Meat lovers, prepare to be very jealous of the photos you are about to see. On Wednesday evening, Carolina’s father prepared an authentic Gaucho barbeque (Churrascaria!) – OH MY GOD! I was pretty certain beforehand that I was going to need to eat my weight in grass-fed beef, and the evening did not disappoint.
Basement Churrascaria
The family dog wants in on the meat
To give you an idea of how big BBQ is in this family, the home has not one but TWO churrasco barbeques. Number one is indoors (where we ate because it was winter) and number two is a second one outside (that is accompanied by its own wood pizza oven, stove, massive refrigerator and enormous deck.
Salting preparing the meet. Note the giant tumbler of kiwi caparinia and the smaller, equally potent one made with lime.
As dinner was prepared, Tito showed me how to salt each meat, explained the proper cooking technique, and busted out some traditional good-time hats.
Tito and the good time hats
Marilla makes Tito put the hats away
I also received instruction in Portuguese pronunciation from Carlina’s cousin Mima (who is a hearing and speech therapist, so ‘seeing’ the nasal sounds of the word for ‘no’, ‘nao’, actually helped, at least temporarily). Perhaps more importantly, I learned the always useful phrase of ‘f off, son of a b” which will surely come in handy in my subsequent travels though Brazil, although Carolina’s 78 year old grandmother was mortified!
Sausage as Appetizer
The evening ended with me trying to explain where in the US I grew up and have traveled while I got my own lesson in Brazilian geography – helped by an almanac and several glasses of wine.
