 8).

Bake at 350 F for about 20 minutes for a round and 10-15 minutes for cupcakes. All ovens vary in temperature (especially gas and electric) so watch them until they are dry in the middle.
(optional) Cream 8oz of cream cheese with 1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar and 1 tsp vanilla for a frosting.

Bolo de Arroz com Cenoura e Gengibre - Sem Glúten

Ingrédientes: 200 grama de açucar, 210 grama de óleo, 2 ovos grandes, 125 grama farinha de arroz (ou trigo), 7 grama de fermento em pó, 10 grama de farinha de mandioca (só para bolo de farinha de arroz), um pouco de sal, 1 colher de canella, 110 grama de cenoura ralada, 1 colher grande de gengimbre ralado ou casca de laranja inteira.

Método:
Combina açucar, óleo e ovos na uma tigela grande. Adiciona farinhas, fermento, canella e sal. Mistura bem.
Colocou cenoura e gengimbre/ou casca de laranga no um liquidificador. Ralado bem. Adiciona no bolo.

Cozinhe para vinte minuto a 250 graus.

May is nearing an end and it's becoming quite cold here. Winter mornings and chilly evening runs. It's funny how we think of South America only as a hot tropical local completely forgetting that there is a South Pole too. Inside the tropic of Capricorn by just 30 minutes; the Antarctic cold fronts that sweep in off of Argentina aren't pretty. It's starting to actually feel like winter, despite the fact that it is almost June. So maybe i'm getting used to things here. Maybe. Mrs. Carrot. Oh wait no, i still don't have a Kitchenaide mixer.

Fin d'Avril - Final de Abril

2010-04-28T12:09:00.006+02:00

April is supposedly the equivalent to the northern September, it's the autumnal month that brings in the winter months of May, June and July. I suppose it has been a bit chilly, sometimes getting as low as sixty degrees. Evenings and the early morning are the only ones who suffer, or how you look at it- benefit. It's almost May, almost one year since i first set foot in Brazil. How can so many things happen in just one year. One year ago to this day, i was just ten days shy of a college graduation, working as a photographer and writer for a magazine, and planning an utterly insane voyage to a country i (bear with me) had no business being in. One year later, as i sit here typing to you, it seems like a lifetime has elapsed. One year without school, without professors, without exams, one year of paying bills and loans (merde), one year of writing (and crying) freelance, a stage in a bakery, a hundred ferry boat rides, a series of months thrown in that seemed to have no purpose whatsoever aside from their role of ticking down, a decision that did not need to be decided, a move, a wedding, a visa, a new home, a new life - and here we are. Ready to discuss dried peppers and gluten free muffins. How is this life? Who said it would be like this? Somehow Salty did.

As we live alone without any mothers to feed us, i cook. I didn't know i could cook. Well, anyone can cook, but i didn't know i would be as excited by it as with baking. Uh oh. There's something about just making flavors work, and somehow knowing that they will. As much as i am fond of Brazilian food, i can't handle eating the same thing as nauseum. I need Mexican, Asian, Indian, French and even some American. Bingo. I can't tell you how much i am intrigued by Indian foods, particularly curry. Simple food made amazing simply by the intricate combination of spice. I know i sound a bit like prosaic Tony here. My kitchen is the international kitchen, as i am a foreigner myself, i feel at home with any and all other tings that are also out of place. The only problem is finding the ingredients i was so well pampered with at my fancy-pants international has-everything market in Seattle.

Enter chilies. I am a spice wimp, but yet i love the taste of chilies. Brazilians, for the most part, do not eat spices. At the grocery store i sought out red chilies, hmm, a pack of 30. Guess not too many people are in need of a chili here or there. So with 30 scalding hot chilies to my name, i did what any good preserver would do; i dried them. Feeling like the California raisin girl (minus the bonnet) i slit them in two and lined up their plump bodies on the balcony. In two days they were shriveled snakes barely reminiscent of their former self. Now the idea of drying things out in the sun makes you wonder about those who choose not to wear sunscreen...Either way, when people hear about my chili antics, eyebrows are raised: hmmm mexican....

Moving on to yet another topic, i have been making muffins quite frequently in an attempt to make a proper pizza dough. The muffins are now a success while the pizza dough is still a large cracker. Maybe it doesn't help that i have no bowls, trays or stones....frying pans and rice pots for everything. The muffins, as light, fluffy and airy as they are, are gluten free and made without any added binding agent. No xanthan gum, no gelatin, nada. Equal parts (1/2 cup each) of 3 alternative flours, 2 tsp baking powder, 2 eggs, a dash of milk, cinnamon, ginger, sugar, butter, pureed mango (or whatever you have on hand right) and all the other yada that goes into muffin making. It's quite surprising but in Brazil rice flour costs less than wheat flour, and there are more kinds of tapioca (manioc) flour than one could ever think possible. There are many recipes that rely on tapioca and corn flour alone, and never does there seem to be any rising or binding problems, and these recipes have been used for, well, for a long time. Makes you wonder why when you see some gluten free recipes out there you see an ingredient list of a length that surpasses even the most complex of curries. I think the moral is that we always make things harder than they actually are.

Gluten Free Cinnamon Ginger Muffins
Ingredients: 1/2 cup each of any three gluten free flours, 1/4 butter or oil, 2 tsp baking powder, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/4 cup milk, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup sugar, grated ginger to your taste.

Method: mix dry ingredients together and add wets (all in the same bowl, no need to mix wets before adding). Fill muffin cups 3/4 of the way full, and bake at ~350 F (my oven is in C now) for about 10-15 minutes or until they are done (dry in the middle).

I'm still playing in my kitchen, still playing with my life. Learning what i can do, and what i have to work harder to be able to do. Looks like i will have to grown my own herbs and wash all the dishes by hand. Hang the laundry up to dry and tweak the the original road i had planned. That seems to occur on a yearly basis. But we're still headed for the same goal, whatever that may be. Brazilian autumn is a beautiful time of year, and in the country side, one can say that it is dangerously close to perfect.

a bientot

upcoming: not sure yet

Paraty - RJ

2010-04-06T18:19:00.009+02:00

the gold stops here

Thinking about going to Rio de Janiero? Why not try for something a little smaller, a little cozier, and a little more colonial. The coastal city of Paraty (par-ah-chee) is about a three hour drive from Rio and is thus easily accessed by bus, taxi or van from the airport. Paraty rests on a natural bay on Brazil's Costa Verde (green coast). The bay is protected from waves surrounded by coastal mountains, and spotted with so many small islands that one feels planted in the middle of a Pirates of the Caribbean scene. The waters and sands of Paraty are not the typical images of sprawling sands covered with sun bathing bodies. The beaches are shallower, dotted with shade trees, and offer more than an arm's length of personal space between you and the sun-bathing Brazilian next to you. But more than the beach, more than the private jungle swimming with pool-side monkeys, more than the five-hour boat cruise through the bay with quick blue-water dips, is the fact that Paraty is an historically preserved colonial town complete with original cobble stone streets, Portuguese tiled and painted buildings, and an overall feeling in the air whispering that you have been transported back in time, and if you just look over your shoulder, there will be a majestic caravel sailing off the port with its bounty of Brazilian gold. How romantic. Just keep the murderous pirates out of your fantasy.

Paraty was "founded" by the Portuguese in 1667. The original inhabitants were the Guaianás Indians, but the Portuguese felt their need for a gold port was slightly more relevant than a complete way of life. However, in well-known Portuguese courtesy, the original name of the region was kept. Paraty, which in the Tupi language means "river of fish", became the destination exit port for gold mined in Minas Gerais (view story on Ouro Preto). Today, Paraty is an historically preserved heritage site with a down town reserved only for pedestrians willing to navigate the uneven hand-size cobble stone alleys puddled with sea water and the occasional crawling crab.

We arrived in Paraty at night, after a six hour drive (four hours under good conditions) from Sao Paulo through the foggy Serra do Mar, the coastal mountains that separate the sea level from the upper plains, and the never-ending stretch of coastal high way through machine-gun rain. With nerves wrecked (Brazilian rain can kill, and it often does), we entered the town through stone gates. Priceless. The rain trickled off as we made it through the city center toward "pousada avenue" as it appeared. There is no lack of lodging in this vacationer's destination. Of the some one hundred pousadas, the Brazilian equivalent to the bed & breakfast, out destination was Eliconial Pousada & Spa (website); a paradise inside of paradise already. A private pool surrounded by palm trees and tropical vegetation and visiting monkeys. Each room is fashioned as a miniature suite complete with kitchen and private bathroom. The private secluded atmosphere is undoubtedly one of the strongest features of the place, as are the welcoming staff typically Brazilian breakfast served each morning. Eliconial, and the majority of other pousadas in Paraty, are within walking distance (about 3 minutes) of the beach and of the downtown (about 20 minutes).
The best way to explore Paraty and it's breathtaking bay are to first simply stroll through the historic down town on your way to the port, and then jump on one of the many boats ready and waiting to take you on a cruise through the bay's many coves and miniature islands. A boat ride through the bay is undoubtedly the number one must-do in Paraty. The rides are extremely affordable, between 20 and 4o reais per person for a four to five hour cruise. Mine, however, was free as i was on my honeymoon. Remember that tid bit. The dock is packed with an immeasurable number of schooners (escunas) and their crew calling-out for customers. Choose whichever appeals most to you, however, i recommend "The Name of the Rose," (O Nome da Rosa) a comfortable and friendly schooner whose crew lead you on a five-hour tour to numerous islands and inlets, anchoring for blue-water swimming dips straight off the boat and a snorkeling dive to view any willing sea life. Many of the locations visited are only possible via boat, so don't miss out. My husband and i both agree that lounging on the deck of boat while sailing through the warm blue-green waters was the biggest highlight of the trip.

As far as food goes, Rio de Janeiro does not have as distinct a regional food as say Mineira cuisine (from Minas Gerais). However, when in Paraty, take advantage of the fresh seafood. If the area is crowded by pousadas, it is overrun by restaurants. Aside from tourism and art shops, the down town hosts no less than three restaurants on every street. The atmosphere is not unlike the nightlife in Paris' Latin Quarter, complete with a variety of gelato (sorveteria) shops to make the cobble stone walk after dinner a little sweeter.

Visit the churches, view some local art, read up on some of the town's history, buy a t-shirt--but when you're ready to relax, grab a towel and a coconut water, and plant yourself under a palm on the beach and just enjoy the beauty around you. I could not have wished for anywhere better for my honeymoon. History, beach, privacy- paradise on earth.

A bientot

upcoming: my new kitchen

There Was a Wedding

2010-03-31T15:15:00.003+02:00

Cupcakes and Cakes

Readers, i know you will forgive me for my absence when i say that i have been busy with a big project: a wedding. Yes a wedding cake! In Brazil, fondant is known as "American Paste" or something like that, as very few wedding cakes in Brazil are covered with the stuff. Leave it to an American to fulfill the prophecy. Petit in size, the two-tiered cake was accompanied by an army of cupcakes; also unheard of in Brazil. I signed up to make the cakes from the minute i found out about this wedding, and of course i planned all along to bake and decorate it all on the day before the event as i knew there would be a few other things to do; such as getting the rest of the event planned and legalized. Wedding planner too? Whose wedding was this? My own :)

Yes. me. wedding on Saturday at 10:35 am in a civil registry office wearing a very tight (but coutour) pearl white dress that hit the knee. No fluffy "Say Yes to the Dress" princess gown. The plan: small wedding as un-wedding like as possible. But do not think we are rebels; it wasn't because we didn't want, but because i wasn't interested in having a real wedding with my side of the aisle empty. With the rest of my family back in the United States, there was no possiblity of asking everyone to fly to Brazil at the same time. The result: civil registry office with 16 witnesses followed by a lunch at a Brazilian steak restaurant (yes the ones with the dressed up Gauchos) and my laptop computer planted squarly on the table in lieu of my plate. Wedding reception via skype. Yes much different, but to me, the day was perfect.

Because of cake.

What is the perfect day to bake the cake for a saturday wedding. Answer: friday. I woke up friday morning (with an unexpected hangover from the previous night's dinner with fancy pants business men visiting from the US. i am asked along of course because i am an English speaking curiosity. what?) to do all the shopping for the cakes. Started baking about 2 (after a nap of course) and finished the army of cupcakes and small two-tiered rice and tapioca flour lemon cake. I covered the cake in white fondant and embellished with white fondant polka dots and white fondant ribbons to cover the horrid seams. I dusted the dots and ribbons with an irridescent pearl dust (not particularly visible in the photographs). Cupcakes, well they are too many flavors to list. The point is, I made my own wedding cake. And everyone, in particular my husband and I, loved it. So in my mind, the day was a success. Well, that and also driving to Paraty in Rio de Janeiro state right afterward. But that's for another post.

I moved to Brazil two months ago to attempt a new language, a new culture, a new career, a new life, and above all the rest, to get married to the man I love; The crazy brazilian who has been part of the Salty Cod since the beginning, the "editor" for those of you long-time readers who can recall. This blog began three years ago because of Paris, and that's exaclty how H and I began; three years ago because of Paris. Two months of paperwork, two months of house work (moving in tomorrow!), and just 6 more months of pending permanent residency, but we're married. We're happy. And now we're back on track with more regular posting.

Upcoming: Exploring the colonial town of Paraty, Rio de Janeiro & inaugurating my new kitchen. Stay tuned.

a bientot

Ice Cream 2 Ways

2010-03-02T12:35:00.021+01:00

Avocado Lemon & Lemon Mint

Ice cream? In March? Remember i'm in the Southern hemisphere now and it is (the end) of summer. Over the past (almost 4) weeks i have realized a few things: i am not going to use the oven to bake anything until i move into my house, i'm not interested in baking yet in the heat, and i enjoy using serial commas. Now obviously it is possible to bake in the heat, millions do it and i have no doubt that i will. But the oven in this house.....and it's not because it's gas, thousands of bakers bake with gas, even my new still-in-plastic shrink wrap oven is gas (though it has a nifty ignite button, so no matches). It's something else....this oven just doesn't like me; it knows i'm North American. Actually there is no thermometer or temperature gauge anywhere to be found and i am not yet quite to the level (and loss of sensory nerve) where i have skill enough to stick my hand inside and determine "yup, 219 celcius." For example. The other day there were 7 blackening bananas, and so before they were mashed 50-50 with sugar in a sauce pan for "dessert" (read: plain) i said hey, stop, let's make banana bread, because after all that is what we Americans do with bananas is it not? Alright alright they nodded, (this of course came out of my mouth in my wonderful present tense Portuguese) and i made the bread. Not cake, i insisted they call it bread. Sweet bread seems to not compute. As the story goes, the thing came out charred black. This was a problem the last time i was here as i recall. But cut away the bottom and sides and it's perfect inside. You've spleened me for the last time oven, now i am only making things on top of you or with no heat at all.

While we were in the middle of miserably hot weeks (90 degrees is miserably hot for me) i thought, ah, i'll make ice cream....no one makes homemade ice cream here. No kidding. But i didn't actually want to be right with that statement. Why make it when you can buy it everywhere? that's something that is starting to pop up more and more around me. The bakeries make bread, so why make it? Cookies come in packages, so why mess up a pan? Well, i guess the answer to all of it is i like to do it. It's not the product i am crazy over, it is the process. However, one thing, at least in this household, that is homemade more often than bought is juice. Juice? Granted there are dozens of varieties of juices at the grocery market, but fresh fruit is not expensive, and buying an entire pineapple for one pitcher of juice is quite reasonable. I watch H's mom make juice daily out of pretty much anything. One carrot and one apple? Done. Chop, put in blender, add water and sugar, then strain and drink. She has a pretty fancy pants juicer that happens to be named Mallory (the name of the electronics brand, seriously. they manufacture coffee makers, toasters and fans too) but she does it this way. Lemons, avocados, oranges-seriously it takes a lot of fruit to make a small amount of juice. But no one has scurvy around here that's for sure. So yesterday there was a bag of passion fruits, about 6 apple-sized yellow globes. I (myself) will make passion fruit juice. When you cut into a passion fruit it is quite hollow, there is a glob of seeds attached to a pink membrane with a little juice surrounding. Once that is scraped out all that is left is white sponge and quite unattractive nodes that look like sea anemone tentacles. Whoever thought to call this fruit 'passion' has a sick mind...the Brazilians actually believe it to be a sedative fruit, quite ironic actually. Can't get to sleep? Suck on a passion fruit. In Portuguese it is called maracuja. I mixed it with squeezed lemons, sugar and water and thought it extremely tart (but good). Later i noticed H's mom added about 50 percent more water. Guess i'm too tart.

What? Ice cream? As i was set on making ice cream to do a post for poor Salty, i had it stuck at the front of my mind. We went to Sao Paulo last week for another visit to the US consulate to finish up a few things, and on the way we stopped at my favorite place smack on the corner of a highway exit ramp, the kind with large obnoxious billboards- where? None other than the extremely corny Castelinho da Pamonha, also known as the "Corn Castle" to grab some corn ice cream to make going to the consulate less dreadful. Now, i wrote about this place last August when i recreated the sweet corn ice cream in a post here. I guarantee you that anyone who visits will be forced even against their will into this place. there's even a corn playground. Neither here nor there, but i couldn't make and post corn ice cream again...so i keep moving.

Two days later i went for a visit to an aunt's house (there are about 20 aunts) which is settled in the garden of an extremely large mansion in a private condominium surrounding a river. Why in the garden? Her husband is the gardener. We were there, of course, for "afternoon coffee" and snacks...slightly British if you ask me. We went into the kitchen and she opened the oven; each rack was lined with avocados (Brazilian avocados are huge, bigger than mangoes) that practically spilled out over the floor. jesus, i said, your oven is full of avocados. well, what a wonderfully obvious statement. Now the sky is blue. But at least i'm trying. Aunts, uncles and cousins are the only ones so far who i am comfortable attempting to practice my wretched Portuguese on. Now there were two more large buckets of avocados on the porch; how is she going to use all these? Horrific thoughts returned to last January in my grocery market in Poulsbo (near Seattle) where i unfortunately had to pay $2.50 for a single rotten avocado that was smaller than an apple. yeesh. Another bucket of lemons, a bucket of oranges, and every 5 minutes one of the caged-quails seemed to pop out yet another spotted egg. Well, i have to say being a gardener looks quite rewarding in more ways than one. When we left we took a shopping bag full of avocados and lemons. i'm going to make avocado and lemon ice cream. Thanks tia.

Back to the nobody makes ice cream here statement. I want an ice cream maker for my birthday (which is in July), i told H a few weeks ago. Anyways. Haven't yet seen one at any kitchen store....gulp. So i'm making it by hand for now. Guess they aren't the most popular selling of products-First sign. Now for cream; everyone knows you need cream to make ice cream (hence the second part of the word.) So we be at the grocery store, "where is the cream? doesn't anything come in bottles?" Poor H who tries to help as best he can to accommodate my outrageous projects that make no sense to Brazilians. He looks, thinks, then says "what kind of cream? What does it come from?" uh, a cow. Oh. We shuffle to an aisle with cardboard boxes full of already prepared whip cream mix that you simply whip. No, not this. I want pure cream, this has sugar and chemical junk in it, isn't there anything fresh? Something that has to be kept cold? At this point he is quite confused and my attitude doesn't help. The people at the store inform us that they don't sell it-second sign. please please, this is not the time to have one of those breakdown culture-shock moments. Over the weekend we stopped by the pharmacy at Carrefour and thought to see if they had cream in a bottle, they did (i think it's cream....) have cream in a bottle. Fresh whipping cream (i hope that's what it is...). Hooray Carrefour! However slightly expensive. At this point i decided to make two flavors, because i'm like that. I need mint now. For lemon mint ice cream. Mint?...again i have confused the poor man, like toothpaste flavor, i clarify. I head over to the produce section with green leaves and herbs, H asks "why are you here then?" I pick up a bundle of mint and say uh, to get the mint. "That's mint? Mint is blue." interesting....wait what?? Let's laugh and move on. We are so lucky to be awarded so many possibilities to laugh at the smallest of things each and every day. Culture is such a wonderful thing, nothing is wrong, nothing is right, all it is is different.

So here is my ice cream, no machine, only hand. It is a combination following the methods of David Lebovitz and Jamie Oliver (both don't mind machine-less cream). I made them both at 5:30 this morning since H left early for work (we have an appointment at the registry office early in the afternoon, immigration stuff). All ingredients were thrown in the blender, and then poured into casserole dishes and placed in the freezer. As they are thick (in depth) they took quite a while to freeze, stirring every 30 minutes to break up the clumps. Would you believe 5-6 hours? Avocado is a great ingredient to use when attempting the dish method to make ice cream as it is a naturally fatty food and allows the ice cream to remain creamy with fewer ice crystals. And, not surprisingly, the lemon mint tastes exactly like a mojito. Now we have homemade ice cream, probably the only homemade ice cream around for miles. Was it worth it? I think so.

Avocado Lemon Ice Cream
Ingredients:
500ml cream, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 can sweetened condensed milk, 2 Brazilian avocados (like 4 of the wimpy ones in the U.S.), juice of 2 lemons, 1 tsp vanilla extract (or powder).

Lemon Mint Ice CreamIngredients:
600ml cream, 1.5 cups sugar, 1/2 can sweetened condensed milk, juice of 2 lemons, 1-2 tbsp finely chopped fresh mint leaves.

Method (for both):
Combine all ingredients in a blender and whirl until smooth (you need to use a blender or you will have avocado chunks...mmm). If using a machine, follow the instructions for your particular model. If making by hand, poor into a shallow baking dish (plastic, glass, etc.) and place in the freezer. Check it after 45 minutes and stir with spatula or whisk. Keep checking every 30- 60 minutes (depending on size of container and temperature of freezer) keep stirring until it is consistency enough to serve.

a bientot

ps. i'm experimenting with banners, this is the third in the past three weeks....can't quite get it right. Yes i do take constructive criticism as useful. So keep it coming.

Ad Interim

2010-02-19T11:46:00.008+01:00

chapter seven place holder

It's Friday, I've been here for two weeks, why is there nothing posted yet? Well, baking in a kitchen not your own can be a bit difficult; particularly when there always seams to be a meal in the making. Who likes to feel in the way. Likewise, getting my mind wrapped around a suitable Salty Cod topic just doesn't seem to be happening right now. Porque? Too much going on. What? Well, our house is not finished yet, ergo we're not living in it yet, and are instead continually working on it. Every weekend is yet another trip to the Home Depot-esque store or marble cutter's yard, tile work or painting. To continue the whining of which i am quite eloquent at, i'm also having a bit of bureaucratic paperwork woe - that being put very nicely. Foreign marriage and immigration is not easy in any state of any country. So don't ever let the word Brazil fool you; flip flops do not mean that all things are as laid back as we are apt t believe, in fact they are yet more stringent (if possible) than anything i am used to. So another trip to the American consulate in Sao Paulo is inevitable...

Either way, i am positive that next weekend there will be something new posted on our salty white sheets here. Don't give up on us. Until then, I've backup material to splatter. An article i wrote last June about traveling through the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais was(is) recently printed in the (get ready for it) annual issue of the Spokane Sizzle (the magazine i used to work for in Spokane; a city on the border of Washington and Idaho). I was very lucky to be given two full pages for text and photos. Along with the Minas article, they ran a gluten free dining article as well as a few restaurant reviews i wrote. J & J, if you are out there reading this, thank you for your faith in me and the opportunities you presented. Good luck!

Article Published in the 2010 issue of 'The Spokane Sizzle' (sizzlencuisine.com)

Get Outta Town
Destination: Minas Gerais, Brazil

When most Americans think about Brazil, images of white sandy beaches, Amazonian wild life, teeny-tiny bikinis and Carnival costumes most often come to mind. But just as it is impossible to define the United States solely with either the image of the Texas ranch, plastic California glamor or New York City lights; it is impossible to define Brazil with any one word other than, well, Brazilian. It would take a lifetime to discover the many gastronomic, cultural, historical and botanical travel treasures that make up the South American nation that stretches its borders across more continental landmass than the United States. So, if a lifetime is all that is given, then Spokane, we better get started.

Don't bother packing the bikini, that is unless you are planning on jumping into passion-fruit creek—today we are not going to Rio, we're going inland, and under-land. Brazil is comprised of 26 states, with our destination being the state of Minas Gerais; the fourth largest and second most populated state in the country. North of São Paulo, and west of Rio, the Portuguese minas (mines) and gerais (general) refers to the state's natural richness in minerals and gemstones. Today, the gold and silver mines have run dry, but the state is still the No. 1 producer of mined minerals and stone. The capital city, Belo Horizonte (beautiful horizon) is a fast-paced metropolis similar to any of the bigs in the US, with shop-lined avenues, manicured parks and giant white skyscrapers. A short bus or car ride from the airport at Belo Horizonte will get you to one of the many historical cities of Brazil, including Diamantina, Tiradentes, Serro and the UNESCO world heritage site of Ouro Preto—city rich in “black gold.” When gold and gemstones were discovered in the region in 1697, Portuguese colonials living in Rio de Janeiro started the construction of the estrada real, the "royal road" that began the extensive mining production that helped Ouro Preto become the state's first capital.

Today, Ouro Preto is a time capsule of Brazil's colonial past, and as a protected UNESCO site, will forever remain so. Like many European cities, the main gist of tourism in Ouro Preto and the surrounding cities lies in the many Baroque cathedrals and museums. From historical mining museums to showcases of the city's most famous artist, Aleijadinho, one could spend weeks touring the churches and museums trying to uncover the past. But what sets Ouro Preto apart form other 17th century historical towns are the myriad mines open to the public. Many of them are tight squeezes (crawls) through damp narrow passages that were once lined with the poor soles of African slaves chained together as they scraped the rock for gold. In Ouro Preto, the mina do Chico Rei was first opened to the public in the 1940s when it was discovered by a woman who purchased the land to open a restaurant. She now offers entrance to the mine (for a $R10 fee) and her restaurant is still open and thriving. Another mine in the area worth exploring is the mina do passagem, located a short drive outside of the city of Ouro Preto in the neighboring town of Mariana. The mina do passagem is the largest gold mine open to the public in the world.

Minas cuisine is the quintessential equivalent to the farm-house country-cooked meal in America. What makes mineira cuisine authentic? The variety. Traditional Minas cuisine is comprised of large pots of rice-and-bean dishes cooked over open fires, as well as a variety of chicken, pork and beef dishes accompanied by vegetables. Beans, feijoão, are a staple throughout the country, but undoubtedly were made nostalgic as the backbone of mineira cuisine. Feijoada, a stew comprised of beans, spices and a variation of meats is a classic dish that has become quintessentially Brazilian and can be found at nearly any authentic restaurant in the city. Tutu à mineira, another Minas specialty made from pureed beans and manioc flour is the taste of simplistic perfection at its finest; eaten alone or scooped over rice is enough to make a meal. When searching for a restaurant, browse the menu first, if you do not see a reference to traditional mineira cuisine, move on.

Aside from the wood-fire traditional cuisine, other savors that have made Minas cuisine famous include the pão de queijo (cheese bread) and queijo (cheese). Driving the highway, one will pass a myriad of casas de quiejo; cheese houses where—you guessed it, one will find a plethora of fresh mineira cheese for sale. Ouro Preto and Mariana are cities with high volume tourism each year, so the chances are that if you request a menu in English, you will get one. When staying, there are many high price hotels in the region, though more common are the poussadas, the Brazilian equivalent to the B&B. These homes are smaller than hotels, more private, quiet and oftentimes more nostalgic in the fairy-tale town setting. They cost much less than a traditional hotel, usually between 50 and 100 US dollars a night, and usually come with breakfast. Hope you like Fresh papaya, freshly baked breads and, of course, cheese. There are many tourism resources in the area, from tourism offices to personal tour guides for-hire.

Ouro Preto is a vacation out of the ordinary that won't put you at the mercy of being lost in translation. For history, for natural beauty, for a gastronomic retreat—Minas Gerais is the other Brazilian getaway, the one that doesn't leave sand in your shoes.

a biento

Back in Brazil

2010-02-12T15:53:00.010+01:00

New Home, New Country, Same Life

We've moved again, the roaming cod. But this time we're here to stay, at least for now. One question that i've been asked over and again is why Brazil and not the US. Why choose a third world country over the center of the world. The answer is quite complicated, and for all the reasons we give, i am not even sure if we know completely. We just, do. For me, there is something of majesty in being in a country that had never before crossed my mind. dismissal, i'd say, once upon a time. But then, you never end up where you plan. Why not US. We are here for reasons of practicality, personality, and preference. Practicality covers all manners of finance. The Brazilian Real (currency) fluctuates between 1.8-1.9 to the American dollar. I still earn my living through US dollars, therefore for every one hundred i make, i earn it's double. Also cuddled into this practicality business is the fact that i am a mobile worker; where i go, my work goes with me. Unfortunately this cannot be said for my other half, ergo to work, we both are here. Furthermore, immigration and marriage in the US is more complicated and expensive than in Brasil. so. There.

In the personality field, i'm the type of nut (no offense to the other expatriates out there) that knows without doubt that i can be at home anywhere. I knew it before i moved to Europe, and knew it for certain after i moved back. This, however does not imply complete lack of fear. There is always fear hiding somewhere in everything we do. the only way to swim over it is to keep looking directly at what sits on the shore.

The last is preference. Now, i will never say that i do not love the U.S.. I am American, and obviously i will always be. I have a large family that i cherish very much. However, large is relative. When i say large, i mean about 15 people. In Brazil when you say large, you mean 100. Now, is it easier to put around 15 people on a plane, or 100. You do the math. Another note on preference is that i have actually started to fall in love with Brazil, and not just the Brazilian. About three years ago i was asked in Paris, what do you know about Brasil? my answer - uh, the capital is Brasilia. After that, there has yet passed a day where i have not learned something about Brazil.

What i find difficult about Brazil is a small list so far. But it is there, nowhere is a paradise. The heat is a bit much for my albino skin, blond hair and blue eyes, all the deodorant is liquid, most people don't have doorbells, nobody owns a clothes dryer, everyone (alright most everyone) drives like a psychopath, Kitchenaid mixers cost a fortune, electronics cost a fortune, there is an overall lack of order to everything-as an American i'm used to following right-hand rules, pedestrians don't have right-of way, and oh yeah; i don't speak Portuguese.

What i find enchanting in Brazil certainly surpasses the difficulties. The sky is always blue. Even in the city i can hear the birds. People seem happy, even the ones with little. I'm in the heat with few clothes and i come from the snow. I have my own house (haven't moved in yet, it's almost done). People ride motorcycles with flip flops. Fruit and vegetables are the least expensive items at the store. I can sleep with no cover with the window open The park is always full of runners. Flowers and bright green trees year round. Listening to Portuguese. Clothes lines. Rice and beans, every single day. Food that rarely comes in packages. Pao de queijo (cheese bread from tapioca flour). That though i cannot speak, i can smile and be understood. Tiles on and in everything. A large welcoming family. And obviously above all other things listed, i get to be with the most important person in my life, without having to get on a plane.

Now that the explanations are over, let's get on with our stories, cakes, Brazilian food and yadda. Check back soon, what is yet to come will make the Paris shenanigans seem like teacakes.

a bientot amigos

Clumpy Granola

2010-01-28T23:42:00.009+01:00

a guest recipe by: my mom

What would you call granola with clumps? my mom asked me as i walked by her desk one morning, uh, i answered, clumpy granola. My family loves granola. A batch lasts about 4-5 day around here, however, my mom as as quick to make it as we are to eat it. It is one of her agenda items; she makes it different every single time striving to reach maximum clumpiness while still using a very scarce amount of oil. After myriad batches of cereal-esque results (12th time?) we settled on massaging a bit of egg white into the mess. The result; clumps. Clumps!

Everyone says their mom is an excellent cook, or baker, or whatever. My mom is uniquely neither. She can cook, she can bake, she can pretty much do everything. But what she is most excellent at is being a mom. I've never had a guest chef on Salty before, who else could possibly be qualified (we are very snobby of ourselves here at Salty), nor have i ever really spoken about my family (who are they?). I'm usually the center of the universe, am i not? But today, this post is for her.

I am moving exactly one week from today; suitcases and boxes are exploding in my room, and my brain is distracted enough to the point of need for medication (or wine). But one of the heaviest things that weighs on my mind is saying goodbye to my family. Now it's not like i've never left before; i went to college, i lived in Paris, i've had houses, apartments, dorms, etc., so i've passed the in-n-out stage with flying colors. I've only been living with my parents since after i graduated last May and got back from Brazil in July, so they are used to me shoving off. But this time it's different. This time there's no Christmas break at the end of the semester or designated time when my student visa runs out. This time i'm actually moving to have a life and for once, to stay put (except for times when we're off adventuring the world). Bluntly stated, the transition is harder on my mom than it is on me. Remember that i am only 23 years old, so i cannot blame her for being melancholy over my departure, especially as it is out of the country. But the reality is that we all leave eventually, and distance is relative. The world is only one place; we're all on it at the same time, there is no falling off. How wonderful would things be if the world (and my mom) viewed the world on the same minute scale that i perceive it on. Seeing is believing.

My mom means the world to me, and i know that without her being who she is, i would have never been able to become who i am; able to make the decisions that i make today. So to my mom: i am not leaving you behind, i am taking you with me. You made me who i am by letting me be who i am. Thank you for being my mom. And if you don't mind, make me some of this granola to take on the plane.

Clumpy Granola

4 cups oats
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey
1 cup flax seed
2 cups raisins
1 cup chopped almonds
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 sunflower kernels
2 egg whites

mix everything together in a bowl. that easy. spread as thinly as possible on two baking trays, and bake at 250 F for 30 minutes, checking (but not stirring) every 10. it should darken to a golden color, and harden as it cools.

If you are living outside of your home country, please scribble a comment on how your family deals with you being away, or how you deal with someone being away. Any help or encouragement would mean so much to me and those around me. If 50 of you say, "lucky mom, vacations to Brazil!" then perhaps we can convince her :)

a bientot

Blue

2010-01-16T23:56:00.006+01:00

The color, not the melancholy emotion.

What do i want to make? was the thought that sat on my mind all week. Why can't i think of something nouveau and creative to wow the masses with. damn it. And why is no one having a birthday! We need birthday cake fuel. My mind is frazzled from mindless work (the kind you make money on) and i can't think of an angle to bake up. The only thought that came to mind was blue. Blue. Blue pastry? I've reverted to primary mode. I think in colors. Excellent.

Like many of you i find unnatural colors in baked goods quite frightening. The bubble gum bright blue ice cream flavor at Maggie-Moo's will always be on my no-list. Sorry E. However, for one reason rather than another, i find macarons to not only be acceptable in unnatural colors, but to be more desirable with each quarter tsp of dye. Why? I'm not sure. Perhaps is the the lackluster taupe-ish hue of a nude macaron, or perhaps it is for the fact that the first macarons to invade my eyes were the bright dye-saturated jewels of the Parisian pastry shop windows that i would stare at on a daily basis. The macaron trees in the Laudier windows, how can you not stare at those. Deep purple, the color of the store, the color of a box of glittering macarons, the color of the sexiest looking sweetie on the planet. Now a vivid macaron image comes to mind; an over-priced pastry shop (perfect for tourists) right across the street from the back end of the church of the Madeleine, late January, and a window filled with a thousand stacked blood-red macarons. Ribbons, bows, trees, glitter. Jesus, what the hell is with these things. When i had (went) to class, i would not take the 40 minutes metro ride home during my 2 hour lunch break. Instead, i would walk 5 minutes down the street, and sit on the floor in the cook-book section of the fnac. 20 different books on macarons. excellent. Did i read most of them? yes. Did i figure out how to make them? yes. and it scared the shit out of me.

I made made them for the first time sometime in October of the following year after i returned to the U.S. And honestly, i found them soothing. Since then i have made hundreds for parties, friends, therapy, and gifts. The last being candy cane and eggnog macarons for a Christmas party which sadly didn't make it onto Salty. The point is, when i need something to make in order to relax, i make macarons. They are nothing special, everyone and their aunt now posts about them ad naseum. But, who cares. I wanted blue. And my babies gave blue.

I don't have much of a blue bias, i love all members of the blue family. Navy, Mediterranean house paint, Tiffany, sky, baby, and of course Portuguese azulejo tile blue. Now, i'm not depressed, no melancholy blues around here today. Just a batch of blue coconut-walnut sweeties, an over-lemony caipirinha, and a surprising soundtrack of norah jones, ray charles, and amy winehouse. endnote.

The stash of blanched almonds sadly found their way into a granola recipe the other day. As such, the costco bag of whole almonds had to be dug into. Skins? Not a problem. We'll mix them with walnuts. No more parchment? poo, only one silpat. What happened to all the pastry bags? I just used them...and i sent my own personal set already on to brazil with measuring cups and teaspoons. Hmm. Plastic baggy it is.

for the shells:
3 egg whites
2/3 cups ground almonds and walnuts
1/4 cup sugar
1 3/4 cup powdered sugar
1-2 tsp food dye

Grind the almonds and walnuts in a food processor with the powdered sugar. Meanwhile, whip the egg whites in a stand mixer or with egg beaters. Slowly add the sugar and food dye, and whip until the whites are stiff. Turn the bowl upside down, if it doesn't fall on your face, you're good. Pour the nut-sugar mixture into the whites and fold using a spatula. Fold 50 times (Tartelette's tip) and scoop into a pastry bag fitted with a wide tip. Pipe small circles onto a silpat or parchment covered tray. Let them rest for 30-60 minutes. Bake for 10 minutes at 275 degrees. Let cool for 2-3 minutes, and carefully remove from the pan.

for the coconut cream
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
2 tbsp coconut milk
1tsp vanilla powder

Beat the butter, add the sugar and whip. Add vanilla, add milk, and whip some more. Transfer to a pastry bag, and pipe a small amount onto half of your shells. Sandwich another shell on top to finish.

The next time i make (try) to make macarons will be in brazil. It may be a while before i find an affordable mixer and an audience to try them. But we will. And they will be better than ever before. A brazilian macaron is different than a french one. I'm not quite sure how it is different, but i will find out. and i will let you know.

a bientot

A Brazilian in Seattle

2010-01-09T02:13:00.006+01:00

Where Have I Been?
right here.

I don't know if other "internet writers" take vacations, as not only have i AWOLed the Salty office, but i haven't looked at any other blog in over a month either. Yeah i'm backed up. Did i even turn my computer on? Well you were busy with your families and what-not anyways, so i rest assured that i was not too sorely missed. But holiday vacations are now over, and it's back to work (real work and Salty work). So, happy late Christmas, and happy new years! May your new year bring you 365 great days of thrills, chills, and peppermint pills. 2010 brings quite a few changes here at Salty as well, we're quite an organic column here, and change quite frequently. In this mode I am announcing that the atmosphere here is morphing back toward that of when we lived in France a few years ago, that is stories based on travel, culture AND food stories rather than singular recipe focus. What brings the shift? I (first person, no journalism here, this is personal) am moving to Brazil at the end of January. I am moving into my (very own) house in a small city in São Paulo State with my fiancé H, who is usually referred to as "editor"around here for his non-colloquial perfect English. I am stepping into a different life, but it's what Salty (and a few other staff members) have been needing. We're deathly excited for the new blog (ehem, life) direction, and hope to take you along as we first did when we opened shop in France nearly three years ago. Announcement done. So let's write a story.

H spent the past month with me in my family's home in Seattle, and remember this was his first time here in the US of A. So what have i learned about Brazilians in America? That not even the most expensive and fancy-pants fish and oyster house restaurant on the Seattle waterfront can keep a Brazilian from dreaming about rice and beans. Good grief. Did i end up making rice and beans at least one night? Absolutely not. When in Rome...eat like you're in Mexico. As far as Washington State tours go, I hit this one on the nail (drum roll); we made it to every corner north, south, east, and west. Well, every corner but Walla-Walla as there is nothing in said town but onions and a state pen anyways. Lucky for us Seattle Christmas was quite warm this year; low to mid 40's nearly every day. So, below freezing for a Brazilian. But for a Swedish Fish out of his wrapper, he adapted quite nicely. Right on Red? Not a problem if i yell GO! And unfortunately yes, we do have to leave a tip for the waiter. Phrases learned: Litter and it Will Hurt, Click it or Ticket, and Can i see your ID? American radios play the same song over and over? Yes. Yes they do. And when i say left, i mean right. For once the tables were turned: i - the mute pantomime not afraid to make animal noises in the thick of public overhear in foreign countries around the world collecting nickles for giggles produced, was all knowing for once. Though, i do enjoy the "huh?"of it all. Being on the unknowing end. I'm meant, i feel, to be a foreigner. Smiling for the same awe as when listening to music in a language you don't understand.

There is a bit more to Seattle than Pike Place Market, though we did make it a (first) stop. Actually, we spent very little time in Seattle. North we went to Ferndale, a town practically on the border with Canada where my aunt and uncle have a farm. For the American tour: oh look a farm. And that's a goat. At the farm my professional cooking aunt was the only one to manage to erase rice and beans from the mind with her eggs Benedict, seafood risotto, and an ever-coming supply of the Northwest specialty, smoked salmon. Then we went south to Vancouver, a city just on the border of Oregon. East to Spokane, Washington's second largest city and the home of my alma mater, and then north-west by boat to the pristine San Juan Islands for a "nature"tour, and overly-cutesy bed & breakfast (which i highly recommend with 10 stars). But even with all the fancy tours that i could squeeze into a month, really what we liked most was lying on the couch, not working, being lazy, and making macarons and tarts in the kitchen. Of course, all of this while wearing the new leopard print snuggie.

Impressions: American food would be better if it had rice and beans tucked in the side. Our cars are a bit big. Ferry boats are cute, but oh how quickly you learn to loath them. Christmas is a big ritualistic deal. Americans and Brazilians really are the same, just a little different. Pineapples cost a lot of money and computers and ipods do not. But most importantly; that we are ready to go back to Brazil and start a new life. The Brazilian has already left the building, but i follow in 25. And i'm taking you with me. Nervous? Me too. So until then, let's bake something, because yes i missed daring bakers.....but it won't happen again.

a bientot

Am I Popular?

2009-11-29T01:05:00.009+01:00

Cranberry Bread Guest Post Em Português

This has been a busy month, but i guess you don't need me to tell you that. There have been babies born, business started, trips taken, games played, jobs gained, jobs lost, and everything else in between (when i list that, i am not talking about myself. obviously...). It seems that i have been stumbling around in the dark when it comes to Salty over the past 5 months, and i have been. Details are not really needed other than the fact that i, like you all, have been going through a bit of a pinch, a hurdle in the road, an elephant in the room, a blind man staring at writing in the sky...nobody knows what i am saying. Ergo we are back!

At the beginning of the month, the staff members here at the Salty Cod were asked to perform their first ever guest post. And we did. So it seems only fitting that we end the month with another guest post, my aren't we popular these days. Remember this time of year two years ago (no you don't) when we were posting about cooking a 30 pound turkey for 40 Frenchies at our place in Paris? Life rolls on doesn't it. Well, our dear friend Moira in Portugal invited us to celebrate the second anniversary of her blog, Tertulia de Sabores, by being the foreign guest blogger to round out the month long celebration of guests. Maybe you weren't around for the Portugal days, but we at the Salty Cod love all things Portuguese, and Moira's blog is one of our favorites. So we jumped at the bit to provide an American (uh oh) recipe for her readers. You can see the post over at Tertulia, though it is in Portuguese, so we will post the English version here. But we wish to say happy birthday again to Tertulia de Sabores, e muito obrigada por nos convidar para celebrar com você.

In this region of the world (the big one below Canada and above Mexico) the holiday season begins mid November and carries through the New Year. Mid November begins the Thanksgiving preparation, that is preparing a turkey filled menu for 8, maybe 15, maybe even 30 people. Thanksgiving is our big holiday here in the States, other than the 4^th of July (which really is not so special as most countries celebrate an Independence or national day) Thanksgiving is our “look at us we're special and unique” day. Turkey, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, and – cranberries. More than any other flavor, cranberries are the taste of the season. It doesn't matter what they are in, on, or around, anything with cranberries in it means dark days of winter, large holiday meals, and in no time at all, Christmas Eve festivities.

When Moira asked if my recipe could be American (as I am the special Portuguese-reading “foreign” guest), I was a little unsure what to make. American? What is American food? I am American and I can't even answer that. I have come to the conclusion that American food is anything that tastes good. Italian, Mexican, and Chinese – these, to me at least, are American foods. But when thanksgiving rolled around, and the bowls of cranberries started piling up, I realized that cranberries were not only a symbol of the holiday season, but more specifically the symbol of the American and Canadian holiday seasons (I'm half Canadian, so represent yo).

Now don't throw out small statistics about Chile and Eastern Europe producing a few barrel fulls of cranberries every year, cranberries are without a doubt indigenous to North America, and have yet to really draw a huge international following. Why? Probably because lingonberries taste (nearly) the exact same, and there are plenty harvested in the Baltic. Over 90% of the world's cranberries are produced in America and Canada, from the Pacific state of Washington, to the Atlantic powerhouse producer of Massachusetts. So, what could be more American to post about than the tart and tiny cranberry. Maybe you have been able to find cranberries in Europe, but I remember full well how difficult it was to find them when I lived in France, and where did I find them? An American import store of course, and at 10 euros a can!

If you have never had a cranberry before, know that they are impossible to eat fresh from the bog. They grow in water bogs, floating on the surface like sparkling rubies. They are inedible when raw, and are found primarily in sauces, juices, baked goods, or sweetened and dried. Cranberry sauce is the traditional dressing for a holiday turkey, but cranberry juice is usually enjoyed year round. For bakers, cranberries mean one thing – cranberry bread. Every American has had cranberry bread at one time or another during this season, it is quite standard. Laced with citrus such as orange or lemon, covered in chocolate, or sprinkled with spices, like any type of quick bread you can doctor it any way you like, as long as it has cranberries in it.

It is very easy for one to say that they love every season; I love the heat of summer, oh but I love the beauty of spring, but the colors of fall are so vibrant, and then there is winter – you can't love every season now can you. Maybe I don't love any single one, but rather like them all equally. This year I am a bit more sentimental in maintaining the images of my holidays, habits, and traditions. I am moving out of the country in a few months to start a different life, and I am not sure when I will have my American Northwest holiday again. But smells, sounds, and tastes make the best memories. Even a million miles away, I know I will still be able to taste the cranberries.

Cranberry Bread with White Chocolate and Ginger

2 1/2 cup flour
1 orange, zested
½ cup orange juice
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
4 tbsp melted butter
200 gr chopped cranberries
1 tbsp freshly grated ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup chopped white chocolate

Method: Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, butter, juice, zest, and ginger. Add to the flour mixture and combine. Stir in the cranberries and chocolate chips. Divide the batter into greased loaf pans, and bake at 375 for 50 – 60 minutes. Use a wooden skewer to check if the inside is still liquid. Let cool, and drizzle with any remaining white chocolate.

Enjoy the end of November Codet(te)s (pretty clever no? That is how i will now refer to you the reader). So December is finally here. We will begin our regular weekly posts again here at the Salty Cod finally after a few months of strings. Why only now as the hectic season picks up? Well, let's just say we're about to get our inspiration back.

as always,
a bientot

Kaka...

2009-11-27T02:56:00.000+01:00

not a poo, not a soccer player, just a cannoli.

Mallory, that looks like poo. Are we supposed to eat it? This month's Daring Bakers Challenge was unfortunately not gummi bears like i had predicted, but something much better, something i have always dreamed about baking. Oh wait, no baking involved. Have i told you that i hate deep frying? Well, i will tell you now. Save doughnuts and chiros, anything coming out of a fryer looks like a piece of crap. More honesty box? Cannolis have got to be the ugliest confection in the book. They are unattractive, look like a cross between a cigar and a poo that is starting to get furry on the ends. And they are a pill to make. Appetizing non? You want to make them now? Go for it, millions of people love them, and for those who don't eat with their eyes first, well they are perfect for you. Have i ever wanted to make a cannoli? No. I am 100% about appearances, if it doesn't look good, the photo won't look good. So how do you make a turd look good? Damn near impossible if you ask me. But you didn't ask me, so we'll try. We don't accept defeat with grace here at the Salty Cod, no we will curse and throw the dough mass in the trash and start over before accepting defeat, even with the chuckles burning down out neck. Oh cannoli you have spleaned me, at least now though we have met. Will you ever be on our bakery menu? Absolutely not. But you know, as with all thing in life, it is never pointless to have performed a task you disliked, you can't know that you don't like something until you try it. So here is the story of a white chocolate cannoli named kaka.

Purple and black are really hot right now. Said the grasshopper. I decided that if i had to make cannolis, i might as well make them when i had to cook, so i waited for Thanksgiving like every other American Daring Baker did. Who wants a Cannoli on Thanksgiving? Well, maybe the Italian American families do; mine is not far from an that though. A gaggle of French Canadian immigrants and a few Norwegians who think they are Vikings and you have a loud yelling stereotypical Italian family dinner table. Brilliant! Back to the story. Cannolis, hmm. The idea in the mind was dough dyed black filled white; piano key cannolis. As i made up the dough and began to fry, my uncle bellows from behind me, that looks like a dog turd!! A fried kaka! Joy. And i still have half the dough left. The rest of the family looks at them nervously, then finishes in a bout of laughter. My aunt adds, oh like krumkaka (Norwegian cookie cone) certainly is kaka! In my defense, i cry, hey! i didn't want to make these! and besides, they'll look better when they are filled. As the rest of my family were to arrive the next day i thought, damn, i better start a batch over. Black cannolis sound better in theory. So next morning, new batch. This time, purple.

The purple didn't solicit much praise either. Oh well, now it's all about the photo. Who cares if they taste like kaka, they'll at least match their appearance. I made up the cream. Shit, didn't drain the ricotta. Try number two, i'm not doing too well with this recipe apparently. 0 for 2. I frost their beards as i wait for it to chill, melted white rolled in crumbled white. Chocolate, that is. Will this damn recipe ever end. Piped. Time for some photos. Will we manage? Will we make the kaka look like a jewel? Is it possible? A Thanksgiving miracle perhaps? At this time i think of Martha Stewart, they say Martha could wrap a poo in tin foil and make a pretty ornament. Martha eh...i can turn this kaka into something that glitters like gold. Really? No. But a girl can dream can't she.

To be fair to the cannoli, appearances aren't everything. They were consumed lickety-split. Beauty is on the inside? Indeed. Said the cannoli to the biscotti: will you still love me when i lose my looks? The reply: honey, i didn't marry you for your looks. Love is blind. Cannolis are a delightful treat (those who ate them reported to me) despite their appearance. Daring Bakers i wanted to yell that this challenge was a fail, but i suppose failing would only be giving up. May we please do something with a cake, a cookie, a bread next time? Anna i'm talking to you.

The cannolis came, the cannolis went. If anything they gave us all a laugh, i always want a kitchen filled with laughter. Thanksgiving at my aunt's house has always been my favorite. And i have no doubt that i will miss it for many years to come, but will be able to look back on it with a wry smile in remembrance of the sweet, crispy fried kaka.

This month's Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. The cannoli recipe is from the book Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and from The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. Unfortunately the recipe was not completely the same as from the book....so neither was mine true to the adapted recipe posted. I found the dough much too difficult to work with the first time around (sorry Lisa) and therefore went with an alternative recipe. So who's did i go with? A non-adapted cannoli shell recipe from At Home with Michael Chiarello, and i filled it with a ricotta mousse rather than cream to give it a little more structure.

Ingredients: 2 cups flour, 2 tsp sugar, 1/4 tsp salt, 3 tbsp white vinegar, 3 eggs (BIG difference from the recipe used for the challenge), 2 tbsp melted butter, 3 tbsp water (i used wine for the purple color) and oil for frying. The method will follow the same as the recipe used for the challenge.

The kakas were not so bad, i suppose. Will i make these again? I think you'd have to hold a gun to my head. Though if the cannoli are here already, you must have left the gun. Couldn't resist, i'm sure every Daring Baker this month quoted the Godfather at least once. In the end, i believe this was exactly what i needed. A humbling reminder that there are many thousands of things i am no good at making, and that even when you are fumbling in the kitchen, when you are fumbling with your family around, it is all worth it. This is a Thanksgiving i will remember with a smile, and who knows, maybe next year when i feel a nostalgia for Thanksgiving, maybe i'll make a batch of cannolis to remember and laugh. Only joking, not even for sappiness would i make these again. Cannolis, i quit you!

Death of (one) of My Idols

2009-11-09T02:23:00.005+01:00

Goodbye Gourmet

It's been over a month since Condé Nast announced that it will be pulling the plug on its nearly 70 year old publication, Gourmet Magazine, and even though there has already been many heart felt cries of anger and misery shouted from blog to blog in concerns to this matter, we at the Salty Cod feel Gourmet, above all the other print publications we dream(ed) of shooting for deserves at least our good bye, and praise for a great run. And to pay a proper Salty tribute to the dying friend, we began this post with an 80 word sentence. Huzzah!

In early October CN announced that it would be discontinuing the print of Gourmet, Cookie (what the hell is that?) and two bride magazines due to both a loss in advertising interest and sales, I suppose. For me, and more likely than not for you and for any other food enthusiast, writer, or photographer, the idea of having a shot or story appear inside Gourmet's margins (or bleeding across two full pages in an aerial table shot) has crossed your mind. Along with Bon Apetit and Food & Wine, Gourmet was undoubtedly one of the forerunners in print food art and writing. Granted i've only been part of the food writing and photography world for about three years now (but i'm also only 23) but i've collected these issues over the years, as thousands of other food photogs have, for inspiration, insight, and well in the words of Tony – Gourmet is one beautiful centerfold of food porn. Even though the chances of ever appearing in the photo credits of a Gourmet issue are slim to none, they've never let slip from my mind, even after decisions to slip the country. Though now, sadly, a photo in Gourmet is one of those little cabbage patch dreams that must be laid to rest.

I can't help but feel a bit guilty for aiding (not being, I am not THAT full of myself. yet.) in the demise of the print industry, an industry that I yet dream to get into. Lovely irony. Blogs, websites and the myriad online recipe indexes are strangling any chance of renewed success in the print industry. All print publications for that matter. I mean look at the kindle, we don't even have to buy books anymore. All in all, are magazines done for? Is Gourmet just the first of many to yet fall? (well technically Condé Nast already folded a couple of other publications, including Men's Vogue. Surprisingly there wasn't much outcry). I've worked for a food magazine, albeit a small North Idaho publication, but the business of publishing is brutal, and the demands for it are waning. Hopefully this isn't the end. There is something about print photographs that have a certain spark and light that computer screen photos lack. Tell you what, if someday they all fold - we'll come out with our own, Salty Cod Magazine, to live on the food mag legend.

In the end we are paying a mourn and tribute to Gourmet, for many years (first issue was January 1941) of stunning photography and inspiring stories about cuisine from every corner of the world. As a food writer, food photographer and travel writer, we will miss you Gourmet, but rest assured we will continue your work for you. Sadly though we now have one less thing to read in the tub.

Thank you to my 11 year old sister G for for braving my big ol' camera to take the photo up top.

a bientot

I'm a Guest

2009-11-01T16:06:00.008+01:00

Chocolate Hazelnut Souffles

I've never done a "guest" post before for a fellow blog writer, but now i can say that i have. Mel of Bouchon for Two is traveling through Paris, and asked if i could do a French recipe to share with her readers, as i used to live in France and can provide a sappy yet hopefully entertaining commentary on Parisian nut vendors....so, i made souffles. Hazelnut souffles. Tu sais that it's my first time making souffles too? Yes. So i've learned that they have tricks, and i've learned a lesson in speed photography. Why speed? You have solely two minutes to capture the souffle before he moves on; you have to be quick, no think, just shooting.

I will not post the whole story here - if you click Bouchon for Two (right here) you will be directed toward my story and recipe. Mmm yes, whether you care for souffle or not, it is a story about Paris, nuts, and love. What the hell more could you want? My souffles are tall, dark and handsome- exactly how i like them.

Petite Version:

Souffles, Paris, Love. I remember a while back Aran (pastry chef, author and photographer of Canelle et Vanille) wrote an ode to the souffle as a symbol of romance, and I have yet to drop the connection. A souffle for two is a romantic whisper, a fleeting “spur of the moment” as you have mere minutes to catch its climax before deflation. Similarly, love is a product of chance moments. That is, one fleeting moment stuck among three hundred million other chanced possibilities, the window of opportunity being infinitely minute. A souffle is a mirror image. You are given a chance with every souffle to marvel it before falls, if you miss it you miss it, love is the same way – your chance is as short as a peaked souffle, if you don't take it when it rises, you will miss it, and if you miss it , it is gone perhaps forever. The word souffle comes from the French verb souffler: the breath (gently), to whisper or to blow (ehem, as in a candle). A gentle whisper, perhaps a soft sigh, oh how romantic, how so very souffle.

A souffle for two...what is more romantic than sharing a whisper. Paris is clichéd as the city of love – but is it clichéd? Could it not be true? Perhaps for some, Paris can catch you that one in a million. And then? And then win him over with chocolate and nuts and he is yours forever. Does food always have a metaphor for life? Yes, yes it does. Photographing a souffle relies very little on a photographer's skill, instead it sits on their impulse. Shut up and click, you have two minutes, no time to think, just feel it, press it, capture it. It is now or never. Therefore life and love are your souffle. Take for your own the exact moment you want.

Ah, tu aimes et vouloir plus? Allez vers le blog de Bouchon For Two pour la recette.

a bientot

Ano da França...

2009-10-27T01:11:00.004+01:00

Tropical French Macarons for a Sweet Victory

It's been nearly a month since Rio de Janeiro was chosen to host the 2016 summer Olympics. If somehow you hadn't yet heard, just pretend you did. Rio beat out Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo in the bid to hold the 2016 games, the city was chosen October 4th in Copenhagen, a decision that has sparked much joy coupled by expected grief. For Brazilians, for South Americans, and for anyone else who has a soul (mmm) the Rio victory symbolizes both a boost for Brazilian nationalistic pride (only a few Brazilians already have big heads) and a reaffirmation that indeed Latin America is finally coming into the world spotlight it has long deserved. Naturally there has been quite a bit of hesitation from both the Brazil-lovers and Brazil-haters (is there even such a thing? a Brazil-hater?) on the chosen city; "Rio is such a dangerous city" - "The money could be put to better use" - "All those tourists, such easy targets, Rio is a war-zone, what are they thinking!?" bla bla bla. But true. Sure Rio has a lot of problems, watch City of God and you won't disagree. But there are thousands of people living in Rio who aren't murderers, drug dealers, gang members, thieves, or helicopter snipers. There are millions of good people living in Rio and around Brazil who deserve the Olympic games. So here at the Salty Cod we wish to ask you to stop thinking about the negative aspects of Rio 2016, and instead close your mouth (preferably over a macaron), lay down your doubts, and celebrate with us that World Cup and the Olympics are going to be back-to-back in a country that will very soon take over the world. This is not a political blog, but we wish never-the-less to say stick it Chicago. Is there writing in the sky? BRASIL!!!

For those of you who don't know, one of our staff members here at the Salty Cod happens to be a Brazilian, so there has been much celebrating in and around the office and test kitchens. So what do we do to celebrate? Why, bake French pastries of course. With no room to brag in our novice qualifications as a patisserie (what qualifications?), I am quite good at making macarons. Yes, i said that. While no where near the skill set of say Helen or Aran whose recipes i've used over the past couple of years to navigate making my own macarons, i've done it enough, (and in quantities that would make some cry), that i know the ratios and timings in my head. What can i say, i like macarons. I lived in Paris, they are gluten-free, and i'm a self absorbed snob who secretly revels in the smug-pleasure of knowing that mine turned out with feet and yours need to see a podiatrist. Either way, a personal treat for a personal topic (mmm yes i take Olympics very personally). So i decided to make macarons, it's the year of France in Brazil anyways, so c'est absolutement parfait pour l'occassion. Then i realized Daring Bakers was doing October challenge macarons- merde, are you kidding me? Well, can't post macarons twice in a month. So. I'll save my idea. And celebrate my (excuse me, their) victory at the end of the month. This is my second month with Daring Bakers, and so far it has not been quite all that daring. Puff pastry and macarons....perhaps next month will be gummy bears.

What makes these macarons Brasilian besides their tri-color? There are Brazil nuts ground in with the almonds in the shells, and the fillings are assorted cheese mixtures with tropical fruit. Idea Original: creamed cheese with guava, but, no guavas in this part of the world. Ergo Idea Supplemental: creamed cheese with pineapple, creamed cheese with banana, and creamed cheese with avocados and apples. Is that a Brasilian macaron? Yes. Yes it is, verdade! Are there any macarons in Brazil now? I will say most likely not. Will that always be the case? Most certainly not.

So what do you know about Brazil aside from the capital as Buenos Aires (please catch my sarcasm here), tropical fruit hats, beautiful naked women, coconut water on the beach, hunky Latin lovers (scratch that), and children playing barefoot soccer in the womb? Nothing? Oh come on, even doctors had ideas. The smartest of medical school trained professionals know to ask (i am referring to my own...lady doctor here) if there are refrigerators in Brazil. Hmm, good question, as it may be difficult to hook up electricity to the Amazonian tree-houses all Brazilians live in. Well, maybe there is no Spanish word for refrigerator. To this point i believe the Rio Olympics are justified in of themselves; the world will be forced (through a month long series of Travel-Channel specials, McDonalds commercials and Visa advertisements) to see that Brazil is not a country of jungle people in grass skirts; me Tarzan you Jane- but a country as, if not more, rich and diverse than all the other tough guys out there. The Olympics may not be for 7 more years, but well, i think it's worth making a note today, tomorrow, and everyday. Carnival is year round non?! So why not the Olympics!

This month's Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Amy S of (i have no idea what her blog is). The recipe is by Claudia Fleming and is found in The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern. However, as i enjoy making macarons, i suggest you try using instructions from Helen of Tartelette, she is, without hesitation, a great teacher for those wishing to attempt a macaron for the first or twentieth time.

Petite French cookies to celebrate such a thing? What can i say, j'adore le Bresil.

*disclaimer: yes i know the capital or Brasil is Brasila not Buenos Aires and that Brasilians speak Portuguese not Spanish.....don't yell at me i was trying to be funny to make a point!

a bientot

Peter Piper Pipped

2009-09-28T07:25:00.013+02:00

Cracked: Vols-au-Vent for Daring BakersWhy the hell does it seem ages since i have been here? Probably because it has. I will tell you how truly painful it is for a blogger to be cut from their lifeblood, from their home: (play your small violin now) it is not unlike pepper spray reaching your cornea, or being stabbed in the thigh with a dull blade, or hitting your head on the corner of a pointy cabinet; a hiatus here at the Salty Cod is like, well it is......making us realize that life is not always as easy as we would like it to be.

I don't think we ever stop going through transitions, whether it is adapting to a new place of habitation, a new job, a new relationship or a new idea; we are constantly going through today what changes our habits of yesterday. When i started this blog almost two and a half years ago (had to make sure to get that half in there...i'm 5'9 and a quarter, don't forget that quarter) i started a habit of myself that i fell in love with. Nothing could keep me from blogging. I'm in a random foreign country alone on a park bench: blog. Last karaoke night of the year at the Irish Pub down the road: blog. Easter, Christmas, thanksgiving: blog. It's 2am and there are yet 3,000 more words due on Alexander's trek through the Orient: blog. Will you go on a date with me: blog. Sleep: blog. Girl's night out cocktails: blog. I have chosen blogging over many things; aside from an ailing family member or friend, what is there that i do, or could do that is more important than this?

Oops. It appears that there is something after all. This revelation, however, does not attach any less importance to Salty. no no nothing like that. In the end what it is is realizing that i don't blog because i have to, i blog because i choose to. And sometimes, i have to choose to wait. Transitions. Transitions are glasses that let you go from dark to light without changing them. But they are also moments when you stack your priorities and weigh the outcomes. Oftentimes, the result is an exploded suitcase and a never-ending cup of tea.

I am twenty three years old. I am sure you were twenty three years once. I graduated college nearly 5 months ago, and am adjusting to two new jobs that take six of my seven days....i'm back with my parents for a bit, did you know? Do you care? I am preparing my rook, bishop, and queen for a move that you will not believe; and it is in the middle of this that i have realized that there are times when we have to sacrifice what we want in the moment in order to get what we want for the future.

But now, we have a post. Three weeks in want, we have a post. In conversation with my editor (who obviously hasn't had much to edit) i realized that the ducks were finally falling into the basket, and that it was finally ok to blog. and the tears come streaming down my face! But oh holy crap! I had forgotten i had finally signed up for the Daring Bakers, after a two (and a half) year stint of protest (daringness for being different) i sucked it up and cracked and wanted in! and i'm almost ready to be kicked out on the first challenge, ahk!

so apparently there is an actual due date that is not just the end of the month...forgive me, i'm blond. will that work? If anyone yells at me, i would just like to point out that Christy at 5 Types of Sugar was late too. Saying that sounds like she's pregnant (she's not) but i love giving her a hard time.

So i rushed to the secret club page (only secret club members are allowed in)...puff pastry. ah ok. i've done puff pastry. wait....puff pastry, dear god why! of all things other than baguettes, puff pastry takes hours! gaw! I don't mind making puff pastry, had i not spent many hours making it about two months ago, i wouldn't have minded so much....but it really is (pardon me) quite a bitch to make. Well. a challenge is a challenge is it not. Touche.

Vols-au vont is the actual challenge; a puff pastry cup filled with a sweet or savory. My only edge is that i have made these before, a Christmas party about three years ago filled with a spinach concoction i have yet forgotten. But on a strict time budget, puff pastry is no bueno. Meh. Salty is no wimp. Alright, Sunday we make the puff pastry dough, and Monday we bake it up. Now we must be creative with the filling...did you know that red peppers can grow in a Seattle backyard garden? they can. hmmm. peppers. Pepper, cheese, cream, cilantro, salsa cream pipped into a puff pastry! Ah sweet that's fast!

The recipe for puff pastry dough can be found here, as the September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. The Vols-au-Vent are based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

Pepper pipped mouse:
ingredients:
8 oz cream cheese
1 cup whipping cream
1 bell pepper
2 tsp bloomed gelatin
chopped cilanto
enough salt to taste
red/cayenne pepper (did you know they're the same?)

method: mix all ingredients (except cream) in blender or food processor until smooth. Whip cream until stiff, gently fold in mixture, and pipe into your cups.

As i've already said, i've made puff pastry for croissants before. However what was produced here, was not puff pastry. hard. dense. where are the flakes? are there any flakes? i am not exactly sure what went wrong, perhaps i was too violent with the poor dough, or went too fast. but i think in the end it was my attitude. in mallory fashion, of course. Well, now we know. take more care, or you will have a ton of pie dough in the freezer.

So i guess i'm a daring baker now, right? no hazing? well. maybe not yet. i'm on the in-crown of baking blogging now eh? we'll see how long i keep it up. but. you know. i think i just may do it.

Change is good. change means we're learning. i like this home here too much to ever give it up. but i must drop my infantile ideas of its condition-less priority. Maybe there will be three weeks again where i cannot come home. In a perfect world, i come home every week. but life's not perfect.

yet.

A challenge just means i have to work harder to get it. if you didn't fight for it; sometimes it is not worth having. we're here. we're baking. we're photographing. we're growing. and we're figuring out the tricks. so keep with me friends. i won't disappoint.

a bientot.

September 7th

2009-09-07T11:23:00.004+02:00

My Virgin Lily Cake.

It's raining in Seattle on this September 7th. Autumn has now officially begun. It goes like this: because the rain falls from the sky ever so gently, the light steady stream remains on the leaves of the sponge trees until they become rain trees. Then, when the steady wind blows in off the west side of the Puget Sound, the leaves of these soggy trees will dance; continuing the rain even though it has passed. This is real rain in the Pacific Northwest. Ensuring a steady six or seven hours followed by the banana slug parade. But i don't mind the rain, not here. Here is where it should rain. No where else. But summer is over. I can hear the mourning bells ring. and i laugh. Happy September 7th.

Do you know what today is? The answer varies depending on who you are. In the US, today happens to be Labor Day, so wave the red, white and blue. In Brazil, today happens to be Independence Day, so wave the yellow, blue, and green. And today also happens to be September 7th, a special day for the staff here at the Salty Cod, a two year commemoration of our team, if you will. So September 7th is quite a cause for celebration, and a Salty Cod celebration implies cake. a real cake. a fondant cake. a lily cake. on y va.

My virgin lily cake is indeed a virgin; this is my first fondant cake. Fondant cakes are typically associated as wedding cakes, but they don't have to be. any special occasion will do. How will i ever make your wedding cake if i do not practice first eh? I've long goggled after fondant cakes, putting them up on the "out of my league" shelf. I did the same thing with French macarons until i found myself making one hundred for a party. so. man invented fondant, man controlleth fondant, and Salty follows suit.

The one thing that has always scared me a bit about cake fondant is the taste, it savors highly of crap. Though i dearly love marshmallows, as the pink ones are my thing, the thought of putting marshmallow fondant in my stomach is not on my wish list. Therefore, after working some image freelance for my good friend, ex-neighbor, and professional caterer C, I asked with a pretty please for the secrets of her fondant recipe. Not only did i get the recipe, but i received a pot of inverted sugar and a hunk of her preferred white coating chocolate. Score one for the Salty Cod! Thank you C, couldn't have done it without you. It tastes like candy!

It really was not as difficult as I thought, though it is not as perfect as i would have liked it to be. A little lumpy in spots, and not as divinely symmetrical as it should be. But close enough for government work, and for our first attempt. What would you say if i told you it was gluten free? Ahk, i suppose would be the correct response. Well, as with most of the things i make for other(s) here, they can seldom be eaten by the intended recipient who is oftentimes in another state/country. Therefore if you can't eat it, i better at least be able to tell you what you missed. And this cake is half intended for me, as i am the paycheck writer at the Salty Cod.

The cake is an extremely dense dark chocolate cake, as are most gluten free cakes. Though with this particular cake, density was a bonus. The denser the cake, the smoother the fondant. The crumb coat used was a raspberry buttercream--when i say coat, i mean coat. Very thin, a crumb coat on a fondant cake should be only just enough to make the fondant stick to it. The fondant itself is a white chocolate fondant comprised of gelatin, white coating chocolate, inverted sugar, confectioners' sugar, and (gasp) i don't have white shortening, so i used butter. but somehow it worked. And, i melted the white chocolate in a double boiler. If only the women in the kitchen at that barbecue could see me now. As i am a fondant novice, i sufficed with one tier and a simple skype-blue ribbon around the parameter. simpler the better some say. and who wants a fuss of details and dobs when the real focus is on the white lily that was carried to me by three African swallows.

If you are an American, happy Labor Day. If you are a Brazilian, happy Independence Day. If you are a crew member here at the Salty Cod, thank you for contributing the Sweets. Salty is good, but without Sweets, we got nothing.

A rainy day, this September 7th. The moral of the story: when lilies bloom in a vase next to a blue ribboned cake, there are only four things to say: salut, ca va? i made you a cake. the flowers are lovey, te amo.

a bientot

A bit of Travel Writing

2009-08-30T01:34:00.010+02:00

Salty Sunday of Philosophical MusingFriends--I can call you friends, after all you're crazy enough to keep coming back to poke a nosy eye into my life, ergo we're friends. And now it is time for Salty Sunday; a moment of philosophical prose. lucky you. It is time for a house clarification: there are three main components of the Salty Cod: fancy pants baked goods, photography, and travel writing. It says it right there in the header. Often the last is forgotten though. We have never been nor ever will be uniquely a food blog. Sometimes food sometimes travel, and sometimes neither? Perhaps this removes me slightly from the community, but what can i do; i'm a slashy.

About a month ago i wrote this article for a travel writing contest on ah-ha moments. I knew i would not win as i exceeded the 200 word count by nearly double. what can i do, i'm a brat. But perhaps on this Salty Sunday of Philosophical Musing, i should resurrect it for someone other than a rejection inbox to read. I will preface it by letting you into something personal; i miss Brasil and what i left in it so much that it hurts.

Under the Stars in Ouro Preto

What a bloody tourist town. We walked past the main square, Tiradentes, as a group of tourists crowded around a gaggle of street performers syncing a drum beat. Tonight was not my mood for entertainment. In our hands were plastic cup caipirinhas purchased from a sticky floored locals-only bar; half the price but twice the flavor. One block past the square—all was deserted. We climbed the stone wall surrounding the Cathedral, Aleijadinho's masterpiece. Are we allowed to sit here? No one near to stop us. I looked at the sky while swinging my legs against the centuries old brick; “you know,” I began with a slight hiccup, “I see the same moon in Seattle...now lets see...where is the big dipper?” “The big what?” my accomplice replied. I stopped short—ah yeah, southern hemisphere. i had forgotten I was somewhere else. How the hell does an American forget that they are in Brasil. So we have the same moon, but different stars. A connection yet a cut. It looks like the difference is merely in the details; big picture little picture. “I don't know what is a dipper,” he went on, “but there are, others you can see...” he resolved as he pointed ubiquitously “up” toward the constellations whose distances, in reality, dwarf our own perceived continental chasms into minute scales of nothingness. My eyes filled and began to salt my caipirinha. Was a bit too sweet anyway. Why do i feel no pangs of homesickness. I looked again to the moon, the same moon, and I knew I was not so far away; how could one feel homesick whilst in their own backyard.

Revelations: The medical test for the feeling of place is simple: if when stabbed with the realization of being far from home there occurs no pain or remorse at or around the injection site—then the diagnosis is that you are home already. Ah-ha.

I scraped the last crystals of sugar off the bottom of my cup. That was the strongest mojito i've ever had. I slid off the stone wall, I won't feel it on my bare legs until tomorrow. For a tropical country, Brazilian winter nights are pretty damn chilly. But enough with the stars, my lemony lips tell me. In a cobblestone town, you have to watch where you place your feet; eyes to the ground, and give me your hand. It is now time to walk home.

A bientot

Boston Cream...Tea Cakes

2009-08-20T01:12:00.004+02:00

What's So Boston about it Anyways?

Confession: I have never, ever, consumed or created a Boston Cream Pie--though i have always been a fan of the yoplait of the same name. But until today, i didn't even know what the trifled layers consisted of. So since confessions are being made; i will admit one more: i've never actually been to Boston either, Holyoke and Amherst are as close as i've gotten. But guess what; though i don't give a damn about baseball, i own a redsox cap and curse the yankees. And Boondock Saints--that's a quality film. So though i've never been, Boston definately deserves some love. And who cares if a Boston Cream Pie is merely a dumpy yellow cake mid-layered with a basic vanilla cream custard, and topped with chocolate sauce; everybody's gotta start with something. So let's make it a little more stereotypically Boston, if you know what i mean. With tea and liquor. Now that's what i'm talkin about.

The Boston Cream Pie carries the name for the sole reason that it was first created in a hotel kitchen in Boston, and according to Wikipedia that hotel was the Parker House Hotel (Bobby Flay was just going on about some biscuit rolls of the same name....i'm haunted) by a French pastry chef named Sanzian (apparently sans prenom). After learning that the pie was merely layers of yellow sponge cake, vanilla custard, and chocolate--i was somewhat dissapointed. Custard and a cake? Hmm, well, not much of a challenge there (sorry Sanzian). But the Salty Cod won't settle for basic bakery mediocrity, no. No, we insist on mucking around with classics that have held their own against the test of time--until now.

Thanks to Christy, Aussie pastry chef of 5 Types of Sugar, we have a couple of boxes of high quality black tea leaves--untaxed no less. To incorporate the leaves into the yellow cake, the milk and butter used were steaped in the leaves, that were also crushed into powder and incorporated in. Thus, we give you a tea-sponge. Boston and tea, can't get more cliche than that. Oh wait--yes we can. The vanilla custard is a little bland; Irish cream liquer mixed in? yes please.

Boston Cake:
ingredients: 1 cup flour ~ 2 eggs ~ .5 cup sugar ~ 3 tbsp butter ~ .25 cup milk ~ 1 tsp baking powder ~ pinch of salt ~ 1tsp vanilla ~ lose leaf tea

method: 1) sift flour and baking powder together 2) boil butter and milk in a small sauce pan, add tea leaves and steap 3) beat sugar and eggs in mixer, add flour and milk mixture. pour into lined baking sheet (this is a flat cake, you cut circles out of it) bake at 325 for 10~15 minutes. cool, and cut circles.

Cream: Martha Stewarts vanilla custard cream + 2 tbsp Irish Cream.
Chocolate: boil heavy cream and poor over dark chocolate.

Assemble: using pastry rings (or aluminum foil and duct tape) layer cake, cream, cake, and top with chocolate. freeze until set, and then paint top with gold dust.

We do intend to go to Boston some day--someday. I've visited my sister who studies at Mt. Holyoke, but, as anyone will testify--Holyoke is no Boston. But it's nice for, well, for studying, and breaking into churches after hours--but that's another story. A Boston Cream Pie has nothing to do with Boston; but it has everything to do with a Salty Cod afternoon of baking to get through....well, life. Boston Cream Cakes to pass the time away instead of looking out the window in a dream; busy yourself to make the missing of another lessen. Damn i need a job already...but i believe this Boston Cream shenanigans desserves further investigation: my editor and i will have to take take a business trip there someday soon--and get back to you on our findings.

In the words of Holy Golightly and Fred-Baby: The British are coming the British are coming! But in this case, the Brazilians. -exactly. oh how things come together.

And a word to our dear friend and Associate S--we at the Salty Cod want to tell you today, tomorrow, and the next day: cool story Hansel. so don' worry, be happy. i'll buy you a caipirinha.

a bientot

The Salty Cod Special

2009-08-04T07:03:00.008+02:00

A Salty Poissant and a Frozen Banana Mousse

Is a fish taco shaped like a fish? no. So does bread shaped like a fish taste like fish? Not this time. Every time i interview a baker or bakery owner, i methodically ask (as does every one in the business) so, what's your specialty? the best seller? what is the self named product? After posing the question a couple dozen times to others, the astoundingly obvious though blatantly ignored fact finally hit me in the face: what the hell is my specialty? Oh right, i don't have one. But i need one? Yes. Magazines and food writers always focus on the one show stopping killer at each joint, so we gotta start experimenting with this now, while we're still young nobodies. Young? Yes. I'm younger than you. And we have a fish croissant now, or rather a poissant. on y va.

I had an unlucky run with polenta the other day, much trickier than it seems. Therefore we were very anxious for this one to work, two slips is a lost audience. Flipping through The Bread Bible, looking for the type of bread that would best hold the fish shape, we fell on croissants. of course, croissants, c'est francaise, pourquoi je ne la pas pense? Did you know we spent a year living in Paris. we did. But can you shape a croissant like a fish? We shall see, never made a croissant before...never made puff pastry before....gulp.

Have you ever attempted this type of pastry dough? No? good for you. It's a bitch. It takes how many turns and at how much time in the fridge in between? gawwwww. But, baking for adventure, relaxation, and stress release (yes, i synonymed myself, poets license) caters the allowance for 9 hours, right? right. just keep telling yourself that. The process from start to finish was indeed 9 hours, and they turned out "alright" as croissants, however not as flaky and a little denser than i would have liked. meh. First times just mean that the next will be better. I turned the dough four times, refrigerating 40 minutes between each turn, but it is a bit hot and muggy here, and my man-handling of the final rolled dough into freeform cut fish perhaps made it a bit overworked. I learn from my mistakes. Regardless, the scaly (flaky) wrigglers emerged from the oven tasting as croissant like as possible. good thing too, because they were made with wheat bran and parmesan cheese. yes.

You know i can't do anything exactly according to directions. So i put wheat bran in it. Take that you age old perfected French pastry technique! All it does is give it a look of a robbins egg. The main taste difference in the Poissant, is the half cup of parmesan cheese massaged into the butter square. A cheese croissant. Like a pao de queijo, but not. The chewy flaky cheesy croissant shaped like a fish; that is our special. At least it is until we make fish shaped dinner rolls.

Banana mousse has nothing to do with the fish biscuit. It was a leftover dud from the polenta dissaster, don't ask. Well, poissants for the next dawn's breakfast, which is a summer breakfast, so banana mousse....frozen! much nicer in photos. I do all this for the photos. you do know that right.

Poissants:
ingredients: 2 cups flour ~ 3 tbsp wheat bran ~ 12oz butter ~ 1/2 cup ground parmesan cheese ~ 1.5 tsp yeast ~ 2 tbsp sugar ~ 1 tsp salt ~ 3/4 cup tepid milk ~ an egg for the wash

method: 1) mix flour, sugar, and yeast THEN salt (you will murder the yeast if you don't mix it first) then with the dough hook, mix at slow speed while you add the milk, once all wet, mix on #4 (kitchenaide) for 4 minutes. 2) greese a bowl, cover and rise 30 minutes, then refrigerate for 2 hours. 3) make butter square: sprinkle bran and a tbsp of flour on plastic wrap, then plop down butter (soft) and cover with another peice of wrap. massage until you make a sqaure ~4.5 inches. refrigerate, but not until its hard, just dont let it melt. 4) roll out dough to a square, and splace the butter sqaure inide at an angle offset, then fold over the dough edges to make an envelope around the butter, and seel with water. refrigerate for 30 minutes, then roll out, fold in half, press down, and refrigerate for 40 minutes. repeat 4 times. 5) Roll out, cut into fish, arrange on lined baking sheet, and refrigerate for 2 hours. bake at 400F for 20 minutes, rotating after 10.

Frozen Banana mousse:
ingredients: 2 bananas ~ 1.25cups heavy cream ~ 2tbsp cointreau ~ .25 cup sugar ~ 1tbsp water ~ 2 gelatin leaves ~ 1 lemon, squeezed

method: 1) soften gelatin in water 2) puree bananas, sugar, cointreau and lemon, add soft gelatin. 3) whip cream to soft peaks, gently fold in puree mixture, and pipe into a mold, bowl, or form that can be frozen. then freeze.

Perhaps it is time, after two years of gaining, losing, mixing, and holding readers from various coordinates around the globe, that we spend a moment on our namesake. Why would anyone ever name a bakery The Salty Cod? Well, the cod, morue, bacalhau--what have you, is a guide. He keeps you going straight on your course, or he makes sure he breaks you from it. He is the scapegoat when you can't explain how your life has taken you to this present day. He is to blame when you do what appears a "crazy" act in the eyes of the world; the cod made me do it! Crazy is in the eye of the beholder, if we were endowed with cod eyes, following what you want would not seem such a crazy concept. But we don't have cod eyes. That is why we must trust that he knows where he is leading us. Even if you don't know what you want, he does. So follow him.

a bientot.

In a Corn Castle

2009-07-24T00:36:00.013+02:00

Sweet Corn Ice Cream and Corn Flour Madeleines

There does indeed exist a corn castle. Connect to this concept: driving down the freeway; you see giant billboards advertising "come, pick apples!" or "the best fried chicken for the next 200 miles!" "World's largest Pumpkin patch, Next four exits!" And each kilometer that you draw nearer, the signs begin to mount, urging you on, "almost there! almost to the freshest bite of fish you'll ever have!" just around the next bend...it is in this very fashion that i arrived at the corn castle. No not the world's largest structure supported by cob columns, but a road side stop shop decorated dino-land water park style to create a facade akin to a castle of ears filled with--yep, you guessed it; corn. Corn as far as the eye can see. Oh how corny. on y va.

I kid you not, a castle of corn does indeed exist. Three actually, and all on one very long stretch of Brasilian high way. of course i'm still talking about Brasil, get used to it. They are called Castelhinho Pamonha, litterally little corn castle, and they are filled with corny treats. Sweet corn tamales (pamonhas), corn juice (suco de milho), corn cakes (bolos de milho), cuscuz (i have no way of explaining this to you), corn cookies, corn candies, polenta, and finally--what i had requested upon arrival, Sorvete de milho: corn ice cream. I had come across it goggling food gawker one evening, and since i have been stolen by its curious concept: a vegetable in an ice cream? We initially pulled over to pick up a bottle of suco de milho, but as we stepped out of the car, H registered, Ah, we can get you corn ice cream here! Corn ice cream? i thought with a smile, it's nine in the morning. Let's do it. The creamy concoction came out of the machine as a soft serve into the cup awaiting its arrival, two spoons please! Brasilians eat a lot of corn, not to imply that North Americans don't, but Brasilians use it in a much wider array that, well, tastes a hell of a lot better than creamed corn casserole.

The cream of the crop, pun intended, is the sorvete de milho. At least in my opinion, and who could care for anything else? That being the case, i have grown attached to corn, not only for it's gluten-freeness, but because it finally tastes good. Sitting at my desk in Seattle, staring out the window, and longing with every fiber of my being to be back in Brasil with H and the rest of the family, i decide that it is time for the Salty Cod to pay closer attention to this summery warm weather treat. Ice cream is my guilt, or rather my non guilt, never say no to wine, chocolate, or ice cream, and to the ears of any North American, the concept of corn ice cream is slightly repulsive. Therefore, i must break, convince, and enlighten. C'est possible? watch me.

I hate canned corn. But i don't mind it if it's an ingredient, no dad, eggs scramble mash surprise doesn't count. A recipe for ice cream: one cup whole milk, one cup cream, sugar, a pinch of salt, and your ingredients. Let us think. This is Brasilian. So let us proceed: one cup whole milk, one cup heavy cream, one can condensed milk, and 1 cup corn. Maybe a little vanilla. A pinch of cinnamon. This is a Salty Cod confection, after all. It's first tasters: my brother R and Sister K. R: it tastes like ice cream, with a background of corn. K: background? try foreground. Success? Well, they said they would take another spoonfull. It's unexpected, that's all, K continued. Unexpected? Well, the unexpected is the best kind.

Another corny treat; mais mais, eu quero mais! Corn cakes. Very similar to North American cornbread, though less dry and with, gasp! flavor! are very scientific. I decided to honor the teaching of Aunt P, who made my 23rd birthday cake in a blender with milk cups, hand full measurements, and hey you like cheese, let's put some in! Experimental fashion. Ergo, corn cake Madelines reflect the same kitchen daringness--nose goes.

Sorvete de Milho (Sweet corn Ice Cream)
Ingredients: 1 cup whole milk ~ 1 cup whipping cream ~ 1 can corn, drained or one cup cooked and de-cobbed ~ 1 can leite condesado ~ 1 tsp vanilla extract ~ 1 tsp cinnamon

method: 1) in a blender, liquefy drained corn along with the milk 2) strain through a blender, press with a spoon to get all liquid. Discard pulp 3) return corn milk to blender, add cream, condensed milk, and everything else and mix well 4) refrigerate until quite chilly, at least an hour 5) process in an ice cream maker, or if you are doing it old-school style, god speed to you.

Corn Flour Madelines:
Ingredients: 1 cup corn flour ~ 1 egg ~.5 cup sugar ~ .5 cup milk ~ 2 tbsps melted butter ~ .25 cup Parmesan cheese ~ 1 tsp baking powder ~ pinch of salt ~ some vanilla ~ some cinnamon ~ some love. damn it.

method: mix wets. mix dries. combine. spray a madeline pan, bake at 350 for less than ten minutes. please don't burn.

In two months, H and i spent over 32 hours in the car together (we like to travel). So when the sign screams at us 50 kilometers until the best traíra! brandishing a cute little fish holding a trident, we know we're gonna stop. And when we do, and find the place a complete bust on service, but escape with a memory of a tiny red armchair made for 2 year olds that i somehow managed to squeeze my ass into, a parking lot kiss that yes i remember, and a laugh as we wave at the giant crowned fish statue as we pull out, then it was without a doubt, all worth it in the end.

Sweet corn ice cream in my little kitchenaide off in the distance of the pacific northwest; castles made of corn can be home to a fairy tale princess too. Or perhaps, just to a cod-girl. One scoop, spoon, lick of the drip on my finger and my mind is flown body and soul to that car ride, to the corn castle, to the shared cup that numbed my fingers in the car on our way to Sao Paulo. ice cream at nine in the morning. And then a cake, and i am transported one month later (in the car as well) eating Aunt P's corn cakes after the failed king of traíra. Life is a collection of connections, you just have to make them. Corn, ah. I could eat a pool of you. Taste, smell; these memory triggers outlast all others. Distance does not have to be a terrible burden. If you make the right recipes, it can, and only will enhance and make yet greater every memory that causes your saudade. And yes, i'm talking about corn ice cream. So stop off at the cheesy billboard. You may in fact catch a great memory, at least one to keep you warm until you can catch the next one.
A bientot