Tapioca Brazil

Tapioca is a typically Brazilian delicacy of Indian origin and discovery in Pernambuco, made with starch extracted from cassava (mealy substance also known as gum tapioca, dry gum, tapioca and sweet tapioca), which when spread on a plate or pan heated coagulates and becomes a kind of pancake or crepe dry. The filling varies, but the more traditional is made with coconut or cheese curds. It is a common delicacy in the North and Northeast of Brazil.

There are also varieties known as scarf tapioca, tapioca and other mass made in furnaces of the flour mills of rural communities at certain times of the year.



Cassava, produced under the system of subsistence agriculture, was the staple food of Brazil to the invasion and colonization of the territory by the Portuguese.

Shortly after the first years of the discovery, the Portuguese colonists in hereditary captaincy of Pernambuco found that tapioca served as a good substitute for bread. In the city of Olinda intensely consumed manioc bread, flour and tapioca (gum) extracted from cassava, from the XVI century with the Portuguese establishment of Flour House in Itamaracá.

Tapioca soon spread to other indigenous peoples, as Cariri in Ceará and Ge, in the eastern Amazon. Still, later it became the staple food of slaves in Brazil. All this served to transform tapioca today one of the most traditional symbols of cooking for most of the North and Northeast.

Brazilian Indians were various types of cassava bread: simple beiju is a fresh cake batter, moist, issued by urupema (sieve vegetable fibers) to form lumps, which are connected due to the heat; beiju-ti yoke made of soft dough cassava and dried in the sun; the beijuaçu, round, made like tapioca-Tacinga but dry in the oven; the Caribbean, which is the beijuaçu sauce rank and reduced to mass again that when water is added, forms a kind of porridge; the beijucica made of cassava rice in thin lumps; beiju tapioca, the wet mass, leaving the urupema in little lumps that when ready, is rolled up; the Cured, a large manioc bread, made of tapioca (gum) moistened in larger lumps, causing raw chestnut, after being rolled up.

From tapioca they were also made some alcoholic drinks like pajuari the tarubá the tapiocuí 'and tiquira. In the manufacture of tarubá, the wet beijus are placed on leaves of Curumi (guaianaense Ravenala), and these extended over a layer of banana leaves on a loft (sticks grid). After being sprinkled, the beijus are covered with leaves Curumi and left for three days, when it begins to drip a viscous liquid, similar to molasses. The mass is dissolved in water, passed through a sieve and the liquid is left resting. After the rest of the drink is ready.