Yara Roberts - Brazilian Table, The

Its eight in the evening, curtain time. Within a few minutes, eight people will arrive at our house for dinner. Yara and I dont know them nor do they know usyet. We start with a brief preview of the evening as we serve caipirinhas, batidas, and soft drinks. Then Yara invites those who are interested to move to the kitchen with her and to help with or just watch the preparation of the dinner to come. A few minutes after she begins to show how to make each dish on the menu, many participants decide to don aprons, wash hands, and join in the preparation. After a half hour or so, a sense of play begins to enliven in the participants a desire to learn, and that sets off jokes, cheering, and gentle heckling. It has become fun.

Characteristically, the food she prepares with our guests is all from Brazilian ingredients, with recipes that are traditional, adapted, or wholly created by a Brazilian: Yara Castro Robertsyour chef, writer, and guide through this book. During dinner, she tells the story of food in Brazil from its earliest days to the present.

At the table, the conversation flows freely and ranges wide. Guests who are new to Brazil often question both of us about what its really like to live here, and we answer frankly according to their interests. We love it, and we can identify and communicate what we love about it, namely, its people and its beauty. With Brazilians, conversation quickly becomes one you would have with old friends.

Weve entertained people from a variety of backgrounds, interests, and nationalities. There have been vacationing businessmen touring Brazil on motorcycles, backpacking students staying at hostels, a king and queen, nobelauriate authors, artists, professors, chefs, couples with children, grandparents, the young, and the old. After a while, we wondered if there was some commonality in this variety. One day it dawned on us that all our guests had two simple but salient qualities in common. First, each one was curious about the world at large. Second, each had the quality of feeling comfortable in his or her own skin (a literal translation from the apt French phrase bien dans sa peau ). Now a dinner composed of people who share those two qualities is going to be... fun. And they have been. Toward the end of the evening at our Brazilian Table, guests often exchange addresses not just with us but also with each other. We call what we do here in Paraty the Academy of Cooking & Other Pleasures, and, by the time they leave, guests understand that we really mean it when we answer, You are, when we are asked the question, What are the other pleasures? Of course, there is also the visual pleasure of the table decoration that is set to fit each region, using only a natural palette of flowers, seeds, fruits, palm fronds, and local arts