What to eat BRAZIL 🇧🇷 Feijoada

Feijoada

The colonial version of what came first, the chicken or the egg would go something like: which came first the slave or the master? Never mind humans are not animals, even if we treat each other like it sometimes, often times, but we are the only known species to enslave their own, whether as hostages or as subjects.

The initial question regarding supply and demand, order and influence, master and slave is not immaterial when it comes to Brazil’s national dish. Far, far from it.

Slavery is a form of barbarism that exists deep within humanity, despite the inhumane nature of the practice. While many nations have outright bans on slavery, notably so in the “new world,” it still exists to this day in many forms and in many places on earth, sometimes visible but often tucked away. Certain industries like agriculture, food service, domestic help and the sex trade have persistent if not endemic issues that must be confronted in various corners of the globe.

Folk wisdom, or the stuff that spreads through oral tradition, long held that in Brazil, the African slaves brought from West Africa by way of the Atlantic Ocean, invented the country’s national dish. However, the earliest documentation of feijoada suggests white colonizers were serving it up in their cafés since the early nineteenth century. But did it exist in some form before then?

If you have ever known or lived with a chef, you know archival menus from their earliest days in the kitchen are hard to come by. Most who work in kitchens live a precarious existence, especially when they are getting started. If they were to be deprived of their basic rights and reduced to a few or no worldly possessions, hauled across an ocean perhaps with little to no literacy skills, would the gilded menu of “the big house” (the master’s house on a plantation, not prison, though like a jail) make it through to the historical record?

The name feijoada itself comes from the Portuguese word for beans, feijão. The basic essence of the dish is beans and some kind of savory scraps of meat, such as salted or dried pork, though in the new world, any such delicacy could hardly be described as rubbish. Aspects of the dish can be traced to ancient Rome, but white and not black beans were used in the concoctions of feijoada’s European cousins: French cassoulet, Milanese cassoeula, Romanian fasola, and Spain’s fabada asturiana, cocido madrileño, and olla podrida.

Feijoada as we think we understand it today was first documented in Recife in the northern Brazilian state of Pernambuco. In 1827, an advertisement appeared in the Diário de Pernambuco advertising an “excellent Brazilian-style feijoada” on Thursdays at the Águila d-Ouro restaurant on das Cruzes Street for a reasonable price. Such announcements continued through the century as if there was a fin-de-siècle moment happening with continental slavery.

At the same time, there was an elite backlash against this new world dish. In the same paper, Diário de Pernambuco, on March 3, 1840, a reactionary commentary from Father Carapuceiro declared feijoada a dish popular “in families where true gastronomy is unknown.” His diatribe against what is now widely considered Brazil’s national dish continued, “Everything is reduced to grease.” (For the record, this is hardly the case.)

Eventually in 1888, Brazil banned slavery, making it so one could not just retire to the big house at the end of a hard day of doing little more than maintaining a plantation where the actual hard work was done by others.

Apart from the written record and the oral tradition, we also have known facts, such as black beans originated with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The legume became a staple for the European settlers in the Americas and was consumed by both the upper and lower classes. Class determined what kind of meat was added and what possible side dishes may be served with feijoada only. The poor were most likely to serve it with manioc flour to thicken the stew.

In 2015, the culinary historian of the African diaspora Jessica B. Harris told The New York Times, that in essence, feijoada is “making the best of what you’ve been given.” Harris leans on the narrative of the enslaved but the disputed origins are most likely the symbiosis of myriad explanations as well as a fusion of flavors.

Elsewhere in the Portuguese-speaking or Lusophone world, the dish has also materialized in some form, whether Angola, Cabo Verde and Mozambique. Smithsonian Magazine elaborates, “Slaves may have been the ones who first started making feijoada, but most likely they were making it for their masters’ palates.”

As new world fusion food that broke through to mainstream to dominating a country’s culinary traditions, feijoada is a complete dish. One of Brazil’s musical icons, Chico Buarque, even penned a tribute song in 1978, “Feijoada completa,” which describes preparing the country’s now iconic national dish:

Woman
You will fry
A lot of pork rinds to go with it
White rice, farofa and chilli
Bahia orange or select orange
Throw the paio, dried meat, bacon into the cauldron
And let's add water to the beans

Recipe

Ingredients:
500 grams of dried black beans
Salt
White balsamic vinegar
3-4 yellow onions
Butter
500 grams of fresh, seasonal mushrooms
Sesame oil
Shoyu sauce
Ponzu sauce
Mirin
Ajinimoto feijão sazón (seasoning packets)
2 slices bacon cut pork or similar quantity of lardons
Tony Cachere’s Cajun seasoning
Black pepper
White wine
Fresh thyme
Farofa or cassava flour (for garnish)

Step 1: Soak the black beans in cold or room temperature water for several hours.

Step 2: Transfer beans with remaining liquid to a kettle and place on low heat. Add an additional 50 centiliters of water, a heaping tablespoon of vinegar (a Chinese-style soup spoon works well for this task), and one tablespoon of salt and stir. Add an additional 50 centiliters of water at a time as needed with corresponding ratios until beans are soft but al dente.

Step 3: Dice onions and place in a frying pan with 1-2 tablespoons of butter depending on the pan’s surface area and number of onions (more of both means more butter). Place on low heat and wait until they begin to caramelize.

Step 4: Combine a teaspoon of sesame oil, with one tablespoon each of shoyu and ponzu sauce and several drops of mirin. This may be too exotic for purists, but it adds a nice salty pop beyond what traditional salts are capable of. Whisk together with a fork and then use a vegetable brush to cover mushrooms in marinade glaze.

Step 5: Chop the mushrooms into small pieces and add to onions along with another tablespoon of butter and teaspoon of salt. Stir together with a wooden spoon and maintain on low heat.

Step 6: Add two 5-gram packets of Ajinimoto feijão sazón to the black beans and stir together.

Step 7: Ladle the black beans into the mushrooms and beans removing much but not all of the water from each ladle full of beans. Slice the bacon-cut pork to the size of lardons, adding or removing the fattier pieces for more or less pork fat flavor. Stir into the beans and mushrooms. Add black pepper, Tony Cachere’s Cajun Seasoning and white wine. Stir together and add a bunch of fresh thyme on top. Cover. Place on very low heat for 1-2 hours. Stir occasionally.

Step 8: Serve with rice and farofa or casava flour sprinkled on top for adding crunchiness on impact. It’s a mighty tasty companion to grilled steak.

Tips, tricks and notes:

For Ajinimoto feijão sazón and farofa in Bern, go to Casa Lusitania at Lorrainestrasse 2A. The farofa really adds the crunchiness and may be available with Portuguese food items in the international section of the grocery. It is worth it, do not skimp.

You can enhance the rice you serve it with by adding bouillon but plain rice is also plenty tasty with fresh feijoada.

Traditional Brazilian churrascaria would offer it as a side accompaniment along with fried plantains and a full salad bar to a carnival of endless-until-you-are-full grilled meats. Ergo, do not be afraid to use it as an accompaniment to steaks and other meats or serve solo.

Learn where to eat Brazilian food in Switzerland.

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