This cookbook is a great resource for making traditional Brazilian dishes. I might buy it in Portuguese just to have around the house (online recipes are super sketchy and best not to trust). When I have guests over, it might be good to serve food they are used to. I usually cook Mexican, Thai, or Indian food if it is just me and my husband eating... So we eat a lot of spices that most Brazilians really cannot tolerate. Not kidding when I say that my MIL complains about sweet paprika being "spicy." Brazilian food is incredibly bland as 90% of it is fried and flavored with just onion, garlic, tomato paste, and parsley.

Unfortunately, this book is very poorly translated and there are many things that will leave readers of the English version scratching their heads. A good translation would have converted all the measurements into standard English cookbook measurements (Brazilian measurements continue to mystify me--how much is a teacup? Your teacup or my teacup? Filled and leveled to the top? Is this teacup a translation of "copo americano"? We shall never know.), as well as doing the research necessary to convert cuts of beef from Brazilian/Portuguese cuts to approximate American/British ones. Besides this, there are frequent mistakes in the wording that makes it obvious that the translator is not a fluent English speaker: change vs exchange, "a history for the last 400 years old" etc. Spelling mistakes related to poor knowledge of English abound. It's frustrating to read and I kind of have secondhand embarrassment for the translator and publisher, but I cannot say I am surprised. As a professional teacher and translator myself, I encounter this sort of translation work done by quote/unquote professionals on a daily basis. It points to a much deeper problem in Brazil that has nothing to do with a cookbook review, so I will leave it at that for today.