CaipirinhasSo, I realise this section is called 'Foodie Friday' and alcoholic drinks, or any other drinks for that matter, are technically not 'food' but a number of countries around South America have traditional drinks associated with them as well as traditional foods. The 'foodie' in us feels it's important to try all the different things that feature in the gastronomic make up of a country. To that end, purely for research purposes, while in Brazil we had to try their national cocktail...a few times...simply to provide sufficient basis for comparison (of course)! As I said, caipirinha is Brazil's national cocktail and is made using cachaça which is Brazil's most popular alcohol. It's a clear distilled alcohol made from sugarcane, pretty similar to rum and it's strong stuff!! Caipirinhas are amazingly easy to make and equally as easy to drink...a dangerous combination when coupled with the fact that Brazil can be an unfeasibly hot country and a nice refreshing cocktail definitely feels like a good idea come happy hour!! To create this alcoholic Brazilian delight all you need is fresh lime juice, sugar and cachaça. Mix the lime juice and the sugar, add the cachaça, pour over ice and BOOM, you have a caipirinha! See, I told you it was easy! Made right you have the perfect combination of sweet, sour and alcoholic and like I said, they can be seriously dangerous!! I would highly recommend giving this Brazilian institution a try! Should you find cachaça difficult to get hold of this can be just replaced by rum or alternatively you could add vodka instead, thus creating a variation of the caipirinha called a caipiroska. Personally, having tried all three (like I said, solely for research purposes) nothing quite matches up to a real caipirinha but I'll leave you to have a little mixology session to make up your own mind! Vamos começar os trabalhos!! Just incase you would like to make one of these at home here is the recipe.
Caipirinha
Directions:
This really is all up to how you like it. Riv likes hers a little more limey so adds an extra squeeze of lime but everyone will like theirs a little differently. Enjoy!
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Pacay(Before allowing this to be read I am going to include a short disclaimer to state that I am aware of the fact that parts of the following food and consumption descriptions sound faintly pornographic! I attempted to edit this in order to moderate the result of the content but it just didn't work, so I'm sorry, but what follows can only be described as soft food porn!)
This slightly daunting looking fruit appears, at first glance, to be an over-sized, dried, tough and wrinkly sugar snap pea pod. Not too appealing or particularly inviting. I had seen these on a number of occasions throughout South America protruding from the baskets of women sitting on the side of the street but had always ignored them as they simply appeared too alien for me to even contemplate. Honestly, the first few times I saw them I couldn't even figure out if they were edible, let alone if they were sweet or savoury, or required cooking or preparation in order to consume. By a stroke of luck, a bag of aforementioned alien pods was purchased by a local woman with whom we were sharing a bus on one journey in Perù. When she noticed the bug-eyed gringo, watching with childish fascination as she tore it open and began to suck the white flesh from the outside of large purplish/black seeds, she kindly offered one. For me, this was the start of a bit of a love affair...with the fruit!! Riv was not convinced, but I thought they were fabulous. The taste is reasonably reminiscent of lychees or rambutan, slightly fragrant and very sweet. The texture, I will grant you, is a little odd. It is a little bit like firm candy floss and it dissolves in your mouth in a similar way. The way it is eaten is by cracking open the pod (sometimes this is easier than others) and then removing each seed individually, which as I said, is covered in this soft white fluffy flesh. If the fruit is sufficiently ripe then simply sucking should remove all of the edible fruit and leave you with a bare and actually quite pretty looking seed. This is definitely an example of one of the more unusual fruits I have tried along the course of our travels and one I may very well have ignored altogether had I not been shown how it was consumed. Just goes to show that sometimes you need a bit of local guidance to figure stuff out but if you can get it, delicious things can be discovered! A Match Made in Strange Foodie Heaven - Chocolate and CheeseOk, I will fully accept that on first consideration this sounds like a pretty foul combination, but we are not talking about a cup of Cadbury's powdered hot chocolate and a slice of cheddar here!
We tried this for the first time in the Valle de Cocora just outside of Salento in Colombia after an unexpectedly tasking trek through the National Park. We were both mildly apprehensive about trying this local snack but were in dire need of some kind of hot drink and substinance and this what was on offer! It turned out to be a risk certainly worth taking and we both agreed we had found a taste combination that would definitely be replicated at home, upon completion of our world travels. This particular gastronomic pairing is a bit of a Colombian institution and involves a careful balance in the flavours of the two elements. The hot chocolate isn't your typical sweet and creamy affair, but rather a slightly bitter and thick melted chocolate mixed with just enough water to give it a silky drinking chocolate texture. On the side is the addition of a hearty thick slice of local fresh made cheese. This cheese has a texture not too dissimilar to haloumi but a taste closer to that of a very mild feta. When the flavour of the bitter sweetness of the hot chocolate and slight saltiness of the cheese are combined it is quite literally a match made in heaven! Neither of us are really sure of the 'correct' way to consume these two elements together and we took slightly different but equally satisfying approaches. Riv opted to take a small bite of the cheese and chew it before taking a mouthful of the chocolate to wash it down. With the cheese having a mildly porous surface I chose to treat it a little like a biscuit (cookie) and dip it into the chocolate and warm it slightly before biting off the warm chocolatey section. We both tried each other's ways as alternatives and agreed that either seemed equally valid. I can picture many of you sitting there with faces of disgust at the mere concept of this, but don't knock it till you've tried it! Trust me, this is one of those good unusual combinations...If Heston Blumenthal can convince people that bacon and egg ice cream can be a thing then give the Colombian's a chance to introduce you to the wonderful world of hot chocolate and cheese! Give it a go, what's the worst that could happen?! This classic South American treat was something we knew we would eat a lot of while travelling around this part of the world and it seemed that each country claimed to have the best version. What surprised us was how different they really were when sampling the range from country to country and in some cases even from region to region within a country.
Our first encounter with genuinely authentic empanadas was in Buenos Aires in Argentina and having tasted a wide selection from there all the way up to Colombia we can safely say that these most strongly resemble what we had experienced and expected of empanadas prior to visiting South America. A hand sized meat/cheese filled baked pastry treat! Next we moved onto Chile! The empanadas here left a lot to be desired in our opinion. In fact, often what we got was simply a hollow deep fried pastry case. Occasionally there would be a small and sad piece of meat rolling around inside, or something that might once have resembled a grating of cheese but that was generally an exception rather than a rule. I wouldn't be in a hurry to hunt down anymore Chilean empanadas in a hurry. In Brazil they have pastilles which are seemingly their version of empanadas. Also deep fried but with a much wider variety of fillings and a much greater quantity of it! They are also huge (or at least all the ones that we saw were)! These are good, but incredibly heavy and not something that for me would fall into either 'snack' or 'meal' categories! From Brazil we went to Bolivia and got to sample the wonder that is a salteña. These were a step back to something we recognised more as an empanada in size, appearance and preparation if not in taste. They were once again small baked pastries with a range of fillings. One that I had a few times had chicken inside in a strange and not entirely pleasant sweet...ish gravy sauce. Can't say I was a huge fan. My favourite of all 'empanada' treats over the whole trip was one I had in Potosí! I can only describe it as divine meeting of an Argentinian empanada, a samosa and a Cornish pasty! A little bit spiced, loads of meaty and potato filling and perfectly baked! I could have eaten about 20...in the end I controlled myself and stopped at 3! Peruvian empanadas continued the trend of delicious baked snack. We found a particularly good vendor when we were in Arequipa who served a version that seemed to be vegetarian, or at least as close as South Americans can get! They appeared to be stuffed with potato, carrots, onion and potentially a few other vegetable bits and were delicious. Absolutely packed full of flavour, very much like their Bolivian counterparts but as I said, seemingly without meat. Ecuador was not an empanada hot spot for us (although almost everything else we ate in Ecuador was wonderful...but I'll leave that for another post)! Here they returned to being deep fried and often absent of or at least severely lacking in any real filling. Most places we saw them they were just deep fried pastry sprinkled with sugar. Not really something that set our world alight, although I realise this does sound surprisingly similar to a donut! Ecuador do have an interesting alternative to the traditional empanada called empanada de verde. These often have the traditional meat filling and are deep fried, but the casing is made from a plantain based pastry and this gives them a nice difference in taste to the traditional pastry and a great crunchy texture! Finally we arrived in Colombia and in Popayán empanadas suddenly became super mini!! In this region they are called empanada de pipián and are made with corn meal pastry and filled with potatoes and peanuts, then deep fried and served with a spicy peanut sauce. I can't say I was a big fan, but then again I don't really like peanuts in savoury food but Riv thought they were delicious. Overall, it was very clear travelling around South America that every country has definitely put it's own mark on the humble empanada. Some appear to have elevated it to something really special while some seem to have largely ignored it and let it flicker out into nothingness. My personal favourite generally was Argentinian as they were simple but super tasty but my one top empanada experience has to be in Potosí in Bolivia! Hope you've enjoyed my empanadic musings! Now I recommend you go forth and do a little sampling yourself!! |
Follow us on Instagram or send us a messageAbout Foodie FridaysWe love food, as most people do! And when we are on the road this doesn't change. We, like many people, believe that food is one of the best ways to really get to know a culture and it's people, as so much about the way people live their lives around the world is centred around food. This means that when we travel we actively seek out the local foods and delicacies. Sometimes that comes in the form of unusual and exotic produce from markets and sometimes from street food vendors serving an array of barbecued, fried, steamed or entirely indistinguishable goodies. Having tried and tested these goodies for some time now, on our adventures around Asia, Europe, North and South America we have discovered some pretty wonderful treats that we have decided should earn a bit of publicity. So, as the working week drifts away and the weekend winks at you like a naughty temptress we will share with you one of the delights that we have encountered from around the world! We hope you enjoy reading about these as much as we enjoyed eating them! Archives
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