As part of our series food and religion, let's travel to South America today. In many parts of the Americas, religious culinary traditions have meant that people eat fish on Fridays. This had been the case in colonial Brazil. Between 1640 and 1649, the Dutch controlled Portugal’s African settlements and its most important sugar producing region in southern Brazil. Johan Nieuhoff worked for the Dutch East Indies and Dutch West Indies Companies spending nine years in Brazil. “The most universal food of the Brazilians,” is manioc or cassava meal, he writes in the 1640s. He adds they also feast upon seasoned crabs and craw-fish either boiled or roasted. “Small fish” they wrap and cook in banana leaves.
