Cassava Meal in Seattle?

[ptridel]

I need to find this Brazilian ingredient in the next twenty-four hours at a store in Seattle. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[ptridel]

Hey everybody, thanks for all the advice. I am loving this online resource for culinary information. I ended up picking up a bag of manioc meal at the Mercado Latino in the Market, where they offered 4 different variations on this product. We used it in a class last night and it was more or less like it is in Brazilian cuisine, as noted by howard 1st, though I recall it being quite pale in color. We had to use butter instead of palm oil, which made it darker, though the texture was there.

[howard 1st]

glad things worked out for you - that is EXACTLY why we all participate here - fyi, palm oil is available (at great expense...) in the middle eastern grocery a hundred yards or so north of the mercado latino.

[howard 1st]

sorry to toss another cock into the ring but yucca and cassava are decidedly NOT the same root - though manioc IS another name for what ptriedel is seeking. be most careful if you are able to obtain the whole root as there is a cyanide compound in it that MUST be beaten and rinsed out - thus, it is most practical to obtain the meal from which most receipes begin; i have seen it frequently in latin markets. feijojada, the brazilian national bean dish, adds the coarse meal as a textural element rather like crumbling crackers into soup. yucca, of course, can be cooked as is and is wonderful as frites or steamed in chunks with a garlic-y mojo

[terrier]

yucca != yuca. Yucca is a genus of flowering agave plants, mostly inedible.

Rest assured that yuca fritters and chips popular in the spanish-speaking Americas are indeed made from the same Manihot esculenta tubers known elsewhere as the cassava. Different growing conditions and varieties are what lead to different preparation methods - the smaller cassava tubers grown in wetter conditions are much lower in the cyanide compounds you mentioned, to the degree that simple cooking is sufficient.

[equinoise]

There is a Brazillian food market on the Ave that seems to be called Karioka now; not sure if sendexnet is still there.

http://www.karioka-sea.com/

[equinoise]

FYI, on the Ave in the U-District there was a retailer that does a ton of internet business selling Brazillian food products; I have ordered stuff before and I get many emails from them. It is known as Sendex.net, and I think that they have a retail outlet on the Ave. I know that they used to.

[ccqueen]

the little mexican grocery at the market sells cassava meal, not the root.

[bergeo]

I'd check uwajimaya in the International District

[terrier]

Yes, uwajimaya. Note too that it may be sold as "manioc" or "yuca" - different name, same tuber.