Texts From Brazil, Flavors From Brazil, Tião Rocha

Tião Rocha

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Flavors from Minas Gerais

Texts from Brazil . Nº 13

Brazilian dried meat production – J.B. Debret (1829). Source: Castro Maya Museums – IPHAN/MinC – MEA 0113

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o trail the routes and paths crossed by the Mineiros, and arrive at their current customs and habits, we must begin at the crossways and sidetracks of Minas Gerais. This takes us, invariably, to the end of the 17th Century and beginning of the 18th Century. The Portuguese Crown had never lost hope in finding precious metals in their lands in America. Such hope was motivated by seductive legends of the city of Manôa, the Emerald Mountains and Sabarabuçu. The discovery of gold in the Colony’s interior, even if its small details was due to chance, in its accomplishment it was, above all, due to historic persistency. Flavors from Brazil

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This discovery cannot be pinpointed to a person in particular. It was a result of continuous efforts and dreams of successive generations. The effort began in 1532 with the arrival of the first Portuguese settlers along with Martim Afonso de Souza. One of the first measures he took was to send an expedition, with 40 men, from São Vicente in São Paulo to the interior in search of gold and silver mines … They never came back. The news of the discovery of gold spread out quickly through the world. The big rush began. Adventurers of all types arrived, men and women, young and old, whites, mulattos and blacks, noblemen and commoners, laymen, clergymen and religious of different orders, determined by the desire of enriching rapidly, without being careful with the roughness of the trails and without worrying themselves with the hardship of the work and the dangers they had to face. They left everything in their homelands. They sold their possessions (if they owned any), left wife and children, broke-off engagements. The departure to the mines was a drama, but the journey was another one, very arduous and maybe even a fatal one. Each adventurer, with few provisions in their bags, took off confidently hallucinated by the visions of gold. Frequently, the worst of sufferings awaited them: hunger. And the scarcity of food was such, that a great famine occurred in 1698, and another in 1700 and still a third one in 1713. Fields and mountains had been deprived of game and wild provisions by people who had consumed everything. Many left to hunt in the forest or returned to their homeland. Many fell by the wayside. With whatever they came across, any type of game, tapirs, deer, capybaras, monkeys, coatis, jaguars, marsh deer and birds, and many times, snakes, lizards, ants and even “a very 82

white animal that is found in bamboos and rotten wood”. They also ate bee honey, pork, palm of hearts, fern sprouts, wild yams … and other varieties which necessity invented. There was also fish: the small ones cooked in bamboo, and the big ones, roasted. Once the cry of gold was out, a migratory wave flooded the region with very few parallels in the history of mankind. Human tides sought the region of the mines, coming from every direction. The news of the discovery of gold echoed in all the corners and provinces of Brazil, and everywhere the demographic system suffered profound changes due to the rush to the mines. Thus, the rapid and gigantic settlement of the region of Minas Gerais was carried out. However, in a very short period, the rush towards the mines transformed itself into a public disaster. There were so many ambitious people who ran in search of gold that the Kingdom was threatened by depopulation. The coastal cities of Brazil also endured the same threat… The mines which had been received as a blessing from heaven, after two centuries of anxious searches, started to be viewed as the cause of disaster and sources of misdeeds. Soon the interdictions and restrictions of settlers leaving to the mines emerged in 1709 and 1711. Besides the restrictions to enter the region, other ones were established, forbidding the clearance of new paths and trails to Minas Gerais. Nothing, however, hindered the rapid and disorganized growth of the population of Minas Gerais, if we consider the distance and difficulties. The more complicated and costly the processes to extract gold were, the more the min Anonymous letter from 1717, quoted by Afonso de E. Taunay.



Texts from Brazil . Nº 13

ers settled themselves, establishing permanent camps with solid constructions, made to endure time. The camps of Minas Gerais grew so quickly that, in a few years, many ascended to the post of villages. The historical cities of Minas Gerais, guardians of the colonial buildings, would become the permanent imprint of the period. From early on, an active trade flow between the coastal cities and Minas Gerais was established. The paths became trails that were frequently walked on and beaten by merchants, tropeiros, caravans and cattlemen who came and went through these paths, differing themselves for this reason from those who, taken by the gold fever, thought only of going and not of returning. Nevertheless, the coastal cities were not prepared to supply the mining cities of Minas Gerais. A fever of speculation took all that was to supply their own cities into the mines. The consequence was a price hike and a general shortage of food and provisions. The situation became so dramatic for Vila de São Paulo that the municipal chamber, in a session which took place on January 19, 1705, deliberated on the prohibition of selling any article of subsistence outside their land, “including manioc flour, wheat, beans, corn, bacon and cattle”. Life in the mines, in the first years following the discovery of gold, would have been practically impossible without the various supplies from the cities and villages of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia: cattle, bacon, cachaça, sugar, flour, beans, corn, cloth, shoes, medication, cotton, hoes and imported goods like salt, olive oil, vinegar, wheat, iron, gunpowder, glass, wine, guns, fabrics and slaves, thousands and thousands of African slaves. From the hunger crisis of the 18th Century, the need to use well the available food emerged. Flavors from Brazil

From the hunger crisis of the 18th Century, the need to use well the available food emerged. And from the need to make better use of it, the plentiful, simple and sophisticated cuisine of Minas Gerais evolved. And from the need to make better use of it, the plentiful, simple and sophisticated cuisine of Minas Gerais evolved. To face the shortage of beef, the Mineiros accustomed themselves to raising pigs, wherever there was any space left, even in their backyards (a custom which still endures). The consumption of pork meat became a habit among the residents of the mines and, today, pork loin is maybe the most typical dish of Minas Gerais, present in the region’s customs, the Mineiros’ favorite. The miners and other residents of the Minas Gerais region never had abundance of food. The food of explorers from São Paulo did not have much variety. The basic food for the majority of the population was beans, corn and manioc. The manioc plantations were insufficient and the canjica was unsalted, for there was not enough salt for everybody. Manioc was the main food and daily provision for these people, followed by corn. The anonymous chronicler of 1717, quoted by Afonso de Taunay, listed some of the many foods made with corn: “popcorn, corn meal, pamonhas, flour, couscous, biscuits, cakes, alcamonias and catimpuera, aluá or beer from green corn, fermented spirits and corn meal. The polenta, cooked in 83

great quantities, in large pans of hot water that “the rich eat for pleasure and the poor for necessity”. The style of cooking of Minas Gerais is unveiled, mainly, in the corn complex. From green corn, cooked, roasted or made into mush or into flour (polenta, mush, cake, cobu, etc), corn is present in all meals, overpowering the native manioc. The Mineiro never used bread of “farinha de pau” (manioc flour), the common bread during the first centuries of colonization, as the basic food. They always preferred polenta, solid corn cakes and cobu rolled in a banana leaf. To mix with beans, he always used corn meal (corn soaked, grounded in the mortar and then roasted), polenta and maize flour (toasted). The poor always used “canjiquinha” (a sub-product from hulling corn, much used to replace rice). At night, a widely appreciated supper is milk with flour (meal or finely ground), while coffee with corn flour and cheese is a strong supper. The delicious corn meal, popcorn and, as a refreshment, aluá, corn flour with water and rapadura, which fermented obtains alcoholic properties, was consumed by the Africans during the caxambus, in between dances. The various uses of corn demonstrate the heterogeneous character of cuisine from Minas Gerais. Food shortage during the mining phase was very serious, not only for slaves (badly dressed and fed), but also for the free men, in the mines and, especially, for those who lived in the cities. There were several consequences of the rapid and disorganized growth in the mining region. Some historians noted that it was the main

cause for the Emboabas War (1709), the conflict for the ownership of the gold mines, in which the Paulistas did not want to share them with outsiders. However, although the reasons for this war were the jealousy of the Paulistas against the Portuguese and the Bahian, and the rivalries about the ownership of the mines, another reason overpowered them in importance: the monopoly of certain goods indispensable for the life in Minas Gerais, like contracts for meat in butcher shops, speculation and smuggling of primary goods, carried out by the sons of the metropolis, allied with the Bahians. We can, therefore, consider that in the origin of the customs of Minas Gerais, which includes its cuisine, we have, among others, the Emboabas War, studied in school books as the first manifestation of “nativistic spirit” of the Brazilian people. Another historic fact that includes the shortage of food supply in the province written between its lines, was the uprising of 1720, in Vila Rica, known as the Rebellion of Felipe dos Santos, against the installation of smelteries in the gold region. Along with this intention, also present in the popular revolt, was the desire to abolish contracts on fermented alcoholic beverages, tobacco and cigars. The seriousness of the supply scarcity of Minas Gerais forms the substratum of the main political events of the region in the first quarter of the 18th Century. Consequently, it reflects on the sociocultural formation of our people, demonstrated in the knowledge and habits of our population from whom emerged copper pans, large melted iron pots and aged stone casseroles

“Memória Histórica da Capitania das Minas Gerais”(Historic memories of the Capitania of Minas Gerais), Revista do Arquivo Público Mineiro, vol. II, p. 425.



João Camilo de Oliveira Torres, “História de Minas Gerais” (History of Minas Gerais), vol. I, B.Hte, p. 161.



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Texts from Brazil . Nº 13

Frying torresmos. João Rural

fuming with the smells, colors and varied flavors of our cuisine. The answers and solutions to basic food needs given by the Mineiros developed personal and family uses that, slowly, in double boiler, were transformed into local habits which, simmered, were generalized into regional customs until they started to pop like torresmos in hot fat forming our cultural traditions. Thus, following these procedures, the Mineiro surpassed the hunger crisis to consolidate a rich, varied and traditional cuisine, based on the best use of the elementary ingredients – beans, corn, manioc, meat – found or available in the region. The lack of variety in resources during the colonial period was the condition for the development of a creative and innovative cuisine, marked by the search for flavors and combinaFlavors from Brazil

tions of tastes, within the few and limited products available. John Mawe, the first foreign traveler who was able to enter the mining territory, authorized by the Regent Prince in 1809, stated: “As long as there are corn and water, the Mineiros will not starve”. Saint-Hilaire observed the Mineiros’ taste for sweets and marmalades, and their inclination to make them. However, he criticized the abusive use of sugar that disguises the flavor of the fruits. This censure is still made today by “Viagem ao interior do Brasil, particularmente aos distritos do ouro e do diamante, em 1809/1810”(Travels in the interior of Brazil, particularly in the gold and diamond districts of that country, in 1809/1810).  “Viagem pelas Províncias do Rio de Janeiro e Minas Gerais” (Travels in the provinces of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais). 

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Cargo troop. João Rural

foreigners who taste our sweets. Some French travelers were surprised to see that we ate cheese with our sweets, a culinary heresy in the opinion of the masters in this subject. They do not know what they are missing: guava sweet with Minas’ cheese, yummy! Meanwhile, families who prepared sweets would send (and still do) trays with coconut sweets, cheese rolls, brevidades and pés-demoleque on the streets. Other families would earn a little money with spicy bean cake, and others would prepare almonds in copper pans for the Holy Week cornets. Quitanda, let us not forget, is the home pastry shop, with cookies, cornbread, twisted bread, biscuits and cakes displayed on a tray. Quitandeira is the woman who produces or sells

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these products. The women of Ouro Preto were famous for being excellent producers of sweets and delicacies. The African and mulatto women who cooked could not, no matter how hard they worked, produce enough to satisfy the gluttony of the mine workers. True multitudes of African and mulatto women, slave or freed, paraded with their trays through the hills and riverbanks, provoking the Africans to spend, on delicacies, the gold that did not belong to them. One of the first governors of the region was already on top of the problem: ... It is forbidden: for women to take trays with pastries, cakes, sweets, honey, spirits and other beverages to the gold mines because some people send them to the mines Texts from Brazil . Nº 13

and places where gold is extracted in order to obtain gold making it possible for the gold to be deviated from their owners and reach the hands of those who do not pay the tax of one fifth to His Majesty... “The richest gold pans that are found in the mines” continued to belong to the “black women of the trays”, resulting in a new prohibition, this time dated September 11, 1729. And, once again, ineffective. “The hunger of the poor is avenged by the indigestion of the rich”, goes the popular saying. The Mineiros have always been gluttons, friendly to sweets and pastries, as are the majority of Brazilians, known for their “apicultural sensualism”. From trays to groceries and small shops, our sweets became famous: milk sweet (the one rolled in corn husk is the most authentic from Minas Gerais); citron, lime and orange sweets, brevidade; quince, guava and banana sweets; péde-moleque; pamonha wrapped in banana leaf; queijadinha; mãe-benta, quebra-quebra; cornbread or peanut bread; manioc starch biscuits; besides others from Portuguese-Brazilian confectionery, whose names reveal the tenderness and gentleness of the romantic century (18th): suspiro (meringues), melindres, arrufado, esquecidos, beijode-freira; papos-de-anjo; baba-de-moça; quindim-deiaiá... In the pantry, there was always a bowl of molasses, which could be eaten with manioc flour or pieces of cheese, and in the stores and

Luciano Figueiredo ,“Mulheres nas Minas Gerais”(Women of Minas Gerais) in “História das Mulheres no Brasil”(History of the women of Brazil), Contexto Press, São Paulo, p. 151.  Simão Mântua in “Cartas de um Chinês” (Letters from a Chinese). 

Flavors from Brazil

“The hunger of the poor is avenged by the indigestion of the rich”, goes the popular saying. The Mineiros have always been gluttons, friendly to sweets and pastries, as are the majority of Brazilians, known for their “apicultural sensualism” bars, next to the jug of cachaça, pão-de-queijo, cream filled cones, popcorn and rapadura could be found. Little by little the hunger threat disappeared, but everything was sold for very high prices. Many of the ambitious, who had rushed to Minas Gerais to become wealthy with gold, found out that it was easier to have it in their hands if mined by others, through trade. Voilà. The path to trade for the Minas Gerais residents was open and they became shrewd merchants, peddlers, caravan escorts, tropeiros, practicing to become, in the future, excellent bankers and speculators. With the supply of goods organized and systematically kept by the caravans of tropeiros, the settlers of Minas Gerais lacked nothing else. In the mid 1800s, there was gold in abundance. Word was out that the Mineiros paid their suppliers generously. Regular routes of tropeiros were established. The threat of hunger or shortage dis-

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appeared for good and there was an abundance of food and supplies. Vila Rica “was abundant in provisions and the land produced many vegetables like collard greens, cabbage and onions. There were also plenty of fruits, mainly peaches, quinces, oranges, apples and juás. Although the land was not widely cultivated, its inhabitants had no lack of food, due to the provisions that came daily by troops carrying bacon, corn, beans, cheese and oil, sold at very reasonable prices” The cuisine from Minas Gerais owes to the tropeiros this dish – feijão-tropeiro. Its name is a homage to these courageous explorers of the interior. The main commercial center were the stores. In them one could find (or, most commonly, not find) cachaça, salt, sugar, beans and dried meat, twisted tobacco, horseshoes, garlic, firearms and prayer books. Gold and diamond mining were absorbing. While production was abundant, there was no room for substantial agricultural or for raising livestock. Agriculture, in the heat of gold extraction, could not have developed because it could not compete with the mines for slaves. Miners paid for a black slave prices a farmer could not. The barns slowly invaded the province, spreading out over the fields near the São Francisco River, as a natural extension of the Bahian livestock raising. In spite of all the difficulties, Minas Gerais slowly became self-sufficient. From the Sabará village came corn, beans, rice and sugarcane; from Vila Risonha and Bela de Santo Antônio da Manga de São Romão arrived cattle, fish and na-

José Joaquim da Rocha in “Memória Histórica da Capitania de Minas Gerais”(Historic memories of the capitania of Minas Gerais), regarding the year of 1778.



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tive fruits; Vila Nova da Rainha produced “the delicate fruits from Portugal”, apples, peaches, grapes, plums; Serro Frio exported corn, beans and their cheeses; and Vila de São José do Rio das Mortes (current Tiradentes) was the most plentiful village of the entire province, supplying most districts with bacon, cattle, cheese, corn, beans and rice. The people of Minas Gerais ate beef salted in layers – dried meat or charque, salted sun-dried meat, “wind-dried meat” or jabá. Like the pork meat and bacon, they were preserved by smoking, salting, turning it into a paçoca or conserving in fat (as it is still done). In the North of Minas Gerais, the common people’s meal is still beans with corn flour and jabá, served with a cumari, malagueta pepper and palm oil sauce - so hot that it can only be relieved by a good gulp of cachaça with chufa sedge or fig leaves. The decline of gold and diamonds, at the end of the 18th Century, was the main cause of the activity change of the inhabitants of Minas Gerais, from the extractive industry to cattle breeding, to manufacturing and to cultivation. In the mining area itself, plantations multiplied. The agonizing mines started to rely on the expanding crops that greedily searched for fertile land in the nearabouts of the mines. In the beginning of the 19th Century, the economic scenario of Minas Gerais was very different from what was revealed in the previous century. The development of agriculture, breeding and manufacturing, supplying the province with elements for self-sufficiency, permitted the province to go on without foreign supplies, and even to become a supplier of regions which had before supplied them, in a complete reversal of the economic scene.

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The German naturalist Hermann Burmeister left us with a curious impression about the places, scenarios, fauna and customs of the people he met on his travels to Minas Gerais in 1851. He traveled through several regions. In Mariana and Ouro Preto, he made interesting notes on the schedule of meals and what they normally ate: At 10 o’clock, lunch: beans, polenta, dried meat, flour, bacon, collard greens, rice, and, sometimes, chicken. They ate as much as they wanted, mixing everything in one plate [as is still commonly done nowadays]. Between 3 and 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the same meal was repeated with fresh provisions. Water and a bit of cachaça were drunk with the meal and, at the end, a cup of coffee. Certain families had a third meal between 7 and 8 in the evening, but this was not part of the general custom. At this time, light dishes were served, like crushed corn with milk and sugar, orange tea with milk, in which a biscuit or a lighter cake like sponge cake or cornbread was soaked. I find the orange tea very pleasant… The basic food on the tables of Minas Gerais (of the well-off families, of course) was, and still is in the majority of cases, traditionally the same with few variations in the regions of the state, that go from the South to the borders of Bahia. Beans; polenta; corn or manioc flour; rice; pork loin; spicy sausages; beef meat, dried or fresh; chicken; and, as greenery, collard greens were, and still are, the main food. Beans were the father of them all. “Beans are the support of a house”, goes the popular saying. In first place, were eaten mainly the kidney bean variety, but other varieties too: chumbinho, chili beans, red beans and black beans. Closely after, comes the polenta, followed by torresmo. Nowadays, rice competes with beans. White rice, Flavors from Brazil

The basic food on the tables of Minas Gerais (of the well-off families, of course) was, and still is in the majority of cases, traditionally the same with few variations in the regions of the state, that go from the South to the borders of Bahia.

cooked in our own fashion, fluffy, cannot be absent from the tables in Minas Gerais and last but not least, collard greens. The daily meal of a simple and common household is beans with polenta and torresmo, flour and collard greens – shredded or finely chopped. The whole beans cooked, almost with no broth, and added to fried torresmos and manioc flour is called “feijão-de-tropeiro”, “feijão-das-onze” or “feijão-de-preguiça”. Another incomparable delicacy to the palates of the Mineiros, and the most “Mineiro” dish, is the tutu de feijão: made with kidney beans. After it is cooked, it is thickened with manioc or corn flour and it is served with torresmos, sliced spicy sausages and sliced hard boiled eggs… yummy! Just like the simple feijoada, which is sometimes cooked with salted pork or dried meat, the tutu de feijão is a hearty dish that requires a “starter” to open your appetite: a small glass of a good cachaça. At the end of the meal, a cup of thick coffee is a must. 89

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Pão-de-queijo (cheese bread). Daniel Augusto Jr./Pulsar Imagens

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The flavor of polenta can be enriched if tropicão (torresmos) or spicy sausages are added. If you add the finely chopped herb, sautéed, yummy! … you have the traditional

tripod: feijão (beans), angu (polenta) and couve (collard greens). Small cakes made of beans are appreciated as appetizers before lunch or dinner, to accompany an excellent cachaça made of Cayenne sugarcane. The daily food in the rural area consists of beans, polenta, cooked rice, some greenery and, in the best case scenarios, eggs and chicken. Manioc flour is always part of the meal… Polenta, a hearty dish, indispensable to the nourishment of the peasants, was equally found on the table of the city dwellers. The Mineiro prepares it normally unsalted, a tradition inherited from the 18th Century, when salt was a rare and expensive product. The flavor of polenta can be enriched if tropicão (torresmos) or spicy sausages are added. If you add the finely chopped herb, sautéed, yummy! …you have the traditional tripod: feijão (beans), angu (polenta) and couve (collard greens). If there is no farofa, it is a custom to add manioc flour itself, toasted or not, to the beans in broth to thicken it. Maize flour is also called far92

inha de munho, farinha de cachorro or toasted corn meal. With the corn meal one can make the very popular mush, serving it simple, with sugar, or sprinkled with cinnamon. It can also be eaten with slices of cheese or by adding milk or honey, in the morning for breakfast or at night as supper … or the fresh corn mush and the angu with milk. At the end of the 19th Century, in the farms of Minas Gerais, the following daily meal was served: beans with polenta and torresmos, roasted pork loin, spicy sausages, collard greens and the typical corn flour. On Sundays, invariably chicken. As dessert, “boxed sweets” and compotes with cheese, or molasses with manioc or manioc flour. After dinner, on the veranda of the farm, congonha (fake maté) tea or coffee sugared with rapadura. Agriculture slowly expands. The same happens with livestock. The south of Minas Gerais offers the best conditions for this. Thus, begins the dairy industry. The Mineiro breeder emerges, not a big consumer of milk, but creator of one of our trademarks: the cheese industry, the “Minas cheese”, round, savory, white cheese which is indispensable in our breakfast, with our sweets… The western districts produce pork. Pork meat, mainly bacon, is consumed all over the region, being an indispensable seasoning in the cooking of the whole country. At the end of the 19th Century, the basic food on more humble tables was still beans, flour and polenta, accompanied by some greenery or garden produces: collard greens, okra, chayote, sow-thistle, yam, pumpkin and taioba. On other

Translator’s note: Sweets made with fruits that, instead of being served in paste, are hardened, packed in boxes and served in slices, like guava sweet, banana sweet, among others.



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occasions, the basic food was beans with torresmos and rice. There was almost never any meat! It was not necessary! However, beans were! Instead of bread, many ate beiju, biscuits made from manioc flour, corn flour or manioc starch. Bread is almost a stranger to the traditional cooking of Minas Gerais. Nevertheless, the wealthier classes could appreciate a larger variety of food, quitandas and delicacies: • Breakfast: a plate of simple corn meal mush sprinkled with cinnamon or with molasses and cheese; or coffee with milk and quitandas; or coffee with milk and bread and butter (foreign); • Lunch: Beans, either tutu de feijão with torresmo, and spicy sausages or pork loin; or simple beans and, sometimes, collard greens; or virado; or polenta, simple or with torresmos and okra; fluffy white rice, dried meat or pork meat, fresh or salted, and, more rarely, fresh beef. Fresh or dried meat, roasted, stewed or diced, with rice or manioc or collard greens or yam or string beans; fried with beaten eggs or shredded (roupa velha); or cooked with vegetables; chicken preferably stewed with polenta and okra; greenery, not a large portion, could be collard greens, lettuce, cabbage, sow-thistle or taioba. For dessert: quince or guava sweet; molasses or any other “boxed sweets” with cheese or fresh requeijão. Bananas, oranges and papayas. • Snack: plain coffee or with quitandas. • Dinner: soup, made with vegetables, or meat and corn flour, or yam or water yams, manioc, white beans, fubá with greenery; plain beans or virado with flour; meat and okra stew or with scarlet eggplant, manioc or sweet potato; or rice with fried eggs. Flavors from Brazil

Dessert: sweets with cheese or fresh requeijão. • Supper: plain corn meal, or with peanuts, or cheese; or fubá mush. • Beverage: a small cup of cachaça, as a “starter”, only for men. • Spices: onions, chives, garlic, laurel, annatto, malagueta pepper, black pepper, coriander. Oil: pork fat. This daily menu that composed the table of the wealthier families in the 19th Century – abundant and inexpensive, varied and healthy, of food that was easily digested and, most importantly, tasty - was the menu of the cuisine from Minas Gerais, maintained by tradition until today with very few variations. Cooking secrets were passed from mother to daughter, as a gold nugget or a family diamond: the “Mineiro” way of “dicing and sautéing”, as our old cooks say, the available ingredients. The housewives of Minas Gerais may have not been versed in food science, but they were excellent in the art of cooking, which was (and is) more valuable. Minas Gerais... is a small synthesis; a crossroad. There are several Minas Gerais, so many, and yet just one. As Guimarães Rosa would say: There is the forest, on the other side of the mountain, still humid from the marine winds, with agriculture and forestry, a densely fertile area; there you find the pacifists and the quarrelsome. In the South, with its coffee plantations, planted on the slopes of red soil or on hills where Europeans organized themselves, maybe one of the most peaceful places of happiness in the world; there you will find the shy and the audacious, to the point of incautiousness. In the Triangle region, advanced, strong, and honest; there you will find those 93

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Chicken with okra. Peixes Press (Embratur)

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who have regular routines and the explorers. In the West, quiet and coarse mannered, farmers and politicians, rich in abilities; there you will find the legalists and the revolutionary. In the North, country people, hot, rustic, Bahian in some stretches, sometimes Northeastern in the unmanageability of the bush lands, and in the incorporation of the polygon of the drought; there you will find the naïve and the extremely shrewd. The central core of the Rio das Velhas valley, calcareous, mild, clear and open to the joy of new voices; there you will find the stingy and also the prodigal. The Northwest, of the plateaus, of the wide fields that are joined with Goiás and Bahia, and that go forward to the Piauí and undulating Maranhão. But I believe that the true customs of Minas Gerais are established through the mixture and co-existence of some of these faults and qualities, with the endurance of essential characteristics of our way of life. Is there, after all, a cuisine from Minas Gerais? A very “Mineiro” way of answering – yes and no! Yes, because one can recognize a constancy in the eating preferences of the people who live in Minas Gerais. No, because these preferences are not exclusive of our people. The constancy is defined, of course, by the daily menu, based, primarily, on the tripod beans, polenta and collard greens, then on rice, afterwards on meat (preferably pork) and, finally, and moderately, on vegetables and greenery. The dishes considered typical of Minas Gerais are: tutu de feijão with torresmos or spicy sausages; roasted pork loin and finely chopped collard greens. We can still add chicken cooked

Flavors from Brazil

in its blood with polenta and okra. Dishes considered genuinely from Minas Gerais, but not being, however, exclusive. But why did these dishes gain the status of dishes from Minas Gerais? The Mineiro way of making them, as a ritual; the Mineiro way of serving them, as a liturgy; the way of savoring them, as a communion! There is nothing better in the universal cuisine, Guimarães Rosa stated conceitedly. “And why not?”, he himself answered, adding: “the true patriotism is in the gustative sensualism, of the table and desserts. The petroleum will not be so much ours; ours, well ours, will be the milk sweets and the shredded dried meat. Mine – please forgive me – is that dish from Minas Gerais which is really the most important; stewed chicken with okra and pumpkin (ad libitum the scarlet eggplant) and polenta, a delicate dish, sliding thickly as life itself, but dripped with pepper”.

Basic reference ZEMELLA, MAFALDA P. O Abastecimento da Capitania das Minas Gerais no Século XVIII, Report 118, História da Civilização Brasileira n. 12, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, 1951. FRIEIRO, EDUARDO. Feijão, Angu e Couve - Ensaio sobre a comida dos mineiros, Center for the Study on Minas Gerais, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, 1966. ANDRADE, CARLOS DRUMMOND DE. Brasil, Terra & Alma - Minas Gerais, Autor Press, Rio de Janeiro, 1967. ROCHA, TIÃO. (org.) Afinal, o que é ser mineiro? Social Service of the Minas Gerais Trade, Belo Horizonte, 1995.

Tião Rocha

Anthropologist and folklorist

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