Spending Winter in Brazil

Take just about everything you think you know about Brazil and put it to one side – save it for summer.  Winter in Brazil – or at least in the south – takes on a completely different style.  Gone are the trips to the beach, nights spent trying to keep cool, walking around in shorts and t-shirt, now we have Festa Junina, nights spent under half a dozen blankets and wearing jumpers and jackets to sit around the house.  You don’t need to spend much time in the South of Brazil to see some cultural differences with the rest of Brazil, but when June arrives, these cultural differences come through even more.

I’ve already written about how bloody cold it gets here, so I won’t dwell on it, although the weather is far from predictable.  At the beginning of June, the overnight temperatures were reaching 0°C, although it has since become somewhat milder with daytime highs around 24°C and night-time lows around 10°C.  All well and good, but I’m waiting for temperatures to plummet again, this winter has been too easy so far!

A pinha, full of pinhões

One of the first signs of the approaching winter is the availability of pinhões in the supermarkets and by the side of the roads.  Even before the start of the season, a pinhão hysteria takes over Paraná and people start counting down, licking their lips in anticipation.  You may recall me writing about these seeds and how I wasn’t altogether very impressed.  Well, as I suspected, they are an acquired taste and after a month or so, I appear to have acquired that taste, to the point where I am now a firm believer in selecting the best pinhões, as opposed to simply scooping a load into a bag!

Once winter arrives, there is another culinary shift.  The customary light evening meal (usually breads, salami, cheese, maybe some salad) is replaced by more warming fare, typically soups. One popular soup is sopa de agnoline.  This is a soup that was brought to Brazil by Italian immigrants and consists of stuffed pasta (agnoline or cappelletti) – a bit like dumplings – in a thin, watery broth with pieces of chicken.  I might not be selling this very well, but it is very tasty and just what you need on a cold winter evening!  Again, this is a dish that the locals take very seriously, I’ve lost count of the number of people who have asked me whether I’ve tried sopa de agnoline!

Quentão with gemada

So you’ve munched on a pinhão or three (probably accompanied by chimarrão), had a filling dinner of sopa de agnoline and now you’re hiding under a blanket in the living room, trying to get warm.  What you need is a good, warming drink.  Forget coffee at this time of night, you’re looking for quentão.  Quentão (literally translated, means big warm) is essentially mulled wine (or glühwein or vin chaud if you prefer.)  The preparation is slightly different to European varieties of the drink, and usually consists of red wine (the cheap and nasty stuff you would never normally drink), sugar, ginger, cinnamon and cloves.  It is sometimes served with gemada – raw egg yolks beaten with sugar – making it thick and sweet.  In São Paulo, quentão is made using cachaça (and no gemada), but I have not yet tried this, and the quentão I previously described is called vinho quente (literally, hot wine.)

A popcorn cake at the
church hall in Pato Branco

All of this comes together in Festa Junina, a popular party held throughout June and continuing into July.  Sometimes known as Festa de São João, this is a celebration that is held all over Brazil and involves people dressing up in countryside fancy dress (men as farm boys, boys often with a painted moustache and women and girls wearing pigtails, freckles and red-checked dresses) with winter food and drink (pinhão, popcorn, cornbread and quentão (with a non-alcoholic version made with grape juice for the children), country music and dancing.  The most common type of dance similar to square dancing, called quadrilha, which is performed to country music and is centred around a mock wedding.  During the daytime, these quadrilha are mostly performed by children, although adults also participate in the evenings.  There are several festas juninhas held throught the cities, often organised by schools and churches, throught June and July.

On 26^th June (Sunday) in Pato Branco, a large Italian lunch was organised by the church, in the massive hall across the road from the church – part of two weeks of festivities for Festa de São Pedro, St Peter’s Feastival, the patron saint of Pato Branco.  As well as the triangular flags of festa junina, the hall was decorated in red, white and green and filled with long tables.  The food was typical of Italian food at the time of mass emigration to Brazil (North Americans call it family-style), but with a Brazilian twist.  The tables were called to the hot buffet stations one at a time to load up with pasta, salad, polenta, chicken and pork, although there were warnings not to take too much, you can always go back for more!  The lunch was finished off by a selection of cakes and sweets for purchase.

Italian lunch, showing one of the queues for food
and the rows of tables

Choosing meat for the barbecue

The conclusion of festivities for the Festa de São Pedro was the barbecue.  St Pedro’s day is on 29^th June (Wednesday this year) and a local holiday (unless you happen to be a home-based employee of a company in São Paulo, when you get their holidays…) and this is marked by a massive barbecue for the entire city.  The day before, you go to an enclosure full of row after row of barbecues and join the long queue to choose and buy the cut of meat you want, skewered with a card tag to identify it. 

On the day of the barbecue, the fires are lit in the rows of barbecues and the hundreds of skewers are lined up to roast.  The numbers on the car tags identify which barbecue they will go to and aid you in finding it.  Dozens of people attending the barbecues, keeping the fires going and ensuring the meat is well cooked.  At midday, the enclosure is packed with people as half of the city turns out to collect their meat and take it home for lunch. 

After the Festa de São Pedro, the festivities start to die down in Pato Branco, with the occasional Festa Junina and Julina (Festa Junina in July – Julho in Portuguese) popping up here and there, but very infrequently.  The city settles back into its normal rhythms and people wait for the winter holidays.  Of course this typically refers to schools, where the last two weeks of July are holidays (also a welcome break for teachers!)  During this time, people either head north to escape the cold, or venture further south to get colder!  There are two cities in particular that are very popular at this time of year; Gramado and Canela, in Rio Grande do Sul.  These two cities lie in the Serra Gaúcha mountains and are only 9km (6 miles) apart.  In winter, temperatures can drop below 0°C leading to hard frost and snow is not uncommon.  In addition to getting a taste of winter, these cities are popular for the beautiful countryside in which they sit, the Bavarian inspired architecture, chocolatiers and artisan shops.  Gramado is next on my list to visit, more on that later!