Last Sunday night I finally cooked my Bahian dinner - as in food from Bahia, Brazil. I had been planning this meal for a WHOLE year. First, I couldn't find dende or palm oil, an essential ingredient of Bahian cuisine. A friend finally gave me a jar, but I was then missing malagueta peppers which I finally came across in a Latin store in LA. Finally armed with all the ingredients, I set a date for the meal and invited my friends Boris, Vienna and Frank over.
The meal was a great success, the food was excellent and unusual. My friend Vienna is from the Caribbean and she hadn't encountered those types of flavors either. As everything is cooked with palm oil, everything is awfully fatty but I imagine Bahians can get away with it as their protein mostly comes from seafood, which is usually low in saturated fats. The palm oil makes most dishes pretty orange as well.
In all, I'm very pleased with how the meal turned out and you can find the whole menu here.
Next on the menu: I may make some more Bolivian dishes this weekend and I have a Berber meal planned for next week.