Market food

I probably can make a bunch more posts about this, but this was effectively breakfast on the first full day. Markets, or "fairs" as they are called. Akin to a farmer's market in the states, but far more regular and not hipster or hippy even.

In this case, we went to the Saturday market down the street from my sisters house. Its basically all local farm fresh food, but it bounces around to various parts of the city. Rather unsurprisingly its A LOT of fruit. The vendors are all very friendly and want you to try their wares, offering fruit cuts, or entire small fruits (mini bananas!). It makes sense, given its the best way to show how fresh it is. I'm advised everyone does this and to not feel obligated to buy anything from a vendor just because you stood still too long and the pushed fruit at you. I don't normally do breakfast so I got my fill.
 
 

In this picture, front or center, two types of dragon fruit. Not sure if there is a flavor difference between the two. Just below the orange colored with stems are Passion fruit. Star fruit on the top left. Guava to next to them. Kiwis and Papayas. All the way to the right and front are Pear-Apples. The weird green fruit is called a "Sugar-Apple". Haven't had one yet. The packaged small fruits are called Acerola, or Barbados Cherry. Just below on the left nearly cut out of the picture are Mangosteen.

These are AVOCADOS. They are really freakin big. I should have put my hand in the picture for reference. I think they eat them (and everything else here) with sugar.

I didn't grab any pictures, but they have meat and cheese stands at these markets as well, and all the way at the end they have a fish monger, the fish was extremely fresh, and lots of variety. Some of it no real good translation for. I may at some point see what I can do to grab a picture.

For lunch, we went to Karaoke at a place in Liberdade, the Japanese cultural center of the city. I unfortunately didn't grab pictures of food at the karaoke place, a little too busy singing I guess? Under the Sea, Evangelion theme song, and Total Eclipse of the heart were some big highlights. I had a really solid bowl of ramen here, complete with boiled egg and naruto slice. I got the miso variety which had a slightly more flavorful broth. We had cake there which was a Matcha (green tea) cake my sister ordered beforehand from a place literally across the street.

The cake was really good. There was a sort of green tea jelly layer, as well as the cake portion itself being slightly tea-flavored. Or maybe it was just green. Either way. Yum. We then headed across the street to see the pastry shop the cake came from. Holy crap. I walked away with a few items, but seeing as I was already full from the cake, noodles, and creme puffs, it was a big "eyes bigger than stomach" situation. Still, I now have Melon bread waiting for me. Score.

In liberdade we walked around, and went in a variety of little Japanese shops and it reminded me of my childhood in ways that I didn't really expect. Though, we didn't manage to find any "sadness candy". If you've ever seen grave of the fireflies, those candies will never been the same since. We didn't have the most success getting bubble tea, they were out of bubbles. The bakery where these crazy macaroons and pastries were had a "upstairs"cafe which had bubble tea, alas hindsight is 20/20.

On Monday, we went to downtown section of Sao Paulo and hit "the market". Ultimately its a large building that looks like it was once a train depot, that was built entirely to be a market square from the beginning. This plays out like the local fair on Saturday, except all the time.

  

I don't even know if I can hope to get in all the comments about the things I saw here. It was much slower than normal, being that it was mid-Monday, some of the booths weren't even really open.

obviously they had sundries, various nuts, dried fruit, meats, dried fish, fresh fish, oils, jellies, cheese, many many types of cheese. Mel was happy to find there is now a Brazilian company doing cheddar and feta. she used to pay import prices, $$$.

Of course I had to stop by the pepper stand! I did not directly sample any of the fresh pepper wares, as this is a dangerous proposition. However, I did not leave empty handed, and have many spicy joys to bring to the US with me.

Seriously though, how cool is it to see all the types of olives you could possibly want? Want fresh garlic cloves? We've got that. You wants palm hearts? Yep. I wish I could have walked away from here with more. It just wouldn't have made much sense, especially since just about every meal I'll be having hear is likely a "meal out". My brother-in-law was complaining that the list of places to take me was longer than days and meals available. Guess I'll just have to come back for a round two!

We finished up our time at the market by getting some well known 'market food'. Above there is something of a deck and a bunch of places selling beer and hot food.

In this case the hot food in question is Mortadella sandwiches. For the uninitiated, mortadella in the US goes more by the name of the region it comes from. Bologna Italy. I'd pretend this was somehow a higher quality bologna, but it wasn't really *that* much improved over what you might think of. It was, however, better than my expectations. My sandwich is on the left. It is a smoked Mortadella with sun dried tomatoes and mozzarella. Mel's to the right was a "spicy italian"Mortadella and looks like more standard fair of tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, maybe some mayo hiding in there somewhere. Gabe's in the rear, obviously not mortadella but a sort of pulled pork. It was a bit too dry and salty unfortunately. My smoked was actually really, quite good. I can't say I was surprised, ingredients list sounds great. The smoked flavor really came out quite well. We also had this sort of fried fish..uh stick? You apparently eat it with hot sauce normally, I'll gladly comply.

Finally, I can't really talk about market food without mentioning street food. They are pretty related, since at the market there are some expected vendors around. One, which is pretty great, is fresh ground sugar cane juice. Mixed with some various fruits of your choice. Ginger and sugar cane...so good. I know I've been on a ginger kick for a while, but man this was good. We also snagged a Lime and sugar cane juice. Really, the only issue with these things (besides I suppose lots of sugar) is that they tend to go bad pretty quick. Might just mean that you get a short cut to making some ginger beer. The second street food. Pastel. These are pretty much everywhere. We grabbed some on Saturday, but we also had some Sunday as a snack while walking a popular culture street (and fair day) before late lunch at Gabe's aunt's place. These are fried "envelopes"of dough with various filling options. Sweet or savory or cheesy. The dough is a lot lighter and crispier than I had expected, I was ready to assume it was too filling. These things are one of my favorites now. I've had the shredded beef and "pizza"filled variations. Only complaint, and a small one at that, is that these things are served right out of the fryer, and they are hot, and the filling ends up sliding down to the bottom. Just means its "good to the last bite" though right? I'll see if I can get a better picture of one of these marvels.

Update: I got pictures of Pastels. Lots.