Brazil is blessed with an enormous quantity and variety of fresh fruits. The fruits are eaten fresh, cooked, preserved, and often made into fresh juice. Every Brazilian city has a number of juice bars - downtown, in neighborhoods, and in shopping malls. These bars make juice to order, and a quick juice is a typical flavor- and energy-pick-me-up for Brazilians of every stripe.
Most fruit juice bars have a menu of twenty or thirty available juices. Some are always made from fresh fruit - orange juice, for example - and others from frozen, unsweetened fruit pulp. The available fruits can also be combined to create an infinite number of juice drinks.
One of the most popular juice combinations throughout Brazil is pineapple (Portuguese:
abacaxi, pronounced a-bah-cah-SHEE) and fresh mint (Portuguese:
hortelã). Somehow the acidic, floral taste of fresh pineapple combines magically with the spicy snap of fresh mint to become something uniquely refreshing. When it's hot and sticky outside, as it can be in Brazil, nothing refreshes like a glass of pineapple-mint juice.
Fortunately, this drink is easy to make in North America. Unlike some exotic Brazilian fruits, which cannot be found in the USA, Canada or Europe, both fresh pineapple and mint are widely available north of the Equator. Here's all you need to do to make Brazil-in-a-glass at home.
Pineapple/Mint Juice2 thick slices fresh pineapple, peeled and cored, in 1 inch chunks
1 tall glass fresh cold water
handful of mint leaves
3/4 ice cubes
sugar to taste (I don't use any, but some might prefer a sweeter drink. Brazilians definitely do!)
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Put everything except sugar into blender. Blend until thoroughly amalgamated. Check sweetness, add sugar if desired, and blend again to dissolve sugar. Serve immediately.
