“Rodizio is restaurant food,” he says. Instead, he is committed to introducing diners to the truly home-style dishes he enjoyed in his mother’s kitchen.
Samba, named for the dance made popular at Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival, is a casual and welcoming little 40-seat spot where you can experience this satisfying fare.
It took nearly a year for Goncalves, 32, to find a chef who had worked with the native ingredients and simple comfort foods of his youth.
Chef Roger Gomes, 38, hails from Ceara in the north, and is now master of the tiny kitchen on Park Street that is barely big enough to shuffle your feet in, let alone do the samba.
PHOTOS: Samba Montclair owner Ilson Goncalves with chef Roger Gomes. Chef Gomes spooning manjar de coco coconut pudding into serving dishes. Photos by Suzanne Zimmer Lowery. Bobó de camarão shrimp stew. Photo by Raymond Helfrich.
Still, the kitchen sizzles with the subtropical tastes of coconut, cilantro, tomato, yucca, and lots and lots of garlic and bay leaves.
“We use bay leaves in everything,” says Goncalves.
Brazilian food is not complicated to make, and most of the ingredients are readily available in the Latin American section of groceries and supermarkets. The foods of Brazil also draw on a melting pot of influences from the country’s many immigrants, so often supplies can be purchased at Asian, African or Brazilian specialty markets.
Nearly every savory dish starts with garlic, onion and olive oil, and the flavors are added and layered from there to create a hearty, yet healthy melting pot of a different sort.
On Fridays and Saturdays, Samba regulars arrive for the “Brazilian national dish, feijoada (pronounced fey-jwah-duh), which begins stewing on Thursday. The black bean stew is made with four meats: garlic sausage, fried pork ribs, fresh beef, and carne seca, a beef that has been salt-dried, much like bacalhau (codfish). The meats mingle for hours and hours in a big pot along with onions, garlic, parsley, cilantro, black beans, and hot sauce–“for just a little kick,” says Goncalves.
The dish is served with rice, a tangy tomato vinaigrette that is more like salsa, quick-seared chopped collard greens, and farofa–fried yucca flour.
Yucca (pronounced you-ka not yucka) is a native root that looks like a long potato with snow-white waxy flesh. It is sometimes referred to as cassava in other parts of Latin America. Whether fried, roasted, or dried and ground, yucca is pervasive in Brazilian country cooking, and can be purchased fresh or frozen.
“It is in the supermarket, but nobody [in Brazil] needs to buy it,” Goncalves says. “It grows in every yard, in every family garden.”
From the coastal Bahia region comes the delicious and creamy shrimp dish called bobó de camarão. Yucca purée is blended with tomato, onion and palm oil and briefly simmered with coconut milk and shrimp to create a saucy stew over white rice.
With coconut being another prevalent Brazilian flavor, it is not surprising that the manjar de coco coconut pudding served with plum sauce is one of Samba’s most popular desserts, and easy enough to make at home. Nothing could be simpler than boiling whole milk, cans of sweetened condensed milk and coconut milk, adding a dollop of cream cheese, cornstarch and shredded coconut to create the cool and creamy treat topped with dried plums that are cooked in caramelized sugar.
“Everybody in Brazil knows how to make it,” says Goncalves, and now everybody in New Jersey gets to enjoy it.
Bobó de Camarão (Shrimp in Yucca Cream)
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 1/4 pounds fresh medium shrimp, peeled (save shells for broth, below)
2.1/4 pounds peeled yucca (see below)
Juice of 1 lime
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 1/4 pounds large diced onion
2 1/4 pounds tomato, cubed
1 bunch cilantro
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1/3 cup red palm oil
1 1/2 cups shrimp broth (see below)
Salt to taste
Preparation:
To make the shrimp broth:
Take the reserved shrimp shells and add to a pot of about 3 cups of water. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, and simmer for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Strain with a fine sieve; add salt to taste, and reserve.
To cook the yucca:
Cut the peeled yucca into large chunks. In a large saucepan, boil in salted water until easily pierced with a knife. Drain, cut into cubes and reserve.
1. Toss the peeled shrimp with lime juice, salt and garlic. Add 2 tablespoons palm oil to a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the seasoned shrimp and lightly sauté. Remove from heat and reserve.
2. In a large saucepan, sauté the onion, tomato and cilantro in olive oil until soft. Add the cooked yucca and shrimp broth and cook for a minute on low heat. Allow the mixture to cool a bit.
3. When cool, transfer the mixture to a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth. If too thick, use a bit of the remaining shrimp broth to achieve a creamy consistency.
4. Return to the saucepan and heat. Add the remaining palm oil and reserved shrimp. Check for salt to taste.Stir, cover the pan and turn off the heat to let the flavors meld.
5. Serve in large bowls with white rice on the side.
Manjar de Coco (Coconut Pudding with Plum Sauce)
Serves 4
Ingredients:
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (13.66 oz) can coconut milk
2 tablespoons softened cream cheese
3 cups whole milk
2 tablespoons cornstarch
½-1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons water
8 dried plums
Preparation:
1. Combine the condensed milk, coconut milk, cream cheese, whole milk and cornstarch in a blender and work until smooth.
2. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and heat to boiling. Cook and stir until bubbling and thickened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the coconut.
3. Pour the pudding into serving glasses and refrigerate until chilled.
4. For the sauce, combine the sugar and water in a small sauté pan and heat until sugar dissolves. Continue heating and swirling the pan, but not stirring, until the sugar is syrupy and darkly caramelized, about 8-10 minutes.
5. Stir in the plums and stir, off heat, for a few minutes to soften. Before serving, top the pudding with sauce and two plums each.
Samba Montclair
7 Park Street (near corner of Bloomfield Ave)
973-744-6764
SUZANNE ZIMMER LOWERY is a food writer, pastry chef and culinary instructor at a number of New Jersey cooking schools. Find out more about her at suzannelowery.com.