Every dish tells a story.
The story of the people who invented it, made mistakes with it and then got it right.
The story of traveling ingredients. The history of the growers and producers. These stories tell why that food has that shape and that taste at that particular time.
More than a chef, Brazil’s Ieda de Matos is a storyteller through her dishes.
She sees her cookery skills through the prism of the stories of her ancestors and her family in Chapada Diamantina (diamond plateau in Portuguese), in the Brazilian hinterland, and her own story of someone who has overcome adversity.
Ms de Matos runs a restaurant in São Paulo and recently visited Sydney to promote Brazilian food in Australia.
She conducted masterclasses for upcoming chefs at Le Cordon Bleu and TAFE where she shared her family’s knowledge of ingredients from the Brazilian hinterland where she grew up.
Chef Ieda de Matos at SBS Studios in Sydney.
Ms de Matos was born in Bahia state, whose coastal cuisine has a mix of Portuguese and African ingredients enriched with palm oil, coconut cream and dry shrimp.
But in the Chapada region (Bahia is larger than France), the food can vary differently due to long periods of drought.
Far from the sea, creativity is a matter of survival.
Ms de Matos grew up in rural poverty but had exposure to country life.
Surrounded by nature and animals, her family produced everything they ate.
She only tasted food prepared on a gas stove when she was a teenager. Before that, her food was only cooked on firewood.
We used to eat what we could raise and harvest.Ms Ieda de Matos
“Most people eat stew with local herbs and vegetables like maxixe (‘mahsheeshe’, a relative of gherkin), pumpkin etc,” Ms De Matos tells SBS Portuguese.
“And green fruits are very important during the drought. Unripe papaya is used with meat in a stew, as a main dish. We also use the ‘palma,’ a cactus, and the green banana,” she says.
But the main local ingredient for her is cassava.
Normally used in Australia by southeast Asian immigrants, the root is native to South America and has traveled the world with the Portuguese during the Age of Exploration, after the 15th century.
Cassava represents life. It is part of the diet of most Brazilians, a food of resistance and subsistenceMs Ieda de Matos
“I have always eaten cassava, the first food my father taught me to plant, cultivate and harvest,” she says.
“It is derived into many products, such as farofa (roasted and granulated), flour, tapioca, dessert, broths etc. It is in the preparation of several other things. And it is our food, indigenous, it is in our ancestry,” Ms de Matos adds.
Cooking – a sacred act
While cooking, Ms de Matos has a specific ritual.
She uses whatever is seasonally available, mixes the ingredients and puts them in the oven for a few minutes. The aroma released inspires her to use seasonal ingredients properly, in an intuitive way.
“Cooking is a sacred act to me. As I come from a large family of 13 siblings, even though I had a simple life, everyone was together at mealtime,” Ms de Matos reminisces.
“Whenever I go in to cook, whether in my restaurant or anywhere else, it’s that moment I connect with.
I like to connect food with its history. Food gets energy. When you finish the preparations, it is reflected in the food. Whoever eats will feel the energy.Ms Ieda de Matos
‘Endangered’ food
Ms de Matos says that the traditional food she was used to eating during her childhood, is being overtaken by fast food.
“I decided to research Chapada to find out if traditional dishes were flowing into the local cuisine,” she says.
“And I was very sad that many dishes are now endangered. I had some difficulty finding it. It saddened me. Food is part of the local history.”
If it disappears, how will we be able to tell the story of the place without talking about the food? Food is culture and it is historyMs Ieda de Matos
The great enemy of a chef
Chef De Matos is not keen on technology, especially mobile phones.
The mobile phone is a great enemy of the chef.Ms Ieda de Matos
“It disperses us too much; I think it makes the kitchen scattered. It bothers me a little when I’m cooking and someone’s around with a mobile phone…. I’ll say it again, I think it breaks the connection between the chef, the kitchen and the food,” she asserts.
Racism in the Kitchen
Ms De Matos is a black woman from a humble family in Brazil.
Brazil has huge social differences. The north-eastern people are victims of preconceptions and stereotypes at the hands of the richer southern states, a lot like Africans are in Europe.
The famous Brazilian chef broke into tears when asked about racism in the kitchen.
“It is perceived as victimism when you say you have suffered racism. I don´t want to make my story a victim´s story. These things happen and only those who have lived them, know what they mean,” Ms De Matos says.
“I went through some situations. For example, when I served a table, and the people told me, ‘tell Chef Ieda the food was wonderful’. I was there in front of this person, but I couldn’t be Chef Ieda.”
“At first, it was hard, I cried a lot. Today, it hardly happens,” she adds.
I became a tougher woman, even more professional. I know what I’m doing, where I am today and where I want to go. I turned my tears into an attitude.Ms Ieda de Matos
“I don’t come from a kitchen of renowned chefs. My background is different, it is woodfired cooking… [I learnt] from cooks who gave me the basis to become Ieda de Matos today.”
“Many renowned chefs inspire me today, but the basis of my cuisine is these women who spent their lives in the kitchen, who learned from their mothers,” Ms De Matos adds.
She advises future chefs at her masterclasses in Sydney “to know deeply” what they are cooking.
Ieda Matos at her masterclass at Le Cordon Bleu in Sydney.
“This new generation (of chefs) is doing very well. They have a more inward look. We must look inside, at our ancestry and not forget our history,” she says.
“I would be nothing without talking about my grandmother, aunts and sisters and their indigenous and African techniques and valuing the producer. Cooking is an act of love, of bringing people together,” Ms De Matos concludes.
Siga ano , e e ouça . Escute a ao vivo às quartas-feiras e domingos.
