Even if your daughter is RioGringa, and even if she insists on living in Rio de Janeiro instead of, say, New York, or Boston, as an Empty Nest Mom, you have to indulge her every whim. Especially when she decides to fly on home for a month or so.
That's why I found myself toiling over a hot stove this week, to make brigaderos, the little Brazilian pastries that RioGringa was missing so much. This involved buying: sweetened condensed milk, chocolate powder, butter, and chocolate sprinkles. You put the first three in a pot, over low heat, and
you stir constantly. And you stir. And stir some more. You wait for the stuff to kind of congeal, to go from being somewhat gloppy, to really and truly incredibly gloppy. So you stir, and stir and stir. Eventually, because you may (or may not) have Lyme Disease, you get a chair and sit down while you stir. After a really long time--maybe 20 minutes or even half an hour--the stuff thickens into a hot, gloopy glob. Then, you let it cool, you put butter on your hands (!) and you form little balls. Then, you make a pile of the sprinkles, and roll the sticky little balls all around in the stuff. They turn out, amazingly enough, just like this. Exactly what they look like when you buy them in Rio for $1.50 or $2.00 apiece.
I even took a few over to Solmar, a brand-new Brazilian restaurant right around the corner, to see how authentic they tasted to some real Brazilians. (And not just an adoptive homey, like RioGringa.) I had to go over there to fix a billing error, where they AMEXed us double the true amount for the dinner we had there over the weekend. I brought little these little pastries to prove my, uh, sincerity? Trustworthiness? Brazil-ophilia?
