One expression of endearment that I find particularly moving is being asked to stay for lunch or dinner without it being reason for any sort of embarrassment. In my childhood, this was a gesture that I interpreted as a warm embrace. Quickly, the hosts would make sure that there was enough food for all: one or two extra guests, it didn’t matter how many. And how did they do that? The most classic image we invoke when thinking about this situation is the well-known act of “watering down the beans”. In other words: stretching out the “sustância”!
“Sustância”, a popular expression that has been recorded in Portuguese dictionaries, refers to hearty, flavorful foods, almost always containing a high calorie count while still being pleasing to the stomach. We’re also familiar with the variation “sustança”, especially when we say we quickly need something to replenish our energies and “sustain” us throughout a long journey. Could it be just rice and beans? Yes. But they become the quintessential “sustância” when garnished with a farofa or paçoca recipe, and the delicious and nutritious side dishes such as the ones we find in this chapter.
Up until colonial times, flour (manioc or corn) fulfilled this role in everyday cooking, which was basically made up of fish; it gave “sustância” to the food. Thickening, reinforcing, expanding – those are verbs that are closely linked to “sustância”. Little by little throughout our history, a more frugal diet was diversified. The quintessential “sustância”? The bone marrow extracted from the ox, directly poured on top of the manioc flour mush, as Câmara Cascudo reports in “História da Alimentação no Brasil”.
Be it in the various preparations of beans (the day-to-day recipe or the tutu mineiro for a side dish, among many other recipes), be it in the various kinds of rices (from the juicy biro-biro to the traditional arroz de cuxá), “sustância” also can come in the shape of anything that comes from the garden, such as braised cousa squash and chayote, ever-present in the home menus, or the classic and beloved fried manioc or French fries. We need “sustância”, there are people coming over! Because, as my mother used to say, “the more, the merrier”.