lakland

Hey JohnnyD! Wow! You did a truly amazing job fixing some feijoada! My mouth was watering indeed! I'm not sure if you can remember but most places serve feijoada twice a week: wednesdays and saturdays... Though I love it, I believe the high consumption of feijoada is one of the reasons we still are a third-world country! Let me explain with a question: Can you work after a hearty full size feijoada with all the works (torresmo which is deep fried pork rind-chicharrones, farofa, couve-manteiga, bisteca, caipirinha etc)??? I can't...Every time I have some feijoada I call in sick... Fortunately I'm my own boss otherwise I would have been fired long ago! So your mom was from São Vicente? Interesting... It was the first city I lived in since I came back 6 years ago. Back then I was doing some missionary work with some guys from California and working at some sushi places. Regarding seafood and fish, there are some different species here. IMHO I don't like the fish here compared to what we have in the U.S. or to what is available in Japan. Despite the fact we have a huge coast, fish is not so abundant and quality not as good. For example: I was used to serve very nice halibut in the States, usuzukuri style. Very thin, almost transparent slices but with firm flesh. First time I got some halibut here I thought it was spoiled cause the flesh was very soft and mushy... slices would fall apart for usuzukuri. Then I took the fish back to the place where I bought it and complained about the quality. The owner of the place thought I was insane or something like that...Later I learned that fish from warm waters are completely different from the ones from cold waters... Tuna is so so... I was told the best yellowfin tuna is exported to...guess where??? The U.S. Well, this is globalization! Nowadays I'm very much into Chinese food... As I said earlier, I'm very excited to go to Vancouver to take a culinary arts program on Cantonese food! Yum! Isn't it ironic for a guy that would get mad when someone would order chop-suey??? Abração! (big hug) eduardo

Thanks a lot Johnnyd! This forum is THE coolest thing about food on the net! Where did you live here in Brazil? São Paulo? I believe most people in the U.S have heard about the "churrascarias"...If you guys have no idea whatsoever what this is all about, think of it as a huge bbq meat orgy! You just sit at the table and have no need to order anything except drinks: the waiters then start coming to your table with huge skewers shaped like swords with several kinds of different cuts of bbq beef, chicken, sausage, lamb, fish, pork and you name it... all you can eat! Oh! And I love it! BTW , nowadays they have sushi too... But, being a sushi-chef myself, i haven't been bold enough to try any of that crappy kind of sushi yet... Here comes another story: soon after I arrived back here I realized that most Brazilians had no idea about the difference between Japanese and Chinese food... Once a customer tried to order some sort of Chinese-American Chop Suey at my sushi-bar... Though I got furious on the inside, I tried to calm down myself and explained him that we were a Japanese restaurant. After that I believe he ordered some Yakisoba or anything that was closer to Chinese food. The same kind of situation repeated itself over and over. Then I decided to open an ASIAN restaurant!!! Since most people don't know the difference... oh ! Whatever! Though I was trained as a sushi-chef we now serve both Japanese and Chinese food... I agree that our Chinese is not very authentic but I've been planning to take the Asian Culinary Arts Program in Vancouver, BC in a few months...THis way I hope we'll grow out of just Kun Pao Chicken and Chow Fan! Answering your question, apparently bluefin tuna doesn't come to these waters... I have never seen it here. Cheers, eduardo

Hi all!!! Greetings from Brazil! Here in Brazil we have the largest Japanese concentration outside Japan (me included!). Nowadays we can find most of the ingredients found in Japan and in the U.S. However, though we have some excellent chefs, I find that the food is not comparable to what we see in the States, for example. By that I mean the top Japanese restaurants, American and Brazilian, side by side. Bad places on the other hand are quite ubiquitous. Sushi for example: finding a good piece of blue fin tuna is virtually impossible here. When I first arrived here from California I got pretty frustrated when people told me that my sushi was bad: they were used to cold sushi rice (I mean really COLD) and back then my sushi was always prepared with warm rice. Another guy even complained and told me that I was doing wrong cause sashimi slices were too thick (he was used to paper-thin slices of salmon-sashimi and thought of it as the REAL sashimi). Just my 2 cents, eduardo

Hi all! Greetings from Brazil! I've been planning to go to China to take some cooking lessons. Not just one of those one day programs but a more extended one. Since I don't speak mandarim and I believe there is no time to learn it, I'd rather go to a place where they could speak English... Please let me know if any of you know about some cooking school that fits that criteria (maybe in Hong Kong?). Any info would be greatly appreciated. Best regards, eduardo