A Culinary Look at Women in History: Brazilian Women

Street Vender in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, making and selling Acarajé a popular Brazilian fast food with African roots, recipe belowAcarajé and va popular Brazilian fast food with African roots, recipe below

The origins of Brazil’s popular fast foods date back to the African slave trade. By the 1620s “Brazil absorbed a migration of some 500,000 to 600,000 slaves from Africa up to 1700” write historians Herbert Klein and Ben Vinson. Although they were enslaved people, Afro-Brazilian women entrepreneurs sold prepared foods such as acarajé, on the streets of Bahia and Rio. Originally a popular West African dish, particularly in Senegal, Afro-Brazilian women street venders continue to sell acarajé after the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888 and into the 20th century. For instance, a 1942 travel account I came across while writing my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy, describes street vender selling “a little light cake of [black-eyed peas] fried in dendê oil and split open like a hot-dog bun for a sauce thick with seeds sold on the streets. [sic]” As many may know, black-eye peas, an African plant used in hoppin John, are a central part of African American/Southern culinary traditions especially on Easter. Here are two recipes for acarajé, one traditional and the other vegan:

Traditional acarajé recipe: http://www.whats4eats.com/appetizers/akkra-recipe
Vegan acarajé recipe: http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Acaraj%C3%A9

Upcoming lecture March, 30, 2010
Dr. Frederick Douglass Opie
Long Island University Brooklyn Campus
Speaking about
“Black and Latino Relations in New York 1959-2008”
Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Health Sciences Building, Room 121.
Book signing to follow
This event is free and open to the public
For more information call 718 488-3374