This recipe doubles easily if you want to use it as a main dish. It is a vegetarian version of posole, a dish made by the Pueblo Indians and Hispanics for feast days and special celebrations. Most canned hominy is pretty high in sodium so I usually wait until after cooking to add sea salt to taste.
Latin America is well known for it’s spicy, hot, flavorful foods. However let it be known that their cuisine does not acquire its famous flavor without a little help from a friend, namely the hot sauce, known in this case as Molho Apimentado. Malagueta peppers rank hot on the list of peppers and this sauce, as most hot sauces, can be used like the American version of gravy, on any dish be it turkey, rice, kale or stuffing. The hot sauce brings the different flavors of the meal together with one cohesive taste and many textures to give Latin American food lovers the taste they’ve been waiting for.
The marinade suggested in this recipe is indigenous to Brazil in that it utilizes one of Brazil’s great ingredients, Cachaça, made famous around the world in the sweet taste of the Caipirinha, one of Latin America’s most popular alcoholic beverage.
This stuffing runs the gamut of the five food groups, relying on fruits, vegetables, protein, grains, and dairy to create the fine mixture roasting within the turkey’s cavity. Farofa (cassava flour), the Latin version of corn flakes, brings it all together and gives the recipe the cohesive texture that it requires.
Brazilian rice is one of the staples of a Brazilian dinner and the holidays are no different. Brazilians most often make use of long grain rice, and the shelled pumpkin seeds give it the holiday zest that it needs while the kale (as well as the rice) is sautéed in garlic to add a touch of flavor. A touch of hot sauce adds zest to this side dish.
