Farofa

The toasted cassava meal Brazil puts beside everything, farinha fried slowly in butter with onion, egg, and bacon until sandy, golden, and savoury enough to eat by the spoonful

Origin: Bahia and the Brazilian Northeast

From the journey of Cassava.

Farofa is what Brazil does with farinha, and it appears beside beans, beside grilled meat, beside roast chicken, and above all beside feijoada, where it is not a garnish but a structural part of the plate. Its job is to absorb: the liquid off the beans, the juices from the meat, the fat from the sausage. A Brazilian table is not laid without it. The dish is a direct inheritance from the Tupi, who ate toasted cassava meal by the handful and mixed it with whatever fat and juice were available. The Portuguese, arriving on a coast where wheat would not grow, adopted farinha as the bread of the colony and then began frying it in fat, which is the whole difference between farinha and farofa. It fed the sugar mills, the bandeirante expeditions into the interior, and, in the darkest use it was ever put to, the slave ships crossing the Atlantic. It is now endlessly variable and every family has its own. Onion and garlic are near universal; egg gives the classic farofa de ovo; bacon or calabresa sausage makes it a dish in itself; banana, raisins, and green olives all appear, particularly at Christmas. The one thing that is not variable is the texture. Farofa should be dry, loose, and sandy, with distinct grains that fall apart on the plate. Greasy, clumping farofa is a failure, and the fault is nearly always too much fat added too fast.

Ingredients

Base

  • 250 g farinha de mandioca (toasted cassava meal), coarse or medium

Fat

  • 60 g unsalted butter
  • 2 tbsp olive oil

Aromatics

  • 1 large onion, very finely chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

Additions

  • 120 g smoked bacon or calabresa sausage, finely diced
  • 2 eggs, beaten

To finish

  • 3 tbsp flat-leaf parsley and spring onion, chopped

Seasoning

  • 1 tsp fine salt, or to taste
  • 0.25 tsp black pepper, ground

Method

  1. Fry the bacon or sausage in a large dry frying pan over a medium heat until it has released its fat and crisped at the edges. Lift it out and set it aside, leaving the fat in the pan.
  2. Add the olive oil and half the butter to the pan and soften the onion over a medium-low heat for eight to ten minutes until sweet and pale gold. Add the garlic and cook for one minute more.
  3. Push the onion to one side, pour the beaten egg into the clear space, and scramble it hard with a spatula until set and broken into small curds. Stir it through the onion.
  4. Add the remaining butter and let it melt. Tip in the farinha all at once and stir immediately to coat every grain.
  5. Toast over a medium-low heat, stirring constantly, for eight to twelve minutes, until the meal is a shade or two darker, smells nutty and biscuity, and feels dry and loose rather than damp.
  6. Return the bacon, season with salt and pepper, and stir through the parsley and spring onion off the heat.
  7. Serve warm or at room temperature, in a bowl at the centre of the table, with beans, grilled meat, or feijoada.

Notes

Coarse farinha gives the crunchiest farofa; fine gives a sandier one. Both are correct and it is a matter of household preference. For the Christmas version, add 60 g raisins soaked in warm water, a handful of green olives, and a sliced banana fried in butter. Farinha, not tapioca starch. They are made from the same root but they are not the same product, and tapioca starch in a hot pan turns to glue. A vegetarian farofa is entirely standard: leave out the bacon, use all butter, and add toasted cashews or Brazil nuts.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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