I’ve had a couple different versions including the packaged kind sold in the supermarket. However, there is this lady at the feira each week that makes the most amazing paçoca around.
I seriously want to ask to go home with her so she can teach me how to make all the Brazilian sweets that fill her cart – cocada, doce de leite and the list goes on and on.
My lack of original recipes and learning to make popular foods here is kind of becoming a trend. Before our move, I had all these visions of learning to cook and bake traditional foods. What I’ve found out since being here is that these days most of the people of my generation buy these kinds of treats, they don’t make them.
Now, there have been some exceptions. I have been taught a few tips. I will get around to making my own brigadeiro one day!
I have no doubt anyone going to the US would have the same experience. There seems to only be a certain part of the population my age that loves cooking as much as I do. I guess I am just now learning that it is the same around Brazil.
However, I want to go back with at least some evidence that I’ve experienced another culture’s cooking and baking.
Okay, back to paçoca.
The only thing to compare it to in the US would be peanut butter fudge filled with ground peanuts and even that doesn’t describe it correctly. It is the perfect balance of sweet and salty.
According to my research in our area paçoca is made of ground peanuts and sugar. However, the one sold by my favorite lady at her sweets cart has to have something else in it.
I’ve looked up recipes that simply call for peanuts and sugar pressed into a pan and then cut into pieces. I think this may be how the type sold in supermarkets is made because it is really dry and crumbly, but the one I like is really soft.
My first guess at an additional ingredient was sweetened condensed milk, but I am not sure. If you happen to have a recipe, please send it my way. I want to add this to my Christmas baking list.
Until then, I’ll just have to stock up from the sweets lady and figure out how to kindly ask her in Portuguese – “Take me home and teach me!”
12 comments:
I love paçoca too!! I have never had homemade, only the store stuff, but we have some kick-butt homemade pé de moleque here that I love. Yes, I agree, few young people cook (at least not beyond regular rice and beans) and Brazilian recipes are notoriously light on specifics. One recipe I saw for pão de queijo on the side of a polvilho azedo bag said mix ingredients and bake (no time, temperature). Ironically I have found better cookbooks of Brazilian food in English rather than Portuguese. I get the impression that people learn all the secrets sitting at Vovô´s knee and watching, which does not translate well to recipes. Sometimes the cooking shows help (Ana Maria Braga or Daniel Bork), but I have found some good recipes on the internet. I have a good one for moqueca and another for caldo de mandioca that I like that I can pass on to you.
That looks so good! I would love to learn to cook, and according to Sidnei, if we go to Brazil, he is very excited for his mom to teach me how. Ha. But seriously I have fallen in love with their pastries and desserts. Although simple, my favorite is the passion fruit mosse, it is soooo good!
corinne - I would love to have those recipes. You can email them to me if you want blondieinbrazil at gmail dot com. I'm always wondering what you can do with mandioca besides fry or bake it. I've found a few good recipes on Maria's Cookbook and Brazil Ethnic Cuisine (on my sidebar), but I am always searching for more. Pé de moleque is on my list of feira foods to feature too. I love it!
Stephanie - Passion fruit mousse is one of my favorites! At the bakery near my apartment they make it in little cups with a layer of passion fruit and a layer of chocolate mousse. It is great!
Well, I dont like paçoca, but wouldnt it be kinda ironic how brazilians SUCK at peanut butter but can make good paçoca?
As for doce de leite... I think its kinda hard to make a GOOD ONE at home. Homemade doce de leite involves guess what Lori? Yup, sweet condensed milk.
talking about that, I remember once reading you complaining about so many desserts in Brazil having sweet condensed milk. If you STOP to think about it, you will notice TRADITIONAL desserts dont use it.
The fact its all an AWESOME marketing by Nestle back in the 50s, 60s, when they started inventing easy-to-make dessert recipes and puting in the back of sweet condensed milk cans.
Leite Moça (the Nestle brand) still rules brazilian market, and its recipes, propagated for 50 years, have dominated brazilian dessert cuisine.
Lori: search the internet for recipes of "ESCONDIDINHO" (diminutive of "escondido", hidden)
Escondidinho´s are a type of pie/soufle whatever, made with mandioca.
example: escondidinho de frango
http://receitas.maisvoce.globo.com/Receitas/Aves/0,,REC24270-7772-11+ESCONDIDINHO+DE+FRANGO,00.html
notice that besides being fried or baked, you can also smash mandioca like potatos. And many recipes are made like that.
(beware, many recipes tell you to put the cooked mandioca in the blender. But its so "pasty" that cheap blenders with weak electrical engines may fail or break from the effort)
sorry, the correct link for the above recipe is
http://receitas.maisvoce.globo.com/Receitas/Aves/0,,REC24270-7772-11+ESCONDIDINHO+DE+FRANGO,00.html
Yes, those food companies and their marketing can be quite powerful.
I've read recipes that you simply boil scm to make doce de leite. I read something about how our regular brand back home, Eaglebrand, has a warning on the side that says not to boil it in the can. I guess many Mexicans immigrating to the US simply boil the whole can in water to make it.
Thanks for the recipe and the site! I'll have to explore it some more. Looks great.
Escondidinho is really yummy - it is like a Brazilian version of shepard´s pie. Yes, I think it is ironic that with all the uses for peanuts, no peanut butter!! Same with corn - there is several verisons of ground corn, but none with quite the same consistency of US corn meal. I had never tried caldo de mandioca until moving to Minas and it is my favorite winter soup now.
Doce de leite is not hard to make - just boil a can of sweetened condensed milk in a pressure cooker half full of water for about 20 minutes. But, I like to buy it already made, especially because it is a speciality of Minas and it tends to be a better consistency than the homemade stuff.
Corinne, the best doce de leite comes from Uruguay. Living in Rio Grande do Sul, its pretty common for me to eat uruguayan doce de leite.
I do love shepherds pie. Interesting that you say that about the corn meal. I found it to be the same way. I like the fried polenta here, but I used to make polenta at home as a warm breakfast cereal and I haven't liked the kind I've made from cornmeal here. The soup sounds great!
Hi,
I just tried to make paçoca, and I wrote about it on my blog:
http://southamericanfood.about.com/b/2008/10/20/brazilian-peanut-candy.htm
I also found this great video of a Brazilian woman making pacoca:
http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:Ze2DmtenpYgJ:hk.truveo.com/Paçoca/id/2557240691+pacoca+receta&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=safari
She seems very authentic, but she does not use manioc meal - only powdered milk, peanuts, and brown sugar.
There seem to be a lot of different ways to do it, but I think the special ingredient is definitely the manioc meal. Condensed milk is optional, but makes it less crumbly and more like the commercially made kind.
Hope that helps!
Hi marian! Thank you so much for sharing your link with me. I can't wait to try it. Greatly appreciated!!
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