Teca Thompson & Fatima Falangola (Brazilian)
Brazilian natives Thompson and Falangola seven years ago moved to Charleston after two decades in New York, and last year launched the Brazilianuts food truck. Their specialty is tapioca, the popular Brazilian chewy crepe-like shell that’s filled with everything from caramelized bananas to scrambled eggs.
Favorite childhood food: Thompson was a fan of her mother’s fruit salad with passionfruit juice, while Falangola’s favorite was her father’s tomato sauce.
Current favorite food to make: Falangola still enjoys tomato sauce on pasta, which is easy enough for her to handle as an untrained cook. Thompson, by contrast, has a culinary degree and professional kitchen experience: She likes to make sautéed shrimp with coconut milk.
Keep in mind when cooking a Thompson/Falangola recipe: There are plenty of Brazilian dishes that don’t overlap with the American canon, so home cooks may not have an instinctive sense of the taste or texture they’re trying to achieve. Thompson and Falangola advise pressing ahead anyhow: “They should try at least once.”