I lean into the deeply nourishing plate composition of a Brazilian “Prato Feito,” with farmer’s-market driven seasonal ingredients. I’ve come to call this style Carioca-California.

Food has always been my family’s love language, and the dinner table is where we traded stories, advice, and affection. When thinking of how to bring my culture to my American home, it had to come back to food. And someone had to do something about my Grandmother’s mysterious recipe books, lacking ingredient lists, oven temperatures, and cook times.  

My addiction to cookbooks and twenty years of experience creating in my own kitchen has been put to work to translate, document and adapt classic recipes from my childhood in Rio. I’m not a trained chef, but neither were the people who cooked some of the best meals I’ve ever had.

With American kitchens in mind, recipes are written using readily available grocery store ingredients, and in standard US measurements.