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Guarana and Shark's Tongue
A shark's palate is as rough as a steel file, so it makes a fine natural grater for guarana. And the guarana of Brazil is put up in the hardest roll we've ever encountered. It's tougher than any German erbwurst (vegetable sausage, for hikers) but much easier to take, because instead of being just peas or beans compressed for soup-making, it's the quintessence of a spicy seed from the guarana bush, affectionately known to the Professors as Paullinia Cupana. So just step into the nearest herb shop, health store or South American specialty bazaar and buy yourself a chocolate-colored roll of guarana, about half the length and thickness of a policeman's club and similar to it in every other respect. Or you might liken it to a chocolate éclair, a chocolate coated hot dog or banana-in any case it is only crushed guarana berries, dried and then pressed into this handy shape. Get a shark's palate too, and you're all set for a whole vacation of stimulating drinking.
Wherever you find yourself just sit down and scrape the seed sausage with the shark's taster exactly as you would grate a wooden nutmeg, until you've got a nice little pile of fine powdery shavings. Sweeten to your own taste, not the man-eating shark's; and infuse it like tea in boiling water. You can drink it hot, but it's better cold, as the Amazon Indians take theirs after centuries of shark's tongue scraping. Or you can just stir the brown powder into a glass of plain or charged water and drink demnation to alky, for there's a kick in this here seed beer that's more subtle than that in any root beer, birch beer or spruce beer we know, although it's not alcoholic. It refreshes; stimulates because it's got caffein, but positively does not inebriate. Besides, whisper it, they say it's an aphrodisiac.
When lemon juice is added you have Brazil's tasty limonada de guarana.
A guaraná infusion made from the traditional pressed stick. The stick and the grating surface are the only unusual parts; everything else is tea-making.
- The stickBastão de guaraná — dried, crushed, smoke-hardened guaraná seed pressed into a cylinder — is still sold by Brazilian grocers and online, though loose guaraná powder is far easier to find. The stick is genuinely as hard as described and will not yield to a knife.
- Skip the sharkA fine rasp-style grater (a Microplane or a nutmeg grater) does the same job safely and is easier to clean. Dried fish and shark palates are not food-safe kitchen tools by any current standard.
- How much to useNo quantity is given. Start with about 1/2 teaspoon of the shavings, roughly 1 to 2 grams, per cup of water; that already carries as much caffeine as a strong cup of coffee, since guaraná seed runs two to four times the caffeine of coffee bean by weight.
- InfusingTreat it as tea: pour water just off the boil over the powder and steep 5 to 10 minutes. Boiling it hard, or steeping much longer, pulls out tannins and turns it bitter and astringent.
- The powder does not dissolveStirred into cold or charged water it stays a suspension, so it will settle in the glass. Either strain the infusion through a paper filter or accept the sediment and stir before each sip.
- ErbswurstThe German comparison is Erbswurst, a compressed pea-flour soup concentrate sold in a sausage-shaped tube — a hiker's ration, not a vegetable sausage in the modern sense. It is still made, and still exactly as hard as the text suggests.
- Limonada de guaranáFor the lemon version, sweeten the cooled infusion, add fresh lemon or lime juice to taste, and top with sparkling water. This is not the same thing as bottled Guaraná Antarctica, which is a commercial soda built on guaraná extract.
- Dose, not aphrodisiacThe stimulant effect is caffeine and nothing more exotic. Because the stick is grated by hand there is no way to know the strength of a given batch, so build up from a small dose rather than judging by color.