Salgados!

Starting off the set of posts about the casamento with an ode to salgados, one of my favorite parts of eating in Brazil. 

Salgados translates loosely to "salty things" - frequently paired with "doces" or "sweet things" - and they form the core of quick foods in Brazil. You'll find McDonalds and KFC and Pizza Hut here, as you do everywhere, but the salgados dominate the fast food culture here. In this picture, the doces are upper left and the rest is salgados.

Salgados come in many formats. I will try to get the portugese names where possible - any Brazilians reading who want to leave names in the comments, have at it - and I'll just describe my favorite ones...

• fried chicken on a stick. this one needs no explanation, i assume.
  
• chopped chicken in a fried cone of bread (coxinha frango, I think). imagine a nice crispy exterior filled with tasty chopped chicken and herbs.
  
• fried pie with dried beef and onions (pastel de carne seca). this one may be my favorite snack food ever. salty dried beef refreshed with water, chopped, and sauteed with onions, then dropped into fresh dough and deep fried. especially good at the mercado municipal in sao paulo. we're going there.
  
• baked pie with hearts of palm (empada de palmito). like a pot pie, but in miniature. fresh palmito is amazing.
  
• cheese bread (pao de queijo). the ubiquitous snack food in brazil. round balls of bread with cheese baked into them, ranging from very small to enormous. a pao de queijo with a tiny, super-sweet coffee (cafezinho) is the classic brazilian salty snack.
  
• salt cod fritters (bolinhos de bacalhau). fried salt cod snack balls. perfect with an icy cold brazilian draft beer (choppe).
  

I'll come back to this one again and again, in all likelihood. I absolutely crush the salgados when I'm down here...