Book: Oxford Anthology of the Brazilian Short Story
Recipes: The Brazilian Kitchen by Leticia Moreinos Shwartz
Enrolado do Bife com Frango
(Chicken Beef Roulade)
1 flank steak, about 1 1/2 lbs - butterflied
3/4 lb ground chicken
1/2 cup each, red and yellow pepper, finely chopped
1 small carrot, grated
4 cloves garlic, pressed
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 chicken bouillon cube, crumbled
Place ground chicken in a large bowl, stir in peppers, carrot, garlic, and parsley. Mix 1 tbsp of olive oil, soy sauce, and bouillon. Spread the chicken mixture over the butterflied beef.
Roll the beef around the filling and tie securely with kitchen twine. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 1-2 days (I skipped this step through bad timing, but I'm sure it would have spread the flavors nicely). Remove from the fridge at least 30 minutes before cooking to allow the roulade to reach room temperature.
Heat 3 tbsp of olive oil in a skillet over high heat. Brown the beef on all sides, creating a nice crisp crust, about 2 minutes on each side. Allow the meat to rest for 10 minutes, then place the meat at the center of a sheet of aluminum foil and wrap it tightly. Place the foil packet seam side up in a baking dish and bake at 225 degrees. The recipe says to cook it this way for 2 hours. I felt it was a little overdone for my taste and would probably cook it for about 1.5 hours next time, being careful to check that the chicken is completely cooked.
Open the foil, save any juices that have accumulated, and slice the meat into 3/4 inch slices. Serve with the juices drizzled on top.
Apart from the meat being overcooked for my taste, the flavor of the beef with its chicken stuffing was surprisingly good. Everyone seemed to enjoy and a few even requested seconds.
Torta Capixaba
(Baked Crab Frittata)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 scallion, thinly sliced at angles
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 lb lump crab meat (you can also use any combination of shrimp, scallops, or other seafood)
2 plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced
4 large eggs
2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Sliced green pepper and tomato for garnish
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium high heat and saute the onions and scallions until they are soft, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for another minute.
Season the crab meat with salt and pepper and add it, with the tomatoes and parsley to the onion mixture. Whisk the eggs. You can bake this in one large pie pan, or you can make individual frittatas using small ramekins. I poured a bit of the whisked egg into the bottom of each ramekin, filled 3/4 full with crab mixture, then topped with the remaining egg and garnished with tomato and pepper.
The recipe says to cook it for 20 to 30 minutes until the eggs are set, but I guess I like my eggs a little more well done than that, I baked mine for about 45 minutes. Serve warm and enjoy.
This was by far the winning recipe of the night. Due to bad timing and competing oven temperatures, we barely ate any of it. It was supposed to be a sort of appetizer and I recommend making it first thing before your guests arrive. As it was, we'd already loaded up on cheese and crackers waiting for the beef to finish and I only popped the frittatas in the oven at about 9:30 (it might have been closer to 10). However, it's a beautiful dish and a real crowd pleaser.
About the stories:
The book is arranged chronologically, so I got the post-Colonial stories first. The best one that I read was called "The Fortune Teller" by Machado de Assis and it's a clear warning not to tempt the fates by asking your future. In a torrid love triangle, a man's best friend and his wife both consult the same fortune teller to ensure that their life of lies will continue happy. She assures them, separately, that they will be happy and she collects a large fee from each. Let's just say, she only tells them what they want to hear. This would have been a great story for the summer's critical lens about a man's fate being controlled by what he believes rather than by external forces. In the end, duped by a false sense of success, the husband kills them both.
The irony lives in Camillo's struggle to overcome his curiosity of the fortune teller. He works himself full circle from pure scepticism that Rita would even contemplate doing such a thing, to believing that it is fate that stops his carriage right at the fortune teller's door. He convinces himself through fear and the desire for reassurance that consulting the old woman will protect him. His initial reaction to his friend's summons, run away!, is ignored because he feels invulnerable. He walks blindly into the friend's house and into his own death.
Such is fate.
