Knowledge And Tastes Of The Colony – Smoked Goose Breast

Abstract

This video shows some of the results of the Knowledge and Tastes of the Colony research agenda, carried out by Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas em Alimentação e Cultura (GEPAC), together with Laboratório de Ensino Pesquisa e Produção em Antropologia da Imagem e do Som (LEPPAIS) and Laboratório de Estudos Agrários e Ambientais (LEAA) from Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPEL), and supported by CNPq and Fapergs. Carried out between the years 2011 and 2013, the work sought to get to know – mainly through studying eating habits – the culture shared by countrymen with different ethnic backgrounds in Serra dos Tapes, southernmost of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. This video shows the production process of a typical dish of the cuisine of Pomeranians immigrants’ descendants: the smoked goose breast. Pomeranians are an ethnic group that comes from Pomerania, a former province of the Empire of Prussia located on the Baltic coast in the north of what today constitutes the territory of Germany and Poland. Thanks to a private settlement project in 1858, the southernmost area of Teutonic settlement in Brazil came to exist at the southern end. The tradition of cooking smoked goose breast possibly came along with the first families of Pomeranian immigrants who arrived at the southern end in 1858. However, despite its historical and cultural importance, over the last few decades the production of smoked goose breast ended up losing ground in the lives of rural families, thus only a few rural households currently have the know-how to make this dish. Gooses are bred by many families and can be found in the farms of Pomeranian families, but are generally used in dishes like roast goose or goose soup. In this sense, the cooking of smoked goose breast has been practically abandoned. The cooking process that is shown in the video is performed by Romilda Grimm Hax’s family, one of the few people who have maintained this tradition for over 50 years. The filming took place in June 2012, the only time of year in which the cooking occurs. Thus, this video represents an important record of imagery of one of the few families that currently keeps alive the tradition of cooking smoked goose breast.

Director, Editing and Direction: Evander Eloi krone.

Camera:Evander Eloi Krone, Losane Hartwig Schwartz e Maurício Dias Schneider.

Support Team: Carmen Machado, Carolina Vergara Rodrigues, Claudia Turra Magni, Mauro Bruschi, Patrícia dos Santos Pinheiro e Renata Menasche.

Research Team: Renata Menasche (coordenadora), Evander Eloi Krone, Losane Hartwig Schwartz, Maurício Dias Schneider, Carmen Machado, Carolina Vergara Rodrigues, Claudia Turra Magni, Mauro Bruschi, Patrícia dos Santos Pinheiro, Caio Moreto Mazzili, Danielle Neugebauer Wille, Flávia Charão Marques, Giancarla Salamoni, Hamilton Bittencourt, Mártin César Tempass, Mauro Bruschi, Patrícia Postali Cruz, Raquel Rau e Sablina Clasen de Paula.