Brazilian Bustle : Every Friday you can visit the Muslim Market

Excited about the prospect of going to the weekly Muslim market I headed out on my next marvelous adventure. I imagined a wonderful street blocked off for several hours, 10a -2p to be exact, and lots of great things to eat and buy. I had heard lovely things about the market from friends but perhaps I didn't listen carefully to the details as I was so enchanted with the idea of seeing something new and eating lamb prepared lots of interesting ways.

The market is set on a busy street on the sidewalk. It is about 400 feet long and is comprised of about 95% food items. Raw meats and cooked. As you can see below, a nice rack of hanging raw meat is for sale as cars, trucks and bikes go racing by.

Here is an interesting and totally unexpected 'tower of offal'. Yes, offal, I think it is the insides of lamb but who knows could be beef definitely not pork. See how nicely the links of mystery meat sausage stack up on top of pure fat and the lovely large brown kidney perched delicately on the top. And next to it a sort of meatloaf of mixed meats. Various parts of this tower are sliced and then sauteed with rice and served for lunch. Next please.

Beautiful nuts and dried fruits were available for sale and admittedly they looked tempting enough to buy. I didn't. They had lovely raisins and dried cherry tomatoes. I have had dried tomatoes in Singapore when visiting our friend Daniel and his wife last November. They were served as pre-dinner nibbles with nuts and chips. I think they are more of a dessert snack as they are very sweet, like candy, and very delicious.

The nut sellers were in traditional Uighur costume. The Uighur people come from the southwest of China and it is said that they are related to the Hungarians. Too bad they don't cook food as nicely as the Hungarians.

Here is a HUGE block of sweets. It's nuts and dried fruits pressed together with honey and sugar. It's $10.00 a pound and a small slice weighs about a pound as it is quite dense. When you look at it you see a lot of walnuts, when you bite into it you taste a lot of peanuts. Yes, I bought what I was hoping to be a small bit and ended up with a pound. The walnuts were so tempting. I do not like peanut butter and I do not really enjoy peanuts, although with a lot of salt I like peanuts. Anyway, a big bust but I am glad I tried it.

This fellow was making small pockets of bread stuffed with lamb and cooked in a hot stone oven. Now THAT looked good.

Fresh and hot!

And tasty!!

I did not try these, lamb on a stick, as each stick is liberally laced with fat and it's very rich and greasy when cooked. I know this as I have eaten these before in another part of town. Do they really like the taste of the fat, perhaps more then the meat? I don't know. They are good, I just didn't have the taste for it this morning.