The Coalition Of The Swilling

Feijoada Update

There’s only one roblem with feijoada: it takes so darn long to cook that I end up having far too many caipirinhas to post anything that night. And that may be a good thing.
Anyhow, when we last saw our hero

He was feeling very sad and depressed because, as Bart correctly noted in the previous post, there were leftovers being used that he assumed he had dibs on. Well, I know the odors this boy is able to produce on regular foods; if you think for one minute he’s getting marinated pork, or god forbid beans, you have another thing coming. I don’t care what cute faces you make. NO!
besides, there are my needs to attend to

Yum yum.
A few weeks ago I posted a few caipirinha pics, and our new friend Cachaça Dave was kind enough to mail me a new muddler with the proviso that I check out his brand of Brazilian hootch. Proving once again that I can indeed be bought, and bought cheaply, I went out and got a bottle

Hmmmm

A very interesting cachaça. It’s aged in new oak for a year, and it contains the barest schmidgen of corn spirits. It has a sweet oakeyness to it, very different from the smokey flavors and molasses flavors one gets from other cachaças. Quite tasty, but I need to do more, ahem, research before I’m willing to say it’s the best.
Oh yeah, the food! The nice thing about cooking this recipe is that timing just doesn’t matter. So many recipes are very precise and if you cook something just a few seconds too long it’s ruined. Not so with this. Cook it an extra hour? Yippee! Time for another drink…
Anyhow, as the beans have been gurbling along for a few hours it’s time to thicken the beasties up. Remove around a cup or so into a small pan and smash the beejeebus out of them (in a loving and christian sense, of course)

And then mix the resulatnt paste back in to the main pot. This will give the beans much more body.
Oh damn, look at that

We’ll correct that little problem.
In the meantime, drain the meat bits

and then mix them in to the main pot o’beans. In a separate pan start sauteeing a large onion and lots of garlic, all chopped up in some olive oil.

and them mix them in as the following action photo Daughter took amply demonstrates

Oh damn, I need another

(now you know why I needed a full day to recover before I posted this)
“Looking for scraps in all the wrong places…”

dum-dee-dum-dee-dum killing time while the beans cook

I’m thinking of a word. It starts with “N” and ends with “O”.

I found some frozen Pão de queijo (cheese bread), so I thought we’d give them a try

Now, as a side dish I thought I’d make some farofa. So in a pan melt some butter and get a smallish onion that has been well chopped sizzling with some bacon bits

add some manioc flour

add 1 egg that has been beaten

Now, cooking is hard work, so don’t forget yourself

Now add some roughly chopped collard greens to the pan, and cover and let it wilt over medium-low heat

In about ten minutes…

You want to serve the feijoada over some plain rice. Assemble it in a nice deep plate

and life is good!