Thursday, November 10, 2005

Tapioca

Perhaps the most common food ingredient in Belém's regional dishes is tapioca. Tapioca is made from ground manioc and is then transformed into a variety of foods, such as the snot-like goma in tacaca or as a tasty ice cream. The most common is simply called tapioca, which refers to what are best described as rolled Brazilian crêpes.

The imaginatively named Casa da Tapioca is a restaurant two blocks from my house where I pick up some take out dinner about once a week. In the photo below, you can see the process.


The ladies begin by scooping some finely ground tapioca from the big plastic container and then sifting it onto a hot round griddle, where it cooks for about three minutes and is flipped half way through. Once the manioc tortilla/crêpe is ready, it is filled with a variety of condiments. The most basic is butter. My usual order is one turkey, cheese, and oregano and one ham and cheese. I also get a dessert tapioca, alternating between a Romeo e Julieta (cheese and guava jelly) and coconut with sweetened condensed milk. They cost a little more than US$1 each, and three are quite filling.

Dinner

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How is the batter made. I have some manioc flour I brought back to make bobo de camerao. Kind of coarse, would it work?

blogazon said...

That sounds a little coarse. The mainoc flour they used was pretty finely ground. You could try it, though.

Also, it isn't a batter. They just sifted the flour onto a hot skillet (that probably had some oil on it to prevent sticking) and the flour melts enough to hold the tapioca together.