That was just heartbreaking. I knew Brazil losing was a very possible outcome for that game but no one wants to see their team completely fall apart. It's really hard to watch a game where it looks like your team just stopped playing. I really had no motivation to do the challenge Tuesday. I had already decided to cook the dish for whichever country lost, but I was so disappointed with the game, it was hard to bring myself to do it. I basically just wanted to turn off the TV and be like this:
But I knew I needed to see this through....
Since the game was decided in the first half an hour and I don't like torturing myself, I decided to use the second half to get my shopping done for the challenge. I had long been planning to do Brazilian feijoada - an amazing traditional black bean stew.
Beans are kind of a wonderful thing in Brazil. In a country with a bit disparity between the rich and the poor and a very small (but growing!) middle class - it's so interesting to find a dish that is eaten at all economic levels. While certain aspects of it might change - I love the idea that this is a unifying dish across all classes. In all the time I've spent in Brazil with my family, I don't think I ever went more than a couple of days without seeing feijoada on the table. Even at my parent's house in the US, it was weird to go a week without black beans. It was definitely one of the harder things to adjust to when I went to college.
As for cooking them - the first still was to boil the beans to start getting them tender. Beans take forever to cook to the right consistency and I wasn't getting the head start of soaking them so boiling ahead of time was crucial.
The one thing I didn't like about my recipe was that is told me to drain the liquid. One of my favorite things about feijoada is just the inky color of the sauce and I feel like a lot of that went down the drain when I poured the beans into the colander.
Next, it was time to take out my trustiest kitchen tool - the crock pot. If you don't have a crock pot, get one. This isn't like the admittedly silly waffle maker or the helpful but not necessary lemon squeezer. If you like to cook amazing food but have a job or a life or anything else that keeps you from being at home for 10 hours to check on your dish, a crock pot will save the day. Even if you don't have a job or life and are at home for 10 hours a day, they way the crock pot cooks things just gives you then most tender meats and it's still nice to be able to set it up and walk away while the cooking just happens for you. The slow cooker is easily the best cooking tool I have.
So I poured my beans into the pot and got started on the rest of the ingredients.
What makes the black beans feijoada instead of just feijao (which just means beans) is to have tons of meaty goodness in there. I had a pork shoulder, short ribs, and sausage to add. The recipe also called for a ham hock. I had no idea what that was so I grabbed this salt pork. I'm pretty sure it's just a giant chunk of bacon. When I got home, I read the recipe again and realized the ham hock was just a big ham bone. Oops - oh well, BACON!
I cut up my cured ham in to little pieces and quickly seared the outside then through it in the crock pot. I did the same with the pork shoulder and short ribs and then added garlic, onions, and jalapeno. I seem to keep getting more jalapeno in my eyes than my dishes though. I think it's time I invest in some kitchen gloves.
The reason for browning the meats a bit before throwing them in the crock pot is just to give them more flavor. I don't know why but browned foods are always more delicious and while the crock pot will make a meal tender and juicy, it won't add that browning aspect.
I let everything sit in the crock pot for a few hours while I finished work and then took a nap. See? This is why the Crock Pot is awesome. I was cooking while taking a nap. I was cooking while working. Crock Pots literally make multitasking the easiest thing in the world.
Once the feijoada was almost ready, I threw in the sausages. I used the same liguica from the Portugal challenge since it was so delicious. Most sausages are already precooked so this is more of a heating up. If they had been in the slow cooker the whole time, they probably would have disintegrated. I've done this before. It's not ideal.
I paired my Brazilian stew with some Brazilian cheese bread and enjoyed it all over a bowl of quinoa. I don't really eat a lot of rice so I like using quinoa to fill that void.
After that I just took a lot of gratuitous pictures of cheese bread. Turns out, that's all anyone cares about. I get more hits because of cheese bread than anything else. To be fair though - the stuff is basically crack. I had the last three pieces for breakfast today and was super bummed. I think I need to go home and make more...
Update:
Here's a link to the recipe I used and I've outlined what I changed:
- no oragne juice, that seemed weird to me, i just added enough water to cover the beans and some of the meat
- cured ham instead of ham hock
- coriander bc I forgot
Things I would do differently:
- not drain beans after rinsing
- actually get the ham hock. my cured ham was good but there were a ton of fat chunks that I had to pick out while eating.
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