Monday, February 12, 2007

Açaí-Oh!




The foodstuff I ate in Brazil most deserving of attention was a fruit called Açaí (pronounced, "assai"), which grows in clusters of hundreds on a palm-like tree in the Amazon. Remembering having tried it once at the Cafe Brasil in Santa Cruz during my college days, I thought I would give it a try instead of the beer I was craving on the beach in Paraty. We ordered a bowl from the tall Rasta working as a waiter in the beachfront tiki shack under whose umbrellas I was hiding from the sun.

The dish arrived in a square white bowl, and Che and I had to play nice with sharing it, because it was so delicious. Passing the iced bowl back and forth from hand to hand, we dug through layers of sweet sliced banana (and let me tell you how much better bananas taste when they are picked from the tree and sliced at your table), thick honey, and toasted granola, arriving at a hard-frozen mass that was as delicious in its thick, slivered, frozen state as it was as it melted into a custardy-textured berry shake.


Açaí is wild-harvested from Amazonian Açaí palms, and then pureed, frozen, and shipped countrywide. To reconstitute the blueberry-like fruit, it is mixed with a concentrated Guarana syrup (Guarana is another Amazonian fruit, whose energy-giving properties have popularized it on the shelves of hippy food-stores in the USA) and whizzed about in an industrial blender (the fruit is so hard it will break a normal blender after a few uses). It's then either eaten plain, topped with strawberries or bananas, or mixed with granola. Sold from açaí-huts (like smoothie shacks, these little kiosks vend fresh juices, pastries, and plastic cups of açaí), bus station snack shops, or restaurants as breakfast, dessert, or a snack.

I ate it ALL THE TIME on vacation, and it's the food I'll most miss from Brazil. Like a healthy ice-cream subsitute, it's sweet, full of antioxidants and fiber, and gives you energy while filling you up for hours.

4 comments:

Augs Casa said...

Sounds wonderful. I never heard of it,. then again, I'm mexican. I was in Arizona and I spotted a few prickly pears on a catus in my in-laws yard, so I picked them and peeled them and ate them i nfrom of my in-laws and my wife. they were so disgusted until I peeled one and let them taste it. Not sure if you are back in S.F. yet, but I missed reading your pblog while I was on vacation.

Davina Baum said...

Acai is starting to appear everywhere in the States now. you can get it at whole foods and places like Rainbow -- i can't remember the brands but there are a few.

gewilli said...

I'm gonna make a shameless plug (although i have nothing to gain by making such) for Shift!

Honestly the only time i've had Acai is in Shift... but how can ya beat a product like that???

never mind how i stumbled here - it is a pretty new product from a great company...

http://www.shiftenergy.com/

it sounds delicious served as you describe in that iced white bowl...

Anonymous said...

I also never heard of this. Looks very good to me.