All the Brazilian barbecue restaurants in England are amazing. Which is why we're making an
amazing chargrilled steak, some cassava chips, Brazilian coleslaw
and a chimichurri sauce. Is that Brazilian? Sort of!
For this dish we've got lots of different elements, we've got steak, cassava chips, a homemade coleslaw
and the amazing chimichurri sauce
but, they're all really simple. And it starts with
our cassava. Okay? Cassava / Or cassava You say
cassava, I say cassava !?! Whatever it is, it's an amazing root vegetable
that actually we don't use enough of in this country. So what we're going to do is cut it into
chips.
But, you've got to be careful. It's poisonous raw.
What? It's poisonous? If I eat it like this? Yeah, if you were to eat it now
If I ate this now? It's basically got elements of cyanide in it.
Really? And after a couple of hours if you ate too much you'd get
vertigo, vomiting and collapse and probably die few hours later. So what we need to do is cook
it.
Brilliant, welcome to the show. There we go, they can go into our pan
with a generous pinch of salt, bring that up to a simmer and they need to bubble away for about 15 minutes
or so. Like you would with potatoes.
And then drain them and we'll fry them later on. Next up we can look at our chimichurri sauce
which
is unbelievable! Chimichurri? Yes.
Is that chimichangas Brazilian cousin? Maybe! Well actually Argentinian cousin.
Because chiichurri is actually an Argentinian
dish originally, but it's become classic
in south Brazil as well. In the gaucho region where
steak is really big. Cool. So to start off with, 2 green chillies
into a hot pan and we just wanna char those so we get a nice kind of charring. They'll begin to pop.
Give them a little bit of a prick. You don't particularly want a chilli to explode on you.
No you do not! Adding to this sauce it's very simple, very few ingredients.
Two cloves of garlic, if you can just peel those and a generous bunch of
parsley. And I mean like loads.
Loads of fresh parsley, its a really vibrant green
sauce. Is parsley the traditional herb?
Yeah, I think. Other places might put oregano in or other favours as well. We're going with
parsley with the garlic and the chilli.
That's what this is all about, its our take on Brazilian dishes.
We are not going to get these right. Well we're going to try. Whether they're right or not they'll
taste amazing but are they traditional? That's what we want to know.
Yeah, that's what we want to know. What he said!
Couple minutes on the grill there and you can see the nice charred pieces... and it's hot,
the skin is beginning to fall off. But then all of these ingredients... parsley,
garlic, red wine vinegar (just a splash of this)
and a glug of oil going into our chopper to blend it all up
along with these chillies. Look at the vibrant colour.
Green, for Brazil! And look
at that. That's the kind of consistency you want. It's kind of got this amazing potency from the raw garlic
and chilli
you've got the vinegar, the salt and everything. That is the sauce?
That is the chimichurri part for our steak. We'll come back to that later on,
but for now we can make a coleslaw to go with it. Okay.
Coleslaw, you might argue not particularly Brazilian... I would probably agree...
but we're going to put some Brazilian flavours into it to really cause
some controversy. Okay, so, here goes... we've got red cabbage,
white cabbage and carrot which we're going to very very finely slice up
and then we'll add in some papaya, cashew nuts and mayonnaise.
We actually asked you lot on Facebook, as Brazilians, what's the best thing
about Brazil? And the things they said were all the things I think
are great about Brazil. Football, the women,
the food, the culture, the carnivals, the beaches.
You know Ipanema beach? Yep. In Brazil
is like Muscle Beach or Miami Beach in that
everyone is so good-looking it makes you angry.
Or Southend in the UK. Just like Southend!?!
Then all of those can go into a bowl along with a
tiny splash of white wine vinegar. A dollop
of mayonnaise. It doesn't need a lot, a very technical dollop that one and then
a pinch of salt and pepper. At the moment that's a pretty standard coleslaw. So if you
mix that up.
I'm going to put in two flavours now that resemble Brazil,
in my eyes. Tell me about them then. Papaya and this was an idea we got
from a Brazilian restaurant in London. That place
is unbelievable. The meat is better than any other meat I've ever tasted. I don't know whether they
marinate it or whatever... perhaps you could let us know... but
it's so tender and juicy and they just bring it to your table.
Once you've finished it they bring more. Once you've finished that, they bring more.
It's amazing. There we go, not too much, just a little bit, try not to mash that up.
Just king of
toss it together, along with a handful of cashew nuts. We'll leave a few more to
garnish
at the end. And that's it, a very simple slaw, takes moments to make.
The papaya and cashew just a little hint
towards Brazilian classic food. So there we go,
last thing to look at, is our steak. You've saved the best until last.
that's going to go into the pan. And that's not going to need more than a minute or so on
either side.
At this point we can probably drain our cassava chips.
Now be super careful because you want to get rid of all that excess water,
and at that point, you put it into your fryer, which has got oil preheated
at 180 degrees celsius. It'll make a bit of noise. But they'll go super crispy.
And when you're happy its cooked to the temperature you want, making sure the sides are
sealed in as well
and then transfer it to a warm plate and leave it to rest for a good couple of minutes. In the meantime,
we can plate up everything else.
Grab our chips, so a little pinch of salt on our
cassava chips. I want some of that Brazilian coleslaw.
Brazilian coleslaw... and I use "Brazilian" in inverted commas.
And then our steak, now that it's fully rested. It's had a good couple of minutes, we can
carve that
up. Nice! Obviously you can cook your steak to whichever temperature you like.
With that chimichurri sauce... look at this
And there we go, it's chimichurri steak, with Brazilian coleslaw and cassava chips.
It's what we think, might be, traditional
Brazilian steak, but we want you to tell us differently if that's the case.
Sorted!
It's spicy and tangy and fresh all in one.
There's so many flavours, it's got garlic, it's got
Chili. And because we've charred the chillies you get a slight smokiness as well. I'm loving that!
And hopefully this is pretty close to the gaucho style of cooking in Brazil.
And if it's not I'm sure they'll let us know!