05
Community COOKERY
Pão de queijo, UAI!
S
ome time ago while in a Brazilian restaurant, a Spanish culinary journalist was telling me that Spain has the best food and chefs in the world, and, according to him, Brazil has the worst. For him, Brazilian food is not elaborate enough. As he spoke, he ordered his second plate of Feijoada, a 100% Brazilian dish, which he ate till the last bean sucking the bones. I offered no response to his comments. For unknown reasons, Brazilian food is not well known in the world, but look at it this way; Brazil has 26 states, and each one of them has a varied and unique culinary influenced by its indigenous inhabitants. The indigenous, the slaves imported from Africa, the European immigrants, and even Arabs each brought their own recipes. Their culture blended to make our Brazilian culture and we are very proud of it. Pão de Queijo is another one of our traditional recipes. Translated directly, this means ‘cheese bread’, although it’s much more than that. Like Feijoada, Pão de Queijo was invented by the slaves, but in Minas Gerais state in the 17th century - around 1600. A process on agricultural land involving the storage of manioc left a fine white powder in the big wooden bowls (gamelas) after extracting out the manioc flour. So the slaves managed to scrape this white starch off the gamelas, make small balls and bake them. These manioc starch balls had neither cheese nor milk in it, just plain manioc starch, and became popular among the slaves. More than 200 years later, cattle farms became widespread in Brazil and slaves (that were being freed by that time) gained access to better food such as milk and cheese. So they began to increment the baked balls with milk and ultimately cheese. When Brazil abolished slavery, their culture began to spread among the rest of the population. Pão de Queijo became popular in Minas Gerais and after that in the rest of Brazil. Pão de Queijo has a unique and delicious taste. Eddie Souza is one of the owners of Pão de Queijo UAI, one of the few successful companies producing homemade pão de queijo. Ed has been a chef in London for 13 years, and he has spent three years preparing his recipe. “If you ask any Mineiro (people from Minas Gerais) which is the best pão de queijo, they will say their mother or Nan’s recipe, and that is really true,” Eddie says. “To recreate the homemade conditions, the process of freezing, storing and distributing is as vital as the recipe, and ingredients to assure the utmost quality of the pão de queijo and requires massive investment and good
installations. That’s why few companies succeeded in this market and that’s why it took me so long before having
the ‘whole recipe’ done. Taste our pão de queijo and tell me if I am wrong in pursuing quality.”
By the way, ‘Uai’ is a Mineiro slang, a slang pronounced ‘WHY’. As a matter of fact it really means why.