This typical Brazilian meal seemed completely wrong when I was cooking it - so much so that I had a moment of doubt and googled to check that the Kitchen Trotter recipe card was right ! It tasted very nice though, even if the texture of the farofa is a bit strange !
Farofa is made from toasted manioc (or cassava, as it is more commonly known in England) flour. I expected it to be cooked like couscous with boiling water or stock, but it's actually eaten dry.
You fry onion or shallot and smoked French bacon (which is cured meat, like smoked ham, not the same as English bacon, but both would work). Then you toss in the manioc flour, stir it to dry-fry it, let it soak up the scant amount of cooking juice/oil and when it's gone golden, it's done.
Following the recipe, I also added a chopped banana. It looked incredibly dry, just like sawdust - I was sure they'd forgotten to add water in the recipe but no, that's what it's supposed to look like ! It's an acquired taste (or rather texture) but it's actually quite nice.
Luckily, I'd noticed on the bottom of the recipe card that you need to serve this with red kidney beans (in tomato sauce, for example) to prevent it from being too dry. I simply heated a can of red kidney beans with a can of chopped tomatoes, then added a squeeze of tomato puree and some spices.
The Brazilian-themed Kitchen Trotter box also had some Churrasco spices for grilled meat.
This is a lovely, flavour-packed blend with a lovely chilli kick. The recipe suggested using this with barbecued beef skewers but, as it was raining, I stir fried my beef instead.
As it's quite spicy, the kids had their beef without the Churrasco mix. A surprising meal but very nice !
I'm joining in with the World Cup recipe challenge over on the Cooking Around The World blog
Linking up with the Food of the World challenge which is focusing on Brazilian food this month
Other blogposts you may be interested in :
When I tried farofa a few weeks ago I also had to notice it is quite dry, but with what you have on the plate here it works just fine.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad it wasn't just me then !
DeleteMy favourite meal is Xinxim from Brazil, never tried making it just had it in a restaurant at the O2 called Las Iguanas its lime chicken in a peanut and crayfish sauce served with coconut farofa and fried plantain, your recipe has just made me think of it I'll have to find a recipe for it and try it myself, I,m going to try yours first though. x
ReplyDeleteooh I've only just seen this ! I will definitely investigate xinxim :)
DeleteI really like the sound of that, so unusual. I love to try new flavours and textures.
ReplyDeleteHave a look through my globecooking index - there's are some weird and wonderful (or sometimes not so wonderful !) recipes on there ! - http://madhousefamilyreviews.blogspot.com/p/globecooking-recipe-index.html
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