Grilled Cheese Brazilian style

So Britain has cheese on toast (or Welsh Rarebit/Rabbit if purchased in a fancy restaurant). A perennial cheap and easy favourite as a winter snack.

America has grilled cheese, best when dipped in soup but also good when flying solo. Definitely also in the comfort food arena as per cheese on toast above.

Which brings us to Brazil. They too have grilled cheese though they go a different route. Purist you might say. Unsullied by trimmings or even accompaniment unless you count the stick…yes, it’s served kebab style.

Cheese on a stick. Genius – though I sense some of you will be having 70s flashbacks and asking where the pineapple is…you wags you. But this dish (!) is so much more, none of your Cathedral City here, its the local cheese, soft and creamy. Then, it’s grilled, giving it a char grilled exterior and a warm slightly runny centre (think baked camembert but not quite as rich). And as an added bonus, it’s available on the beach because nothing says beach food like cheese on a stick. I can hear you all now salivating thinking of runny, creamy cheese in 85 (30) degree heat… Mmmm.

You can get your Magnums, 99 cones or ice cream tubs but if you want to go local, and bold, this is what you try. They really do sell like hot ca…I mean hot cheese on a stick…literally.

And in much the way ice cream has vans, bikes and push stalls to take it to it’s adoring public the cheese on a stick has it’s mobile scheme too. The push stall with fixed grill capability. A regular attraction on the beach. So much so that one of the guys got in on the act and set up in business for a short time. He was just about to crack the market when the local protection racket clamped down on him and made him give the stall back to it’s rightful owner. So near yet so far.

Say ‘cheese’.

N