Oludara’s Meal in Salvador
What better way to celebrate the launch of this website than with a tasty meal?
In an early scene of “The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara”, Gerard offers a meal to Oludara in exchange for a tale. This meal includes grouper, beans and rice, roasted manioc, corn bread, and pineapple. Oludara refers to it as a “feast”.
In the future, I’ll be going into more detail on some of these foods and their importance in Colonial Brazil, but for today’s post, I thought I might recreate this meal, and see how much of a feast it really is. I ended up having to do a couple of substitutions, but it comes close.
Let’s start with something easy, the corn bread:
Although corn wasn’t the primary staple among the Brazilian natives that it was in other parts of America (losing that distinction to manioc), it was used to create alcohol, medicine, and popcorn, among other things. The Portuguese frequently used it to make bread and cakes.
Next we slice up a pineapple:
Small and sweet, the pineapple in this picture was grown in my state (Rio Grande do Sul), about ninety minutes from where I live. In fact, the southern region of Brazil gave origin to the fruit. Pineapple appears in a lot of colonial literature, and I’ll be giving the fruit its own write up in the future.
Even though manioc is common in dozens of dishes in Brazil, the local stores just happened to be out of the raw tuber, so I substituted a different starchy root in its place: arracacha (known as “mandioquinha” in Brazil). If you’re ever in Brazil, I highly recommend trying the puree, which is rich and delicious:
I won’t write anything else about arracacha, which wasn’t present in Brazil in the sixteenth century (it is native to the Andes), but I will go into much more detail about manioc in a future post. Manioc was the staple food in Brazil when the Europeans arrived, and continues to be one of the most-eaten carbohydrates in the world.
Next we have rice and beans:
Rice was introduced very early on during the Portuguese colonization of Brazil. And when you use the word “feijão” (bean) in Brazil, by default you’re referring to the black bean shown here. The combination of rice and beans became a staple even in the earliest colonies, and it remains so today. Many Brazilians eat beans and rice every day.
And last but not least, we have our fish:
Oludara ate grouper, but I had to substitute a different white fish for my dinner: St. Peter’s fish. The end result looks a lot the same. I prepared this with fresh cilantro and some pepper.
So when we’re all done, the final plate looks like this:
Conclusion: Oludara’s meal in Salvador really was a feast!
All the food that Oludara ate over four hundred years ago is still eaten frequently in the restaurants and homes of Brazil today.
And if you don’t mind, that’s exactly what I’m going to do — eat it! This meal looks fantastic!
(Photographs by Christopher Kastensmidt)
MG Ellington
02-10-2010
at 10:55 am
That looks fabulous. What does the puree taste like? You have me curious. Thank you so much for this. The photographs are especially helpful. I love research like this and can’t tell you how much I enjoyed your presentation.
chris
02-10-2010
at 1:02 pm
Thanks, MG!
I’m not a great describer of flavor, but the puree comes out more buttery than potato (even without the butter), perhaps going in the direction of a sweet potato, but without all that sweetness. I’ve heard people describe the tast as “nutty”. In any case, it packs a lot more flavor than a potato.
Melissa Mead
02-10-2010
at 4:34 pm
Sounds delicious!
Christopher Kastensmidt
02-10-2010
at 5:10 pm
Thanks! It was!
Russ
02-10-2010
at 5:41 pm
Cool post. I wouldn’t mind have some of that.
Also, very nice food photography!
Say, what would’ve been in the drinking vessel? Surely not water?
Christopher Kastensmidt
02-10-2010
at 6:36 pm
Thanks, Russ! And great to see you around!
“Say, what would’ve been in the drinking vessel? Surely not water?”
Some things are best left a secret.