Eating my way round South America, more like....!

It would be a pity to change the general tone of this blog, which has been much concerned with the available foods here on the other side of the Atlantic. This week I've been in Bahia, a northern state whose capital is Salvador, a gorgeous old colonial town (popn 3 million), and which is characterised by its colourful history of gold mining, sugar plantations and slave rebellion. Capoeira is danced/fought on the streets by day and night, both for tourism and for fun, and it is not unusual to see local kids trying out their new moves on each other at any time or any place. The smells that fill the air are strange and exotic, and the landscape is coloured by the foods that are everywhere - rich red dende palm oil (in which almost everything is cooked at some point), crushed and juiced fruits of colours, textures and aromas that our palates can barely contemplate and armfuls of sea-fresh fish sold by the roadside (raw or cooked). Time doesnt mean money here, so fast food is limited to greasy pasteis (like Ecuadorian empanadas, but deepfried at your local chippy) and bowls of acai, a deep purple fruit which is lauded for its many nutritional elements (only a few adverts mention its aphrodisiac qualities).
Slow food is where it's at, and as the Bahian ladies set up their acaraje stalls in the mid-afternoon, you know that they've spent the morning perfecting the contents of the shiny pots and pans over which they proudly stand, occasionally lifting the lid to check temperature and allow a little tempting sniff to be caught on the wind and by the noses of passers-by. Acaraje is a regional dish made with beans, seasoned with salt and onion, fried in palm oil, and served with pepper sauce, dried shrimp, vatapá, tomatoes, and green pepper.
Their white dresses, trimmed with ribbons and buttons and hems of lace, are boosted by unknown quantities and shapes of hoops and bones beneath, and they turn the plain-faced street into a costume-drama theatre of present and past. The food of this region is predominantly Afro-Bahia cuisine - manioc flour, toasted and roasted, with bacon or beans and innumerable other secret ingredients, feijoada, a local stew of black beans with pork and jerk beef which is cooked for several hours and is a relic of the sugar-plantation slave diet, and cachaca (more politely known as pinga, literally meaning 'a drop'), a fire-water liquer made from sugar cane, which is the basis for the real caipirinha. This drink is so much part of the national psyche that there are pinga festivals in cities and towns all over brazil, when residents walk the streets drinking the 'drop' offered through other people's windows. A little like Hallowe'en for adults, I guess!
One of our favourite dishes from this part of Brasil is the moqueca baiana de peixe, a Bahaian take on the traditional seafood stew of fish, onions, garlic, tomato, cilantro and chilli pepper, but with the addition of coconut milk, dende palm oil and shrimp. Delicious!
Fruits, though, are the real star of Brasilian food, and there are any number found only in this part of the world. As well as more types of banana than you could shake a machete at (and its rather disconcerting to see very young children doing exactly that before breakfast!), there are dozens of varieties of limes and lemons, apples, pineapples, melons, mangoes and papayas, and a thousand other fruits: jaboticabas, pitanga, fruta do conde, graviola, carambolas, passionfruit (maracuja), guavas, acerola, jackfruit and (familiar, this one) cashews. We've only tried a handful so far, but the weekly 'feira' or food market makes it all look so delicious, I'm going to do my best! The food there, by the way, would put us to shame. No 'authentic' dirt on the veggies here, oh no! Every piece of fruit and veg is washed and polished, deleafed and packed beautifully in a variety of portion sizes to suit every diet and budget. Photos to follow from the next one!