Lunch and Learn

I arrived back in Brazil on Tuesday and instead of heading to Maringa, my husband and I decided that we would spend some time in Curitiba (one of my favorite cities) for him to work a few days and for us to celebrate his birthday this weekend. So I met him here on my way from the US. I’ve been working from the hotel room or coffee shop with the occasional exploration.

I headed out for lunch today, not quite knowing what sounded good. I finally determined that I wanted a true Brazilian lunch. This typically means a meat, rice, another starch and beans. (Although this time mine was without beans.)

This is unusual for me as I simply can’t get accustomed to the heavy lunches here, but it was a cloudy, cool day and comfort food, or what I consider more comfort food, was in order.

I settled on a little place that is popular with the office workers around the city. It is a bit small and honestly resembles more of a pub. I’ve had my eye on it the past couple visits, but had never stopped in.

I had thought my lunch would not warrant much to write about, but happily I was proven wrong.

The daily special was frango ao molho de maracujá, chicken with passion fruit sauce. I adore sauce of passion fruit. I first had it on salmon here and whenever I see it on a menu I can hardly resist. It is basically the pulp of passion fruit, cooked down with some sugar. The crunchy seeds are left in it and it still maintains a bit of a tart taste. It is excellent with salty meat, similar to the way pineapple is often used with pork in the US.

Despite the tasty main attraction, it wasn’t the most interesting part. I noticed on the menu that a puree of mandioquinha was included. Adding the inha in the Portuguese language occurs all the time. It basically means little. So I automatically thought this meant little mandioca, or manioc, or yucca which I talked about in my post on Moqueca.

It did turn out to be a puree like a mashed potato, but it had a bright yellow color. The taste was outstanding! I’m sure it had a ton of butter in it, but it was so rich and smooth, even better than many mashed potatoes I have had.

I did some research on mandioquinha and learned that it is actually a root vegetable different from mandioca. It is also called arracacha, batata baroa and the Peruvian parsnip. It is smaller like a carrot with a brighter yellow color than a basic white potato and a richer flavor as well. They are native to the Andes and are grown and used in many countries in South America. I haven’t seen these at our farmer’s market, but I will be looking more closely for them from now on.

I found this old blog post which will give you an idea of what they looked like before they were mashed up on my plate.

So lunch turned out to be more of a culinary learning experience than I was expecting. Tonight we are headed to a French bistro so hopefully I’ll have some more interesting finds for you tomorrow.