Beach fit with cheese bread

Rosani and Raul Goes have lived in Ireland for more than 25 years. Yet, there is no turn of the year festivity that doesn’t include this traditional dish: Páo de Queijo. In Brazil, the cheese bread is a popular breakfast dish and snack.

The small, cheesy bread rolls are widely sold at snack bars and bakeries and freshly prepared in the Link Brazil store in Ballyjamesduff where the pensioners Rosani and Raul are enjoying their morning snack.

“The families get together on New Year’s Eve where we cook and have dinner together,” Rosani says. “We’d have a big barbecue outside where we’d grill meat and fish and serve a lot of fruit. The whole family would cook together.”

For dessert they make ‘pudim de leite condensado’. Like with many sweet dishes, she explains, this Brazilian flan’s main ingredient is condensed milk.

Together with eggs and sugar it makes a pudding with creamy texture topped off with caramel sauce.

“After the countdown we all hug and everyone gathers at the beach to see the fireworks.”

Here they dance to Samba and Bossa Nova tunes played by various musicians like there is no tomorrow. “We stay until the sun rises.”