Tapioca

I remember tapioca as little, hard white balls that needed to be soaked before cooking them into a delicious pudding. I didn't know, then, as a child in far-off North Dakota, that tapioca came from the manioc root. On vacation we saw a sign advertising "Tapioca--made to order" and decided to have some. The girl serving us was from Bahia, a state famous for its tapioca. She had come to southern Brazil to go to college and one of her school projects was making regional foods from her state. The project took and she is still living in the south making food.

The way she made the tapioca was to fry it, and fill it with the traditional filling of coconut and condensed milk. It looks like a pale taco shell. It was oh, sooooooo yummy!