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10 Brazilian food winners at Rio Olympics

Who says that the Rio Olympics have to be all about sport? Brazilian expat Ana Lucia Ferreira gives us 10 dishes that you simply must savour if you want the full Brazilian culinary experience.

1. The cocktail – Caipirinha

This is the cocktail that you’ll see Brazilians consuming at the beach and often before meals. Made with the ubiquitous Cachaça sugarcane spirit, the caipirinha is equally delicious and refreshing, thanks to generous quantities of fresh lime and brown sugar. The cocktail is famed for “contributing to the happiness and energy" of the South American country’s population.

2. The bread – Pão de queijo

Pão de queijo is a gluten-free cheese bread found pretty much all over Brazil; at cafes, bars and even petrol stations. The essential difference between this and your average bread? The flavour comes from sweet and sour starches from the manioc root (cassava). Pão de queijo is quite literally the eat-anytime option: for breakfast, as a snack or used as dinner rolls. The kids tend to love them too.

3. The side dish – Farofa

Cassava-flour-based farofa is popular for its versatility, simplicity and taste. While there are hundreds of recipes for farofa, the dish is basically just toasted cassava flour with your favourite ingredients and spices thrown in; you can make it with eggs, ham, chorizo and/or carrots. It’s typically served as a side dish with beans.

4. The paste – Goiabada

Goiabada goes well with cheese, but the versatile flavour of this pink guava paste is most commonly used to accompany Brazilian sweets: biscuits, cakes and desserts. Not only is it delicious, it’s also 100 per cent natural.

5. The snack – Pacoquinha

Pacoquinha (sweet peanut rolls) are a divine choice of snack featuring a crumbly, fall-apart texture that melts in your mouth. Their rich and sweet flavour marries well with coffee and complements ice-cream sublimely.

6. The staple – Feijao

The black bean casserole is basically the country’s national dish, devoured by millions of Brazilians every day. You’ll find the vegetarian feijao on offer for lunch and dinner. The black beans are super nutritious and high in fibre by themselves, but meat has also been known to find its way into the dish too.

7. The barbecue – Churrasco

The South Brazilian-style barbecue secret was out long ago and it’s slowly making its way around the globe. Churrasco is a variety of meats, such as pork, chicken and beef, barbecued over natural wood charcoal, leaving them with the trademark churrasco smokiness. It’s more for a dinner party occasion than an everyday indulgence.

8. The chilli – Biquinho

The Brazilian biquinho chillies, particularly popular in the east and north of the country, don’t radiate a particularly strong heat, meaning even a person who doesn’t like chillies may enjoy them. They are eaten as a side dish or in salads, their deep red hue adding colour to the table.

9. The chips – Biscoito de polvilho

Manioc chips are an extremely moreish snack, which you’re more than likely to see being devoured en masse on the beach in Rio. The oven-baked chips are made from manioc starch, making them a gluten-free alternative.

10. The super berry – Acai

This much-hyped, antioxidant, fibre and vitamin-rich berry led the superfood revolution in the West, but they are more mainstream in their native Brazil. Brazilians normally eat or drink them as part of a healthy breakfast, in a sorbet or smoothie. In some regions of Brazil, acai is eaten as a savoury dish.

 

Ana Lucia Ferreira is co-founder of Brazilian Style Imports together with Jason Hill, an importer of Brazilian food, beverage and barbecue equipment products in Australia.

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8 grand journeys across Latin America

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    From camping along alpine meadows in Patagonia to cruising the Amazon, these are the best Latin America journeys to tick off your bucket list.

    1. The Q Circuit in Patagonia

    Travelling with: Emma Ventura

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    Tolkienian peaks, pristine lakes and snow-bloated rivers are highlights for most visitors spending a couple of days in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park. But for the more intrepid, the real rewards come from a 10-day solo circumnavigation of the Q Circuit, camping along tracks that become more sparsely trodden the further you head into the park’s astonishingly diverse landscape – think glacial passes and granite spires, alpine meadows and forest paths. Five-star lodges might provide a break from Patagonia’s infamously feisty weather, but there’s nothing like carrying your own kit, a chance encounter with an elusive puma, and a crackling wood stove in a remote refugio for delivering the kind of fulfilment that money just can’t buy.

    2. The jungles of Central America

    Travelling with: Megan Arkinstall

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    Emerging from the seas millions of years ago, the isthmus that is Central America is a tropical sanctuary of jungle-clad volcanoes, thunderous waterfalls and mist-shrouded rainforests, fringed by coral reefs. At its heart, Costa Rica is the land of pura vida (pure life), a tiny country that is home to six per cent of the world’s biodiversity – think toucans, macaws, anteaters, tapirs, jaguars, sloths – with verdant rainforest carpeting more than half the country. It’s a land to explore on two feet, two wheels and with two paddles. Do all three on Intrepid Travel’s eight-day Costa Rica: Hike, Bike & Raft tour and G Adventures’ 16-day Costa Rica Adventure.

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    3. Dance across Latin America

    Travelling with: Elizabeth Whitehead

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    Put on your dancing shoes in Latin America. (Image: Getty/Pollyana Ventura)

    Don your tassels and get flirty cha cha-ing in Havana. Feel the heat dancing Argentine tango at a milonga in Buenos Aires. Hear the pulse of percussion as you samba in Rio. In Latin America, movement is an expression of culture, celebration and passion. You don’t have to be a professional to partake, and there are plenty of dance schools where foreigners can learn the basics. It’s easy as one-step, two-step, cha-cha-cha.

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    Travelling with: Sarah Reid

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    The Lost City is Colombia’s best-kept secret. (Image: Getty/Charly Boillot)

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    5. The Galápagos Islands

    Travelling with: Carla Grossetti

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    Expect the brackish air around the Galápagos Islands to be mixed with the gritty odour of bird droppings and pungent tang of sea lion BO. Twist your binoculars until the black eye of the giant Galápagos tortoise fills the other end, and you might imagine yourself to be quite the adventurer centuries after the inhabitants of these islands inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Get onboard a cruise with operators like Silversea, HX Expeditions, Celebrity Cruises and Metropolitan Touring to see the remote archipelago of 19 islands loom into view just 900 kilometres off the coast of mainland Ecuador.

    a blue-footed booby on the Galapagos Islands
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    6. Pantanal, Brazil

    Travelling with: Carla Grossetti

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    Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland and a UNESCO World Heritage site, is reportedly one of the best places on Earth to spot jaguars. This vast landscape of flooded plains and savannahs also shelters more than 650 species of birds (such as the toucan and hyacinth macaw) as well as various reptiles including the yellow anaconda and cold-blooded caiman (a type of crocodilian). Add capybaras, giant anteaters, maned wolves, giant river otters and South American tapirs to your wildlife bingo card, too. And find a tour that includes piranha fishing, if you dare.

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    Travelling with: Carla Grossetti

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    Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni covers more than 10,500 square kilometres, making it the world’s largest salt flats. The salt flats of Uyuni were formed more than 40,000 years ago when several prehistoric lakes dried up and left a bed of rich minerals behind. Stay at Luna Salada, where the walls and furnishings are made from dense bricks of packed salt, so you can immerse yourself in this ethereal landscape. Visit southern Bolivia during the dry season when the salt crystallises into mesmerising shapes and patterns.

    8. The iconic sites of Peru

    Travelling with: Megan Arkinstall

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    Stay in a superior suite onboard andBeyond Amazon Explorer.