TAKE FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF cross-Atlantic commerce and movement of people, voluntary and otherwise, stir in massive amounts of energy, add misery, guns, money, Portuguese forts in unexpected places, and scorched earth everywhere else, leave it be for the benign neglect of time to assimilate everything, and you might just wind up with something as good as feijoada.
The best ideas are simple. Meat, fried fat, beans, cereal grains. The combination is classic enough that it’s made it’s way into rap: red beans and rice didn’t miss this MC’s muse.
It’s the kind of thing you’d cook, outnumbered and out-supplied, bored and jumpy with all the time in the world, in a mud fort somewhere on one of the insect coasts a crooked Pope gave the Portuguese, while your enemy sat two hundred metres away and cooked the same thing. As a response to tedium and drawn-out existential horror it is therefore one of the perfect themed dishes for this blog.
Though I will take advice and correction from Australian blogdom’s most notorious Lusophile, I tend to think this one’s a tasty, if not authentic, approximation of the Latin American variant.
Feijoada do Stanmore
- Can of black beans/frijoles
- Can of four-beans
- A chorizo sausage
- About 250gm casserole beef, cubed
- Two rashers bacon
- A brown onion
- A fistful of garlic1
- A nice hot chilli or two and some paprika2
- Did I put cumin in? I think so3
- Bay leaves
- Steamed vegetables to go along, rice, and an orange.
Heat up your pot and fry up the chopped bacon, chorizo, and the other meat until the smell makes you hungry. Add the onions and garlic and beans, stir in the paprika, chilli, cumin(?) and bay leaves. Now turn the heat right down and leave it alone for an hour and a half while you faff about on the internet, or mend the sheets and halliards of your carrack, or finish field-stripping that demi-culverin you’ve weathered all the way from Manila.
When Tenente Amilcar calls quittin’ time on the day’s beach fort sentry-go or topsail yard watch, serve with rice, steamed vegetables, and a chopped up orange on the side. Cue up the great and underappreciated gangster film City of God on your caravel’s in-house DVD system. It’s cooler than any movie Michael Caine ever pointed a threatening finger in, and it’s given the world what must be the most exciting urban armed chase involving a chicken ever.
1 I think there’s an emerging theme to the recipes on this blog.
2 Yep.
3 Yes indeed. Op. Cit.
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FDB · 7 April 2011, 20:14 · #
A good mate made a huge batch of this with 4 different kinds of smoked pork, and just black beans. We were on holiday in Southern Victoria in midwinter, and after a day spent in a boat in the rain not catching any fish, it was the only reason nobody got killed in their sleep that night.
Liam · 7 April 2011, 20:28 · #
That’s the idea entirely: you know it’s good when nobody gets brutally murdered. (Let’s not talk about the long term effects of excessive sodium intake).
I just requoted that for effect. Call it an echo.
Umberto Eco & the Funnymen · 7 April 2011, 21:41 · #
4 DIFFERENT KINDS OF SMOKED PORK?!!
FMD. Respect, man, respect.
FDB · 8 April 2011, 09:09 · #
Weather’s cooling down again, so it’s time to bring that dish back from the forequarter to the head of this fine animal.
Lefty E · 8 April 2011, 10:21 · #
four-cannon salute
Bemvindo a nossa fortaleza, O Tenente Liamistão. I see you brought dinner. Mmmmm yow!! – feijoada from Cabral’s secret coast. Hoo mama!
[bust the welcome choon, Lieutenant Amilcar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-PJS3zSZu8]
We apologise for the palm wine, but I believe youll find it effective, if rather unstable accompaniment.
I gonna cook me up one of these, O meu Tenente. Last I had was at the Cafe Brasil in Dili (delicious), and before that, at Ze Carioca in Coimbra (still coming down from that high, 12 months on)
http://www.restaurantezecarioca.com/
PS The Holandes next door eat miniature ponies. We have proof.
4 different kinds of smoked pork · 8 April 2011, 18:50 · #
On the recipe, O meu Irmao, I’d only state the obvious: beef’s in a feijoada, big time, but never at the expense of pork.
But, as you note, this is an openly variant dish, so peace be upon your and all your bean-based dishes.
Its also a wee bit offal-lite for traditionalists, truth be told. But trust me, you’re off the hook with me there. Ive seen too way too many pigs ears in my Cozido.
That said, remember this famous Portuguese saying: A galinha de minha vizinha / é sempre melhor que a minha.
It might even catch on.
Liam · 8 April 2011, 21:34 · #
Certainly I gave the dangerous eye to the spare ribs on hand at the butchers’ when I was doing the planning, but I’m trying to be tight, rather than authentic.
Bird in the hand, ¿no es?
FDB · 9 April 2011, 00:30 · #
Yes, thanks to the Sinister One for pointing to the organs.
One of the Four Smoked Porks was liver sausage.
“tight, rather than authentic”
“Tight”, as in keep your shit…?
In which case, chitlins!
Lefty E · 9 April 2011, 00:45 · #
“My neighbour’s chicken always looks better than my own.”
Nando’s should work this in somehow.
PS Like the preview/ submit function. Noice.
Lefty E · 9 April 2011, 00:56 · #
Incidentally, Tenente Amilcar doesnt call quittin’ time…I calls quittin’ time.
“Quittin time!!”
Liam · 9 April 2011, 08:17 · #
That should have been one of the heraldic symbols of the Apostles. Keys for Peter, liver sausage for João.
Well, you’s the foreman.
David Irving (no relation) · 28 April 2011, 16:25 · #
This sounds similar (but not identical) to the red beans ‘n’ rice I do frequently, which involves 3 kinds of salt smoked pork (chorizo, ham and bacon). I shall try feijoada as a variant.
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