Cooking like a local in Brazil

Hello,

Enjoying the local food of your expat country is great, but learning to cook the dishes yourself is even better. Please share what it's like cooking like a local in Brazil.

What are some of the most popular local dishes that are easy to prepare?

What are the most common ingredients used in dishes in Brazil? Where can you purchase them?

Is there a specific technique or a secret ingredient to master the local cuisine?

Are there resources available to teach you to cook like a local (classes, websites, etc.)?

What are the advantages of learning to prepare local dishes in Brazil?

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Priscilla

I cook moqueca sometimes, it's a sort of fish/prawn stew from Baia with lots of coconut palm oil and coconut milk, served with white rice.
I learned it by watching watching a Biano friend cook it and eating it in restaurants.

The ingredients can be purchased at any supermarket, sometimes corriander can be hard to find in the supermarket though, I find it at a little japanese owned General store. The prawns get bought by my brother in law from a connection in Caraguá.
The only thing I'm having doubts about now is the Palm oil....I love it but it's production really bad for the enviroment :(

otherwise the standard Brazilian lunch plate is a piece of beef/chicken, rice beans, a simple salad and maybe some potatoe chips

I am Brazilian and I live 35 years in Germany and only as Brazilian dishes when we have a party and so someone prepares or when you are on vacation in Brazil. I personally do not know how to cook very well. I like very much the dishes of our land and mainly national foods made with native products like cooked bana and the cooked or fried fish with salads. Here in Germany you can buy some products but the quality is not the one you buy in the Brazilian market.
I really like Brazilian sweets that are made at home the old way.

With the event of the Internet you can cook anything, just follow the recipe.  In Houston I made about a dozen "quindins", and they turned out quite well.

My Bahian specialty is more with seafood, coconut milk, pungent peppers and azeite de dendê!

Hi Ron. We should do a cook-out!

I don't cook my wife does. I like some of the Brazilian dishes, many I do not.

Jim

Hey Robal, long time no hear from you.
We should do a cook out, a drink out and get together out.
One of these days.
Take care.

In the South, and probably most other states in Brasil, there's always a Churrascara...so we never run out of reasons to do Churrasco on Sundays.  That goes from Picanha, to Camaroes (not the car...just no accents on my US keyboard).

We also enjoy Moqueca, but that's not as common down our way.  But In Balneario Camboriu, it's the Sushi capital of S.America, it seems.