Hungry in Berlin

This post is in response to a question from a reader. If you have other questions, let us know, and we’ll do our best to track down the answers.

Berlin loves Brazil. At least the idea of it. You can get a caipirinha anywhere. There are still gigantic murals all around town (most sponsored by Nike) greeting the Brazilian football team for last year’s World Cup.

That said, finding Brazilian food turns out to be nearly as hard as dribbling past Ronaldinho. A reader, Caroline, asked us whether we knew of a place to buy traditional Brazilian products such as manioc flour, condensed milk, corn and a particular Brazilian cheese. While none of us are terribly familiar with Brazilian food, we have passed a little Brazilian bookstore and Lebensmittel (foodstuffs) shop called a Livraria in Mitte (Torstr. 159), and figured they might know the answers.

We took a trip today, and it turns out they have a small but useful supply of some of these basics, although the selection is limited to packaged goods. Manioc flour is there, as is a powdered, just-add-eggs-and-water mix for Pao de Queijo, a Brazilian baked cheese puff (we brought home a package of this, and will give it a test this weekend). The selection includes bottles of palm oil (watch out for those arteries, folks), guava jelly, banana paste, a delicious-looking ground peanut candy called pacoquinha, and various dried beans, black and otherwise.

I’ve never used manioc flour, but it’s widely used for making a side dish called farofa – the flour fried in oil or butter along with other ingredients such as onions, tomatoes, and then mixed with additions such as egg, raisins or walnuts. Sounds like something worth trying this weekend.

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