ninetwelvetwentyfive

so hello everyone. it’s been a wee while, no? more than a wee while. a long while.

we have been travelling a bit. first we went to queenstown. it was still quite wintry down there but gosh it was beautiful. we walked along the lake, drank lots of coffees to warm up, ate excellent pizza from winnies, travelled on the earnslaw steamship to celebrate fathers’ day .. it was a good time.

L and i spent a few days in pahiatua with my mum and dad. it’s quite different to queenstown, let’s say. i like it though. it’s friendly. people say hi in the street. the countryside is quite cool. there are excellent op shops. and brockies cafe makes a lemon and date slice which alone is worth the trip.

pahiatua is close to palmerston north – the place to go if you want to do a big supermarket shop. there is not a lot else there, i’m sorry to say.

and most recently, L, the rockstar and i went to brazil. we spent most of the time in brasília which was in the middle of the rainy season and not terribly photogenic, bless it. there was a lot of family time. but we snuck away for a night to pirenópolis, a colonial town about 2 hours’ drive away (in central-west terms, that’s practically nothing). it was good to get away, just the three of us.

and a bonus piece of hee-larious brazinglish for your pleasure and delectation. the best bit: this shirt was spotted in quite a chic store in shopping iguatemi brasília, a very very exclusive mall for those who prefer to not to rub shoulders with the great unwashed (which also happens to be the nearest source of decent coffee to the rockstar’s mum’s house; hence my presence there). binge drinking! it’s the new hip trend from the west!

so yes! i am back. i will write more shortly – right now i have to go and stop L from pulling all the CDs off the shelves and then proceeding to chew the corners. as i write she is nomming down on feminist sweepstakes by le tigre. that’s my girl.

até!

To start a series on Brazilian street food with anything other than the pastel (or, to give it its proper name, “pastel de feira”, literally “street market pie”) would be folly.   Let’s be clear:  as much as Brazil is one country, she is also many countries.   Each region has its own cuisine and its own traditions .. and of course, its own street food.   The beaches in Rio have the Globo biscuit (which will feature here in due course) and the streets of Salvador have the acarajé (which won’t:  I’m afraid I just can’t eat acarajé as the dendê oil makes me ill, and besides, others have written about it far better than I ever could).   But everywhere – or at least, everywhere I’ve visited – has the pastel.   And with good reason.

The pastel is, in its purest form, an envelope of wheat-flour pastry, filled with something tasty.   The traditional fillings are white cheese, minced meat or hearts-of-palm;  fancy-pants gourmet variations include salt cod, shrimp and cream cheese or even sweet fillings like guava paste or cinnamon-banana.   The pastel is crimped at the edges and fried in very hot oil until the outside of the pastry blisters and the inside is hothothot.

In Brasília, it is always said that the best pastel in town is served at the bus station.   The Pastelaria Viçosa, to be exact.   Ignore the less-than-elegant surroundings;   here, the boys turn out thousands of pasteis a day and their fame is deserved.   The house special, two pasteis and a cup of sugar-cane juice, is just R$2.75 — which is $2.20 NZ or $1.60 US.  In this incredibly expensive city, this might just be your best value calories-per-buck feast.

Turnover here is brisk and the pasteis are super-fresh.  Eaten standing up at the counter, the first bite will be as every first bite of a pastel should be:   a little puff of steam rising as you break the pastry shell with your teeth.   Don’t worry if the locals stare at the sight of a foreigner:  within a bite, you’ll be transported.

In São Paulo, the Mercado Municipal is the place to go.    There are a number of pastel places there but the one we chose was the Bar do Mané.   A cheese pastel here runs to R$5, nearly twice the price of the Viçosa, but it’s a classy affair:  larger, far more cheese and you can actually sit down to eat it, showering pastry crumbs at every bite.

Your first few bites of a cheese pastel will yield little more than pastry but as you work your way down, you’ll hit the mother-lode.   The cheese is like a salty but mild-cured cheddar with the same propensity to separate as it melts .. so you’ll need to watch for the odd spot of oil.      This ain’t diet food.   Calorie estimates I found on the internet say you’re looking at about 250 for an average pastel, but I simply cannot see how this can be true .. I reckon it’s more like about a million calories.   But worth every sinful, salty bite.

Finding a good pastel is a question of asking a local, but visitors can find a good one pretty easily.   The rockstar says you should look for pasteis that are fried to your order, not ones that are pre-fried and left in a warmer;   and my personal tip would be that if the pasteis are good, there will be a crowd of people in the place eating them, any time of the day or night.

Pastelaria Viçosa, ground floor, Rodoviária do Plano Piloto (Central Bus Station) Brasília

Bar do Mané, Mercado Municipal Paulistano, Rua da Cantareira, São Paulo

so, erm, yeah.  about that gap in posting.  here’s what i’ve been up to, in pictures:

(this photo was not taken by me but by my super-talented mum.  i love it, so i have posted it here.)

first two brasília, at the sound shell;  last four padre bernardo, which is where the rockstar’s family have a farm.  and where his party was.  more coming, promise.