Tropeiro beans from Tocantins mix country cuisine with Amazonian flavors – 05/15/2023 – Recipes by Marcão

In the Southeast, we tend to associate tropeiro beans with cuisine from Minas Gerais — and, more broadly, with country cuisine, which also covers the interior of São Paulo and part of the Midwest. But the tropeiro also appears in the food of the Northeast and even in the North of the country.

More than a recipe, tropeiro is a way of serving beans: without broth, with flour, usually with some pork meat.

In Minas, it uses red beans and corn or cassava flour, as well as sausage, cabbage, egg and crackling. In Bahia, it is made with the same black-eyed peas as acarajé, fine cassava flour, less meat and no cabbage.

A few days ago, I met the Tocantins tropeiro bean. It was at the MST fair, in São Paulo, with a food court with regional restaurants from almost all over Brazil.

I ended up in Tocantins because there was no queue, but I was pleasantly surprised: the food mixes rustic flavors with Amazonian and Northeastern elements.

The tropeiro from Tocantins is made with very fine cowpeas and puba flour, also called flour d’água.

This flour, common in the North and Northeast, is extracted from cassava which, after being harvested, is stored submerged in water. The root ferments and develops that characteristic smell of sour starch.

Puba flour undergoes a very rustic milling process, which preserves grains that are quite resistant to bite —in other words, hard. It’s a typical texture of Amazonian food, which is delicious once you get used to it.

The tropeiro from the MST fair —according to what I was told, a recipe from Bico do Papagaio, in the far north of the state, on the borders with Pará and Maranhão— was served with cilantro and chives, pepper and a lemon to squeeze.

I left the restaurant and went to the Tocantins stall to buy the ingredients to reproduce the dish.

I took puba flour and an owl bean, with tiny grains and quick cooking. There were also two other varieties, climbing beans and bush beans.

These are beans that you will hardly find in stores in São Paulo. Water flour is easier to find, but everything can be replaced: beans, flour, meats and even lemon.

As I said above: tropeiro is not a recipe, it is a style of serving beans.

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TROPEIRO DO TOCANTINS

Performance: 3 to 4 servings

Difficulty: easy

Ingredients

200 g of string beans

150 g of bacon in pieces

150 g pork sausage

1/2 sliced ​​red onion

2 minced garlic cloves

200 g of water flour

4 small kale leaves, chopped (or 2 large leaves)

salt to taste

Garnishes: cilantro, chives, chili sauce and lemon

Way of doing

1. Cook, drain and reserve the beans.

2. Fry the bacon in its own fat. Add the sausage and fry until golden.

3. In the same pan, sauté the onion and garlic. Add the drained beans and flour. Sauté for a few minutes, until heated through. Add the cabbage, mix well and turn off the heat. Adjust the salt.

4. Serve with garnishes and white rice.

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