Asakiyume mita

When I make casabe, I grate cassava and then squeeze out the fluid. The fluid is always milky white--cassava starch, aka, tapioca. The last time I did this, I let that starch dry... and there it was, actual tapioca, like I buy in the store! That I made out myself! Not very much (maybe a tablespoon's worth), but still!

I decided to use my homemade tapioca (generously supplemented with store-bought tapioca) to make boba, the bubbles in bubble tea. First step was to find some guidance on how to do this.

You have to bring a sugar-water solution (to which you can add cocoa powder or green tea if you want) to a boil, take it off the burner, and then add the tapioca starch. The heat causes the starch to somehow break apart on a molecular level (!) (Not an atomic level--that would be amazing, though: boiling-water-induced fission), and then you can sort of knead it as if it had gluten (which it doesn't). Then you flatten it out...

(you can click through on all of these to see them bigger if you want)


Then the (for me) hard part, cutting or breaking off small pieces and forming them into balls. If you have too much liquid, the balls won't stay balls--they flump back down into a flat circle--but if you have too much tapioca, they are powdery and break apart. Anyway, I made some balls, but they were about twice as big as the boba you get in real bubble tea:



The directions I was following were kind of confusing because they detoured into how you can store them at this point, but you can also just cook them right away. Cooking involves two separate boils. First, just in water. The time varies depending on the size of the boba. My main failure was that I didn't boil them for long enough--I was trying to have them finished by the time guests came. You want them to boil until they're almost entirely translucent, then turn off the water and let them sit until they get the rest of the way translucent. This means they're cooked all the way through. Mine never got that far, so they looked kind of adorably like frog eggs--or like ice cubes that are clear on the outside but opaque inside:





Then you put them to rest for a few minutes in cold water, and then you boil them again in sugar water syrup. The directions say to use brown sugar (which you can flavor if you want). I used panela, which is just solidified cane juice from crushed sugarcane and tastes delicious.



And then you put them in tea!

Mine were large, so you had to eat them with a spoon, and they had a center which, though not uncooked, was a different consistency from the outside--not ideal, but still tasty! I miiiight do it again sometime, but if I do, I'll try hard to make them smaller. But I might not do it again--it's easier to use tapioca starch for other delicious things, like pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread).

Last year, when wakanomori and I went to Amazonas, one thing I really loved was fariña, a preparation of cassava made by grating it, then roasting it. After returning home, I found a great video on the making of it among the Tikuna (I wrote about it here; the entry had screenshots from the video). And I knew that was something I really, really wanted to participate in if I ever got the chance.

And I did get the chance, and it was (a) just like the video and (b) lovely, and (c) I made a great friend who had nearly the same name as me.

First went to a little shop in a residential part of Letícia to get rubber boots for me. Then we went by taxi to a point in the middle of apparent nowhere, and the taxi let us out. There was a tiny path leading into the landscape, and we set out on that:

( four photos: little shop, taxi, and two of the path )

All along the way there were wild fruits we could just reach out and eat. Here, granadilla, a type of passion fruit. This one isn't ripe, but we had some ripe ones.



And there were garden patches and fields all along the way, too, but blending right in to the riot of other growing things. Here, pineapples:



There was also sugarcane, bananas, and... cassava! Here's a bunch which even I could see was a grouped planting (you can see some small bananas in there too, though):



At last we came to the place where the fariña roasting was happening. You can see the machine used for grating the cassava--just like in the video! But they were past that stage. The big roasting pans are also just the same! And the paddles for turning it. They graciously let me take a turn. My new friend Francy and her mom are feeling the fariña to see if it's still damp, or if it's dry. If it's dry, it's done.

You can see that the fariña is being roasted over a fire that's contained by a wall of corrugated metal that's then insulated with a mud-grass mixture. Very cool.

( the roasting area--three photos )

When it's done, it gets strained to take out the large lumps, the quiebra muelas, or tooth breakers. But one of my guides likes snacking on those, and they can be good if you soak them in something, like açai juice. Açai was in season, and people were selling the juice (actually somewhere between a juice and a puree) everywhere. People like to have it mixed with ordinary fariña (not the tooth breakers) and a little sugar--wonderful.

You can see that the sieve is handmade. Beautiful.

And then it's ready to be put into a sack to take home. Francy used a scoop made from a gourd to put it in the sack, a beautiful item. On another occasion I had cassava beer, which we drank out of gourds like that, coated on the inside with a local resin. They filled a 50-lb sack with fresh-made fariña. They also had buckets of cassava starch (used to make that beer, among other things).

( straining the fariña, scooping it, plus the starch (three photos) )

At some point before we left, we took a little walk around, looking at the fields. When the cassava is grown, you can walk underneath it, like in the first picture. They told me that it's ready to harvest when all but the top leaves have fallen off.

One of my guides was asking about different types of cassava, trying to correctly identify ones that were sweet (don't need to soak to remove the cyanide) from the ones that are bitter (that do need to soak). They looked at things like the leaves to be able to tell, and I was reminded of the dissertation by Clara Patricia Peña-Venegas that I've been reading, which has this diagram of all the places indigenous people look to make distinctions between types.

In her disssertation, she also said that special landraces (local cultivars) get given special names, and I saw this! "Does this one have a special name?" my guide asked of one plant, and Francy's father said, "pajarito."

Under the cut is the diagram, and also: a cleared area for farming, some stems of cassava, which are used for planting (each one is cut into smaller sections for planting), an example of one of those in the ground, and what it's like under a canopy of cassava.

( cassava agriculture (five photos) )

When we were finished, we waited for a long time for transport to come. Francy's parents had huge loads: her dad carried the 50-lb bag of fariña, and her mon was carrying a similar amount of firewood. The mom, Mateas, and the bag of fariña went off with one motorcycle taxi, and the dad, the firewood, and Francy went off on another (I think: memory hazy, now). Francy's boyfriend (brother of one of my guides) and my guides and I went back in ... I can't remember now if it was a taxi or a tuk tuk!

Waiting

This is one thing I want to go back to the Amazon for: to join in in this (if there was a community that wouldn't mind that). The screenshots here are taken from a gorgeous 21-minute video made by the Department of Intangible Heritage of Peru's Ministry of Culture (the Tikuna/Ticuna/Magüta people's ancestral lands encompass portions of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil).

Here's a link to that video: Uí, preparación y vigencia de la fariña entre los ticuna

It starts by situating us in relation to the forest, to the trees and plants. An anthropologist says that for the Tikuna, "plants are the beings that possess all knowledge ... they are the most intelligent beings there are." I like it better when people are allowed to speak for themselves, and fortunately that's the case in the rest of the film. But I like this idea, and at least I could feel warmth and respect from this woman toward the Tikuna, and toward their respect for plants.

( screenshots of the flooded forest and a solo tree against the clouds )

It starts in a field, digging up the cassava tubers. You can see what the cassava plant looks like on the right, and you can get a sense of how big those tubers are! Coincidentally, in the story by Nando I'm currently (very slowly) translating from Tetun, a husband and wife are digging up a kind of yam, and it's a lot of work, and looking at this video, I can see the how and why of that.



Some peeling happens right out in the field. I took this screenshot because I was admiring the little kid, who, though it's not clear in the picture, is wielding a knife of his own: helping!



And I liked this image of everyone coming back to the community with the tubers they'd dug up because of the boy playing the drum and cradling a tuber like a phone between his shoulder and head.



Half of the peeled cassava is left in water to "ripen," and the other half is immediately grated (and then left to ripen... both portions are going to be mixed together in the end, and it all ends up grated, so I'm not understanding this step, but I'm sure there's a good reason for it).

In the community where this video was made, they have a machine for grating the cassava:





(Some cassava is also pounded. Again, not clear on how this figures in to the process. I thought I was understanding the Spanish fairly well, but I could have missed something.)
( strong arms )

The video also shows women making the sieves that will be used to strain the grated cassava, and also making the tipiti, a long, woven tube into which the grated cassava is packed.



Once the cassava's packed, the tipiti is hung from a tree and a heavy stick is inserted at the bottom of the tube. Then someone sits on it, and the tube contracts and the moisture is squeezed out of the mash!



The person speaking says if you don't want to sit on the stick, you can just use one that's very heavy that'll do the squeezing for you.

And beneath the cut you can see the mash coming out of the tipiti and being strained:

( three photos )

Next comes toasting it. You start early in the morning and go through into the afternoon, or even, if you want, to the following day:



"If there's no fish, there's fariña. What's important is to never lose the cultivation of cassava because in it is the people's way of life,” says one man.



( two photos of fariña in meals )

¡Gracias por acompañarme en esta história de fariña!