Plenty puts the Amazon on the plate in Inhotim – 10/02/2023 – Food

Chefs from the Amazon taught original food techniques at Fartura, the oldest gastronomy festival in Brazil, which took place between September 30th and October 1st at Inhotim, in the city of Brumadinho, Minas Gerais.

Next to the colorful walls of “Invenção da Cor, Penetrável Magic Square #5, De Luxe”, by Hélio Oiticica, the second edition of the event combined stalls from local producers, restaurants, practical classes and talks with experts about what was eaten at the Brazil before colonization.

According to chef Roberto Smeraldi, who carried out studies on the topic for the Amazon 2030 sustainable development initiative, Amazonian cuisines —in the plural— were born from the encounter between different peoples.

The diet on the Negro River, in the north of Amazonas, mixed knowledge of the Arawak, Baniwa-Baré, Tukano and Yanomami. In Pará, it came from the clash between indigenous people, enslaved people and Portuguese. In Acre, it was born from indigenous, northeastern and Lebanese roots, from the era of the rubber boom.

Therefore, techniques and foods from each place vary from one another, says Smeraldi. Indigenous people from the west, for example, find the bacuri fruit strange, while villages in Mato Grosso are unfamiliar with tucupi — fermented cassava juice that is traditional in other parts of the region.

This diversity jumped to everyday products for Brazilians, such as açaí and chocolate. Even the cheese bread, made with cassava starch, an ingredient using indigenous techniques, was born from the encounter with the original peoples.

Even though the influence was erased by violence during colonization, much of the original food culture managed to be preserved. Kamirrã Waurá, indigenous chief and cook from Xingu, in Mato Grosso, showed at Fartura how her people make cassava starch.

Called beiju, the ingredient is produced from grated cassava and dried in the sun. The festival menu included a version of beiju in farofa to accompany beef ribs smoked in peach wood.

“Our food is all natural,” says the chief. In addition to cassava, the Waurá’s meals include poultry and fish, which go through a smoking process using moquém, wooden grills whose embers remove moisture from the food. Once ground, they can last up to 30 days.

The fish, seasoned with bird pepper and water hyacinth salt, can also be wrapped in coconut leaves, in a preparation known as pokeka.

According to chef Roberto Smeraldi, the technique encapsulates the fish’s collagen and keeps it soft in texture, even with less humidity. “It’s a preparation based on traditional knowledge,” he says.

Pokeka is also used by chef Leo Modesto, from Sítio Mearim, in Curuçá (PA), hundreds of kilometers from Xingu. He learned the process from his family and uses it as a way to contribute to the cuisine of his ancestors.

“As a cook in Pará, I’ve made a lot of steaks and fries. But there came a time when I wanted to make dishes from my culture,” he says, who created a project in the state to immerse visitors in the cassava cycle, from planting to making tucupi. .

At Fartura, Modesto shared a class with the Waurá chief to teach how to prepare mangrove fruits with black tucupi and jambu with beiju. After each session, the public had the option to purchase the dish made by the chefs in the demonstrations.

According to Carolina Daher, curator of Fartura together with chef Morena Leite, the choice of original food follows themes that were already being worked on by the festival: in particular, the origin of the food until the preparation of the dish.

“Nothing more original than bringing real Brazilian food,” says Daher. “We need to look back and understand all the technology and all the methods that came before.”

The idea appears on the stands of the festival’s restaurants, which contained at least one recipe with ingredients from the Amazon. On Dona Lucinha’s menu, for example, there was a duck cake with cassava, designed by chef Debora Shornik, from Caxiri, in Manaus.

Originally from São Paulo, but based in the Amazon, Shornik says that she learned a lot from the riverside and indigenous cooks with whom she worked in Novo Airão (AM). This contact translated into respect for original ingredients, she says. “I’ve never used vinegar since I discovered tucupi, which can also be used to season salads.”

Bela Gil, GNT presenter and owner of the Camélia Òdòdó restaurant in São Paulo, was also present at Fartura, mediating two tables that discussed original foods.

According to the chef, this type of food offers an alternative way of consuming. To preserve food culture, it is necessary not only to know about food, but also to eat it, says the chef.

“Eating is a way of perpetuating original techniques that can reverse the future of environmental catastrophe”, he says.