Walk through any of São Paulo's street markets, the feiras that set up in a different neighborhood each day of the week, and you will find the pastel stand by the sound of frying and the length of the queue. The pastel is a big, flat rectangle of very thin dough folded around a filling and fried until it blisters with bubbles. Its Paulistano form owes much to the city's Japanese and Chinese immigrants, who ran many of the early stalls.

Tradition says to eat it standing at the stall with a glass of fresh sugarcane juice, hot enough to make you pause and too good to wait. Fried in batches and wrapped in paper, it is exactly the kind of thing the Interlagos crowd lives on.

The dough

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups (315 g) all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon fine salt
• 2 tablespoons (30 ml) neutral oil
• 1 tablespoon (15 ml) cachaça
• 1 teaspoon (5 ml) white vinegar
• about 2/3 cup (160 ml) warm water

Beef filling

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon (15 ml) neutral oil
• 1 small onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 12 oz (340 g) ground beef
• 1 small tomato
• 8 green olives
• 2 scallions
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Cheese filling

Ingredients

• 8 oz (225 g) low moisture mozzarella
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano

Shaping and frying

Ingredients

• about 6 cups (1.4 liters) neutral oil for frying

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