Traditional Brazilian Cooking at its Best Being such an enormous country, it’s to be expected that Brazil should have an equally enormous plethora of culinary delights. The country’s cuisine aptly reflects the diversity and richness of its culture, from African-inspired seafood in the Northeast to succulent slow-cooked meat dishes of the gauchos in the Interior. Today my recipe of choice is ‘Moqueca’, a personal Latin American favourite and a dish that has been cooked by the Brazilian people for at least 300 years. The sea-food stew derives from both the Northeastern state of Bahia as well as the neighbouring Southeastern state of Espirito Santo, with the latter variation known as Moqueca Capixaba. With its use of salt-water fish or shell-fish and fusion of African and European flavours, I personally believe that when it comes to Brazilian gastronomy the Moqueca is as traditional as it gets. Recipe: 1kg skinless firm white…
One night whilst staying at the brand new Palacio de Astoreca in Valparaiso, Chile we were feeling a bit lazy so for dinner booked into their restaurant which was simply called Alegre. We sat down at our table completely unaware of the culinary delight that we were about to receive. Our very nice waiter handed us our menus and in his best English said that he would recommend the chefs taster menu. 7 courses of whatever the chef feels like cooking, based on the ingredients that are fresh at the time and each menu is individual to the table. Rather mysterious but we thought we would give it a go. Before we even had the first course we were treated to 2 amuse bouches. We immediately realised this wasn’t going to be a normal dining experience! What followed were 7 of the best courses of food we had both ever…
