Few people, if any, make acarajé like Toinha in Brazil. The most famous street food in the country, which arrived here with the slaves, is already challenging on its own: bean paste, vatapá, caruru, peppers, all with slow and complex preparation. But Toinha goes further and even makes her own dendê oil. With her masculine strength, she climbs up the palm tree with a machete in her hands to knock down the large cluster, separates the seeds, cooks, pounds until extracting all the liquid, strains, and cooks again. Only then does the oil separate and rise to the surface. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s rewarding,” she says. Then, at her food stall, she prepares and serves the acarajé with all her feminine delicacy. “I am both a man and a woman at the same time; I do the macho and female fuss,” says Toinha, a transgender woman who left home when she was still young, in Aracaju, to be free. She has been selling her acarajé with a lot of “fuss” for 30 years, as she says: “It tastes delicious because of the dendê oil,” she assures.