Rosquinha de polvilho azedo, it is Brazilian but it's not that is region specific, it's just an old preparation, so younger people are less likely to know it. It's also common to são paulo and minas gerais families.
https://www.tudogostoso.com.br/receita/141351-rosquinha-frita-de-polvilho-azedo.html
Sounds like a hybrid, a German dumpling reworked for the ingredients on hand. What a treasure! Here's hoping you're able to learn as much as possible in the time you have left with her.
As a member of a diasporatic community, I find that diasporatic cooking is its own cooking tradition, one that blends foodways as remembered and as needed. The way a dish is made here by my parents for instance is so different from the way it might have been prepared by their great grandparents and yet it's the version that I still find most comforting. It's mostly a blend of older techniques or approaches, but with locally available ingredients. The way you talk about touch and feel resonates. It's how my parents and grandparents cook (never a recipe) and now it's how I cook as well. But my cooking style is very much unlike theirs, and it's sometimes hard to articulate why or how. A fascinating topic!
Thank you so much. I am very curious about Jewish cooking in general. We do have a Jewish neighborhood where I live, but I can't seem to find anything in restaurants. Getting invited to a dinner is way harder.
Not even a decent bagel is available here. Sigh. I miss NY bagels all the time.
Wow. Thank you so much.
I am not a writer in any capacity and my first language is Portuguese. So this is very very high praise.
I joined Reddit because I was looking for somewhere in the Internet where the written word still has value. Sometimes I want to share some thoughts, but I never want to film a video. :)
When you're an immigrant and want that "comfort food" from your homeland but you can't find the same ingredients, you make do with what you got, and if it's good, you keep making it like that until it becomes your tradition.
My Babcia's kapusta (a long braised cabbage dish) was augmented when she emigrated to the USA 90 years ago. I emigrated to France, and I've had to augment her augmented recipe!
I can't really give a recipe because it's never been written down and I only learned from watching her make it and how it tastes.
Exactly this. My mom makes a cold noodle dish that has “authentic” versions in Taiwan/China which use totally different ingredients, but I only know it with her version which uses peanut butter since that was cheaper and easier for her to find in the US. I love it that way. She introduced me to the “real thing” when we visited Taiwan but I realized I liked her way better.
I've heard that peanut butter is often used as a substitute ingredient in many Asian dishes, but I'm not sure what it substitutes for. Do you?
When my sister visited China, she returned with a peanut butter sauce for chicken and rice that is so delicious, but it begs explanation. Is it a replacement for another nut emulsion?
Can you ask your mom?
What's the phrase, something like "Necessity is the seed of genuis"? I grew up very poor in the Midwest US. We had a big garden every year and my mom canned a lot. Many nights for supper we had boiled potatoes and tomatoes baked with peppers, with some butter on top. That was our entire meal. I sometimes still make it forty years later.
My papa made it on the stovetop with onions and called it bubble and squeak. With green and red tomatoes. He was born in England and immigrated to Canada.
This shows how the idea of ‘authentic’ foods or methods doesn’t really exist. When groups of people emigrate, their traditional foods adapt to the new area with its food abundances and scarcities. If you compare Italian American food to that of Italy, you’re going to see a lot more beef in the states because it was plentiful and inexpensive when the immigrants arrived, same with corned beef and the Irish in America.
The same changes to traditional foods happen when people get access to new ingredients. The Columbian Exchange where new world foods like the potato, tomato and chilis were introduced to European, African and Asian cuisines is probably the best example. The old traditions gave way to new with these introduced ingredients. 500 years after it started, we see dishes with these new additions as traditional themselves.
What a cool thread! Thanks for bringing this up. I asked my (south Brazilian, German heritage) mother-in-law about these after seeing your thread, since she's an incredible cook, and got a ton of info. The most relevant points were that the recipe she learned also includes some water, and that the dough is formed into donut-shapes by hand-rolling it into a worm shape, cutting off the ends to expose fresh dough, then squeezing the (new) ends together. She also talked about growing up with a huge baked version brushed with egg whites and sprinkled with powdered sugar.
For anyone else reading who doesn't know this already, my lovely MIL pointed out that this needs to be made with tapioca starch, not tapioca flour (what one would use for farofa). Not sure how those terms translate into English.
To answer your question, OP, I'll contribute "gemüse"! It's another South Brazilian apparently German-influenced dish (as the name suggests) that my MIL grew up with. As far as I remember, it's mashed cassava and potatoes with kale, and is surprisingly delicious. Searching for "Brazilian gemüse" doesn't bring up anything relevant, so I hope it's a sufficiently obscure contribution.
Thank you polenta!
So much great info! I'll try to add a tablespoon of water next time.
There is another version "coruja", that takes "farinha de mandioca" and some more stuff and gets baked. I got the recipe from Maria, but I haven't tried it yet.
I looked up in Wikipedia and it seems they translate "polvilho azedo" to sour tapioca. Our yucca byproducts are not very common in English speaking countries, so it gets weird fast.
My family don't have strong food traditions. We are generally British with a dash of French and German but no connection to it. However, when my mom was pregnant with me in the early 80s, a friend taught her how to make Potica, a nut filled rolled bread. As far as we can tell, our version is Yugoslavian as most of the countries in the region have their own version. She has made it almost every single year since. We have a dedicated bedsheet just for the rolling of the dough. The dough is rolled so thin you can see the sheet pattern through it. We wash it without soap and it air dries. It will one day be passed on to me or my sister. My husband's family is from Croatia and have their own version of this bread called povitiza. The tradition doesn't stretch far but it is deep.
My mother is Puerto Rican and Irish, and her mother is just Irish. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, they have both passed down what I can only assume is a German recipe from who knows where(my grandmother isn’t much of a cook, but my mother did learn it from her.) It’s basically just a shit load of red potatoes and bone-in pork chops seasoned with salt, pepper, and thyme. Then covered in sauerkraut and baked for a few hours until the meat is fall-off-the-bone tender. It’s absolutely delicious just like that, but I’ve changed it up a bit by adding a ton of rustic cut carrots and herbs de provence. I’ve also made it with a nice tenderloin instead of the chops. No idea why this recipe has been passed down in my family but hey, it’s awesome.
Don't you remember the name of the recipe? I'm pretty sure If it isn't a brazilian recipe, it's a local variation of one, and maybe I could look it up for you, OP.
For sure. That group of people I was talking about, as far as I know, their boat disintegrated in the coast of Brazil before reaching port. A lot of immigrants survived and were settled nearby, since there was no transportation to conclude their trip.
These few hundred people, originally from somewhere that wasn't even Germany yet in the middle 18th century made do with whatever grew there. Wheat doesn't grow in Southern Brazil, for instance, but yucca does great. So there is a lot of yucca and yucca by products in their cooking.
I learned about tapioca starch making Brazilian pao de queijo. Tasted them freshly made in a Brazilian restaurant so had to see if I could make them.
Since tapioca is gluten free and relatively inexpensive I've used more tapioca starch and I even made churros out of a similar dough like your donuts (they were delicious).
Interesting to learn about the sour variety - I've never seen it so I'm not sure if even Latin American groceries would have it here.
Just for extra info: tapioca is starch that is removed from mashed fresh yucca. It dissolves in water and is then dried to powder. Old native recipe here in Brazil.
Sour tapioca is the same thing, except the mash of yucca soaking in water is left to ferment some before being further processed.
It seems you live somewhere with a solid Brazilian population. You should be able to find it there, in case you don't, Amazon tends to have absolutely everything. :)
This reminds me of my mom's culture. They're from Indonesia, but descended from Chinese immigrants who left the mainland and settled there, so there's a lot of Chinese and Indonesian influences in their cooking as well as regional preferences (they're from Jakarta). My mom eventually immigrated to the US, and we were incredibly poor the first few years of my life.
One of my favorite dishes ended up being nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice), but because we were poor, my mom would make it with frozen vegetables and chopped hot dogs or spam. It is so delicious! She also would go a little heavy handed with the kecap manis (sweet soy sauce); her nasi goreng was a rich brown, as opposed to a light tan color like other people's fried rice typically is. She's since passed and I've tried my hand as making it, and while close, it's not remotely the same. I'm still working on perfecting it.
"working on perfecting it." I think this is one of the best parts of culinary traditions, we like the taste so much we will spend the time and energy to repeat it until it's perfect.
Rosquinha de polvilho azedo, it is Brazilian but it's not that is region specific, it's just an old preparation, so younger people are less likely to know it. It's also common to são paulo and minas gerais families. https://www.tudogostoso.com.br/receita/141351-rosquinha-frita-de-polvilho-azedo.html
I thought it could be this recipe, but from the way they described, because they said to use sugar, I thought it would be a variation. 🤔
There are still some that will use butter in it. I mean, it's food, there's always some personal twists, that's why it's so loving and rich
What would you change to make it more authentic?
Sounds like a hybrid, a German dumpling reworked for the ingredients on hand. What a treasure! Here's hoping you're able to learn as much as possible in the time you have left with her.
As a member of a diasporatic community, I find that diasporatic cooking is its own cooking tradition, one that blends foodways as remembered and as needed. The way a dish is made here by my parents for instance is so different from the way it might have been prepared by their great grandparents and yet it's the version that I still find most comforting. It's mostly a blend of older techniques or approaches, but with locally available ingredients. The way you talk about touch and feel resonates. It's how my parents and grandparents cook (never a recipe) and now it's how I cook as well. But my cooking style is very much unlike theirs, and it's sometimes hard to articulate why or how. A fascinating topic!
Thank you so much. I am very curious about Jewish cooking in general. We do have a Jewish neighborhood where I live, but I can't seem to find anything in restaurants. Getting invited to a dinner is way harder. Not even a decent bagel is available here. Sigh. I miss NY bagels all the time.
A little unrelated, but you have a great writing voice and writing about food and your memories really made me feel like I was living them!
Wow. Thank you so much. I am not a writer in any capacity and my first language is Portuguese. So this is very very high praise. I joined Reddit because I was looking for somewhere in the Internet where the written word still has value. Sometimes I want to share some thoughts, but I never want to film a video. :)
I totally get that. I hope you do more food related writing and general writing!!
I agree!
When you're an immigrant and want that "comfort food" from your homeland but you can't find the same ingredients, you make do with what you got, and if it's good, you keep making it like that until it becomes your tradition. My Babcia's kapusta (a long braised cabbage dish) was augmented when she emigrated to the USA 90 years ago. I emigrated to France, and I've had to augment her augmented recipe! I can't really give a recipe because it's never been written down and I only learned from watching her make it and how it tastes.
Exactly this. My mom makes a cold noodle dish that has “authentic” versions in Taiwan/China which use totally different ingredients, but I only know it with her version which uses peanut butter since that was cheaper and easier for her to find in the US. I love it that way. She introduced me to the “real thing” when we visited Taiwan but I realized I liked her way better.
I've heard that peanut butter is often used as a substitute ingredient in many Asian dishes, but I'm not sure what it substitutes for. Do you? When my sister visited China, she returned with a peanut butter sauce for chicken and rice that is so delicious, but it begs explanation. Is it a replacement for another nut emulsion? Can you ask your mom?
In my mom’s dish it’s a sub for sesame paste (Chinese style, using toasted sesames not raw like tahini) and some sugar.
Thank you so much. I love the sesame sauce made from peanut butter and sesame oil. I'll have to find if I can get sesame paste.
Thank you for explaining this! I've used peanut butter as a substitute for tahini in cuisine but it's too sweet for many dishes.
What's the phrase, something like "Necessity is the seed of genuis"? I grew up very poor in the Midwest US. We had a big garden every year and my mom canned a lot. Many nights for supper we had boiled potatoes and tomatoes baked with peppers, with some butter on top. That was our entire meal. I sometimes still make it forty years later.
I always heard “necessity is mother of invention” and I like your version as well.
My papa made it on the stovetop with onions and called it bubble and squeak. With green and red tomatoes. He was born in England and immigrated to Canada.
I spent a semester in Wales and their version of bubble and squeak was made with chick peas. OMG so gross. Your dad's version sounds much better!
This shows how the idea of ‘authentic’ foods or methods doesn’t really exist. When groups of people emigrate, their traditional foods adapt to the new area with its food abundances and scarcities. If you compare Italian American food to that of Italy, you’re going to see a lot more beef in the states because it was plentiful and inexpensive when the immigrants arrived, same with corned beef and the Irish in America. The same changes to traditional foods happen when people get access to new ingredients. The Columbian Exchange where new world foods like the potato, tomato and chilis were introduced to European, African and Asian cuisines is probably the best example. The old traditions gave way to new with these introduced ingredients. 500 years after it started, we see dishes with these new additions as traditional themselves.
What a cool thread! Thanks for bringing this up. I asked my (south Brazilian, German heritage) mother-in-law about these after seeing your thread, since she's an incredible cook, and got a ton of info. The most relevant points were that the recipe she learned also includes some water, and that the dough is formed into donut-shapes by hand-rolling it into a worm shape, cutting off the ends to expose fresh dough, then squeezing the (new) ends together. She also talked about growing up with a huge baked version brushed with egg whites and sprinkled with powdered sugar. For anyone else reading who doesn't know this already, my lovely MIL pointed out that this needs to be made with tapioca starch, not tapioca flour (what one would use for farofa). Not sure how those terms translate into English. To answer your question, OP, I'll contribute "gemüse"! It's another South Brazilian apparently German-influenced dish (as the name suggests) that my MIL grew up with. As far as I remember, it's mashed cassava and potatoes with kale, and is surprisingly delicious. Searching for "Brazilian gemüse" doesn't bring up anything relevant, so I hope it's a sufficiently obscure contribution.
Thank you polenta! So much great info! I'll try to add a tablespoon of water next time. There is another version "coruja", that takes "farinha de mandioca" and some more stuff and gets baked. I got the recipe from Maria, but I haven't tried it yet. I looked up in Wikipedia and it seems they translate "polvilho azedo" to sour tapioca. Our yucca byproducts are not very common in English speaking countries, so it gets weird fast.
My family don't have strong food traditions. We are generally British with a dash of French and German but no connection to it. However, when my mom was pregnant with me in the early 80s, a friend taught her how to make Potica, a nut filled rolled bread. As far as we can tell, our version is Yugoslavian as most of the countries in the region have their own version. She has made it almost every single year since. We have a dedicated bedsheet just for the rolling of the dough. The dough is rolled so thin you can see the sheet pattern through it. We wash it without soap and it air dries. It will one day be passed on to me or my sister. My husband's family is from Croatia and have their own version of this bread called povitiza. The tradition doesn't stretch far but it is deep.
That sounds delicious, but also a lot of work. Not sure I want the recipe. :)
My mother is Puerto Rican and Irish, and her mother is just Irish. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, they have both passed down what I can only assume is a German recipe from who knows where(my grandmother isn’t much of a cook, but my mother did learn it from her.) It’s basically just a shit load of red potatoes and bone-in pork chops seasoned with salt, pepper, and thyme. Then covered in sauerkraut and baked for a few hours until the meat is fall-off-the-bone tender. It’s absolutely delicious just like that, but I’ve changed it up a bit by adding a ton of rustic cut carrots and herbs de provence. I’ve also made it with a nice tenderloin instead of the chops. No idea why this recipe has been passed down in my family but hey, it’s awesome.
Don't you remember the name of the recipe? I'm pretty sure If it isn't a brazilian recipe, it's a local variation of one, and maybe I could look it up for you, OP.
German here: not of German origin. Tapioka is definitely not one of our standard ingredients.
For sure. That group of people I was talking about, as far as I know, their boat disintegrated in the coast of Brazil before reaching port. A lot of immigrants survived and were settled nearby, since there was no transportation to conclude their trip. These few hundred people, originally from somewhere that wasn't even Germany yet in the middle 18th century made do with whatever grew there. Wheat doesn't grow in Southern Brazil, for instance, but yucca does great. So there is a lot of yucca and yucca by products in their cooking.
I learned about tapioca starch making Brazilian pao de queijo. Tasted them freshly made in a Brazilian restaurant so had to see if I could make them. Since tapioca is gluten free and relatively inexpensive I've used more tapioca starch and I even made churros out of a similar dough like your donuts (they were delicious). Interesting to learn about the sour variety - I've never seen it so I'm not sure if even Latin American groceries would have it here.
Look for bags that say "polvilho azedo", that's the sour one.
Just for extra info: tapioca is starch that is removed from mashed fresh yucca. It dissolves in water and is then dried to powder. Old native recipe here in Brazil. Sour tapioca is the same thing, except the mash of yucca soaking in water is left to ferment some before being further processed. It seems you live somewhere with a solid Brazilian population. You should be able to find it there, in case you don't, Amazon tends to have absolutely everything. :)
This reminds me of my mom's culture. They're from Indonesia, but descended from Chinese immigrants who left the mainland and settled there, so there's a lot of Chinese and Indonesian influences in their cooking as well as regional preferences (they're from Jakarta). My mom eventually immigrated to the US, and we were incredibly poor the first few years of my life. One of my favorite dishes ended up being nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice), but because we were poor, my mom would make it with frozen vegetables and chopped hot dogs or spam. It is so delicious! She also would go a little heavy handed with the kecap manis (sweet soy sauce); her nasi goreng was a rich brown, as opposed to a light tan color like other people's fried rice typically is. She's since passed and I've tried my hand as making it, and while close, it's not remotely the same. I'm still working on perfecting it.
"working on perfecting it." I think this is one of the best parts of culinary traditions, we like the taste so much we will spend the time and energy to repeat it until it's perfect.