Andy HoffmanWe have to start with Shakespeare, because his play sets the tone. Over the centuries, people have taken so many perspectives on this tragic love story that even just the title evokes confused and conflicting ideas. Shakespeare himself calls them star-crossed lovers. Many people take them as brave young people, daring to go against society for what they believe to be right and true. Sometimes the conflict peers through a narrow lens, with the Montagues and Capulets standing in for (as in Elizabeth England) Catholics and Protestants, or (in West Side Story) rival gangs. At its heart, the story chronicles the power of young passion, particularly in the hands of characters neither smart enough nor strong enough to control it.
In Brazil, Romeu e Julieta alludes to Shakespeare’s play, but refers more commonly to a dessert or snack that combines two distinctly local ingredients into a simple dish. You see it everywhere in Brazil using queijo de Minas, a cheese from Minas Gerais, and goiabada, a thick paste made from guava. It originated in the Portuguese colonial era, a carry-over from Europe but made with local ingredients. Minas cheese hardly differs from simple farmer’s cheese, made from squeezing milk curds to extract the liquid whey, and then pressing the dry curds into a cake. This cake is stored and sold in a brine. The saltiness of the cheese compliments the sticky sweetness of the guava paste, guava jelly with most of the liquid removed. The balance between the salt and sweet, between the grainy cheese and uniform goiabada, and between the milk and the fruit depends on how much of each you gather of each in a single bite.
Here in Minas Gerais Romeu e Julieta completes a day. A 1960s advertising campaign, based on the actors from a popular telenovela – the evening soap operas that remain the essential Brazilian programming – cemented the association between the characters and the foods. The romantic leads in the soap opera dressed as Romeo and Juliet in a pitch for one brand of goiabada, and what had been a quaint and loosely remembered food combination became a national standard. In truth, there seem to be dozens of different brands of both queijo de Minas and goiabada, and it hardly matters which you use. To the individual makers of each product, this general acceptance of product over brand must feel as tragic as Shakespeare’s ending – Romeo killing himself after mistaking Juliet’s drug-induced slumber for death, followed by Juliet following suit upon rousing and seeing her lover dead. I doubt that committees that create advertising feel entirely comfortable associating their products with such a sad and pointless end to young lives.
But Deb and I don’t get confused by this association. In the end, the name of this favorite dessert has nothing to do with the catastrophic misunderstanding between Romeo and Juliet. Two completely different things become something greater together. Shakespeare’s lovers never got the chance, but queijo de Minas already has its place and identity in this country, as does goiabada. Together, they make something greater than either alone. Just like me and Deb: we are whole and complete as individuals, but together we become something better and probably more memorable. Romeu e Julieta benefited from an advertising campaign, but the value of our partnership can’t increase through the external, only through what we share. Much as I might believe the combination should be renamed Deborah e Andre, because we represent that extraordinary balance better that Romeo and Juliet’s extremism, I would rather keep our love away from comestibles.