First Try at Cooking Feijoada

Today I attempted to cook the national dish of Brazil: Feijoada.

A year or so back, I met a Brazillian family who was touring in Canberra. Amongst other things, they related to me how amazed they were at how much meat Australians eat, and how cheap meat was. It transpired that in Brazil the main staple is black bean stew served on rice.

During the camper holiday where some of our meals consisted of beans instead of meat as the base, I was reminded of the Brazillian staple.

Trawling through a few recipes, I compiled the following ingredients:

1kg black beans600g smoked chorizo sausages, chopped into chunks3 cloves garlic, pressed2 onions, chopped finely1 can of peeled, chopped tomatoesa few rashers of bacon, chopped very finelyboiled rice to serve

I bought Brazillian black beans in Belconnen for $5.90/kg, and after soaking them overnight, I boiled the beans for an hour and a half.

While the beans were boiling, I placed the chorizo chunks, garlic, and onion in a pan and fried them off.

Using a slotted spoon, I then lifted a few spoonfuls of beans from the pot of boiling beans, put them in a blender, and added the canned tomatoes. I whizzed them for about a minute. I added the resulting paste back into the pot of beans, along with the chorizo and onion mix.

The first serve of my interpretation of Bazillian black bean stew.

Leaving the soup to boil for another ten minutes, I then fried the bacon to a medium crisp, and allowed it to drain on paper towels.

I then served the sticky dark purple/brown soup on rice. A, X, and E were a little apprehensive at first, but they ate it!

The colour is certainly different to the lighter coloured foods my family is used to. I must admit that I was a little apprehensive at first that I had done something wrong, as the colour was quite dark and muddy. However online descriptions and photographs of this dish assured me that what I had cooked was not too far from the mark. A blog called Urban Cuisine Tour features this dish (2nd dish from top). Now I must admit that I don't know what collard greens are, or if I should serve Feijoada with some other greenery such as broccolini. This will be something I explore soon.