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Brunching in Brazil Let's get together at Jorgina's
It's often said that loose women are trying to replace the memory of
their absent fathers by sleeping with a trove of men. This might explain
some things.
While I was growing up, my father was a blue-collar machinist in the
rough and tumble tool-and-die world. He was a young father, low on the
seniority pole in the union hierarchy and, as a result, he was often a
second or third shifter, which meant he either slept through or was gone
for dinner. Henceforth, there was never any real family gathering during
the week. (Weekends, when he'd share a nip of his favorite Cabernet
Sauvignon with me, were another story.) My mother, an excellent cook,
tried to keep my brother and I together with her excursions into Ladies
Home Journal recipes like chicken cacciatore, but there was often the
intrusion of sports or after-school activities.
If we were lucky, a couple times a week, the three of us would honor
a 4:30pm reservation at our brown faux-wood-laminate dinner table before
darting off. My brother still has this table in the "man den" that is
his garage, and when I head back to the suburbs of Detroit to visit, one
glimpse reminds me of the impossible number of meals composed solely of
Fruit Roll-Ups that we crammed away before soccer practice.
As a union guy my father made a decent living, which meant I grew up
on the edges of the right side of the tracks. This meant that most of my
friend's parents were white-collar professionals always home for dinner.
Given the chance to join these outside gatherings, I'd often forsake my
own sad threesome. Real family dinner, I soon learned, was of course
also an opportunity to grill your children about school, and ever the
laconic adolescent, I was thrilled to have avoided such moments in my
own house. Dinner was also, at my friend John's house, a scary
amalgamation of freaky diet fads, where the whole family once ate whole
grapefruit dusted with Nutrasweet. Maybe I wasn't really missing
anything.
Yet reviewing the wisdom of loose women, I've come to believe that my
adult obsession with entertaining and cooking may have something to do
with my own absent father and latent jealousy of childhood friends. I've
always yearned for an Algonquin Round Table of sorts, a fellowship of
witty repartee, flowing drinks and, in my dreams, a personal audience
with Dorothy Parker. This never-ending quest recently led me to a
gathering at the home of Brazilian caterer Jorgina Pereira.
Every Sunday afternoon, Pereira, a noted local caterer, opens up her
three-flat for a Brazilian-style brunch. Pereira, who originally hails
from Rio de Janeiro, is a former IT guru who specialized in Unix and
mainframe work. She worked for Montgomery Ward and Borg Warner. When
Borg moved to Detroit, she became exasperated with having to switch jobs
again, and decided to give up corporate America to cook.
She grew up with the smells and tastes of her godmother's culinary
alchemy. Still, she never really cooked. Living in America, she yearned
for the tastes of her native country and began experimenting, relying on
her sense memory to guide her way. This sounds like magical realism fare
from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, but there's a precedent for such
things. When I once spoke with Madhur Jaffrey, the famous doyenne of
Indian cooking, she said she relied on the memory of her mother's food
to learn to cook while studying acting in London.
The proof of course is in the Feijoada, the national dish of Brazil,
an amalgamation of rice, black beans and various pork products, and also
the centerpiece of Pereira's brunch.
Upon arrival there was a respite in Pereira's salon, a Liberace-like
palace of alabaster paint and green and white hand-carved wooden
furniture which was once part of a set from, according to Pereira,
"some Mafioso movie." On this occasion, I was joined by a couple of
Brazilian ex-pats and a structural engineer and sculptor. All business
is word-of-mouth, and on any given week, there could be a handful of
neighborhood folks or a rambunctious bunch of French aerospace
engineers.
The brunch is BYOB, and after washing some tasty deep-fried artichoke
empanadas and stuffed olives down with rhubarb caipirinhas, we retired
to the first level for the main buffet.
Pereira's Feijoada is magnificent, coupled with three types of meat,
including rich, smoky pork hocks. Accompaniments included tangy Cassava
flour-cheese puffs, cognac-marinated mushrooms, braised fennel and baked
codfish loin, which was eminently flaky. The Brazilian fare is available
each week, with other dishes like the mushrooms changing according to
Perreira's inventions. Perreria says that as an IT consultant, she
always had to stay one step ahead of the customer, anticipating their
project needs, and that now as a chef she does the same thing, creating
dishes her customers love, but that they didn't know they needed.
Indeed, for a little while, my own thirst for a rich family meal was
finally slaked. If you want to check out this weekly gathering for yourself, and
you should, check out http://www.sinhaelegantcuisine.com/ for more
details.
Also by Michael Nagrant Hungering for More
Ramping Up
Requiem for a Restaurant
North by Northwest
Smuggler's Blues
To Be Franc
Culinary Mythology
Sweet Sojourn
Super Party
Big Greek Breakfast
Mass Appeal
Outside the Lunchbox
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