feijoada in the spotlight of tourists during the world cup

7/22/2019 Feijoada in the Spotlight of Tourists During the World Cup

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Feijoada (Brazilian bean stew) in thespotlight of tourists during the World

Soccer Cup in Brazil

Brazilians, so fond of their gastronomical traditions, often believe that their bean stew feijoadais a national invention and that only they could be able to produce a deliciousand authentic feijoada. In this idea there is some truth but also some myth. Truthbecause only Brazilians cook a bean stew like this one, using black beans and so manyvarieties of salted and cured meats, served with all the traditional accompaniments. Myth

because there are many other bean stews all over the world.

Every community with agricultural traditions has in its food culture one or another typeof bean or pulse stew. The black beans used in the Brazilian feijoadaare native of theAmericas. Europe was only presented to it after Columbusvoyages. In pre-Columbiantimes the Old World used other kinds of pulses, like fava beans, lentils, black-eyed peas,and garbanzo beans.

All pulses have something in common: they are able to absorb the flavors of theingredients cooked together in the same pot. Being a great source of protein and othernutrients, nothing more logical than the fact that peasants all over the world have used

beans and legumes cooked with some flavorful ingredient, in general a sausage or meat,cured, salted or smoked, in order to achieve at the end a cheap dish that was at the sametime appetizing and delicious. From the necessity to use cheap and easily availableingredients, some wonderful culinary creations were born. As example we have: theFrench cassoulet(white coco beans, sausages, duck comfit and other meats, like mutton);the Spanish olla podrida(the rotten pot, with garbanzo beans, sausages, various kindsof meats, and vegetables); from the Asturias region in Spain, fabada asturiana (favabeans, bacon, sausages, vegetables); fves au lard from Qubec, Canada (white navybeans, bacon, brown sugar and/or maple syrup; Boston baked beans (white beans,molasses, mustard, and lard); chili con carne from the Southwest of USA (red kidneybeans, ground beef, tomatoes, and plenty of chili peppers); chollentfrom the Ashkenazi

Jews of Eastern Europe (pulses like garbanzo beans, stewing meat from beef or mutton,vegetables, eggs). And this short list would be even less complete without the deliciousfei joada portuguesa (beans, smoked pork belly, various types of sausage, including thegarlicky onealheiraand lots of vegetables).

But the Brazilian bean stew is unique and, according to the majority of citizens of thatcountry, the best one! Feijoadahas already been praised in prose and verse; it has beenthe theme for many songs, and almost provoked and international diplomatic affair when


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a Frenchman dared to say bad words about it in front of maestro Villa-Lobos. Feijoadahas its advocates and even some detractorsfew, very few detractors indeed ... The onlything that feijoada does not provoke is indifference, neither from Brazilians nor fromforeigners.

The story goes that feijoada was born in the slaves quarters of the plantations, havingbeing invented by slaves that were obliged to do with the less noble parts of the pig themasters threw them. Nothing more false! First, in Brazil the slaves very rarely had haveaccess to a kitchen to cook a meal by themselves; they received the food already preparedby other slaves which were constituted in general of a meager mixture of beans andmanioc flour, or beans and a kind of unsalted corn meal porridge. Second, what wascalled feijoada until the 19th century was simply any kind of beans cooked with apiece of meat, being it pork or beef, but invariably salted meat. The first mentions offeij oada completa (the black bean stew with its traditional accompaniments) appearonly in the middle of the 20th century, even if beans cooked with some meat were knewall over the country by the designation of feijoada. And, last but not least, Portuguese

and Brazilians of Portuguese descent always loved varied meats (including here offal, pigears, tails, trotters, and snouts). Until today those morsels are considered real delicacies inPortugal and in Brazil (and also in many parts of the world). Probably the ones that atethose morsels the most in their bean stews were not the slaves, but the mastersthemselves!

The true history of feij oada completa, as we know it today, is that it has evolvedslowly and, according to some ethnographers, is still under development. Through theexperiments of patient hands in the silence of the kitchens it has evolved from a simplepot of beans cooked with a piece of bacon or jerked beef to be one the crown jewels ofthe Brazilian gastronomic culture.

History

Lets see a bit of the history of this dish, described by the travelers that crossed Brazil inthe 19th century:

In 1817, August de Saint-Hilaire talks about the food in the city of Diamantina, MinasGerais: Black beans are an indispensable fare in the table of the well-to-do and this

legume is almost the sole food of the poor.

John Luccok, in 1818, said: The people eat mainly beef, lard, beans, and othervegetables.If we remember that the conservation of fresh meat was extremely difficultin those latitudes, one can easily imagine that the meat Mr. Luccok was talking about wasprobably salted or jerked beef.

In 1826, Carl Seidler confirms the omnipresence of the forerunner of the actual feijoadain the Brazilian foodways: Beans, especially black beans, is the national and favorite


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dish of Brazilians; it appears on the most refined tables, escorted by a piece of jerkedbeef and lots of fatback.

Maria Graham, visiting Recife, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro in 1821, wrote in hermemories that besides manioc, beans are the favorite food, prepared in all possible

manners, but most frequently cooked with a small piece of pork, garlic, salt, andpepper.

The great painter Jean-Baptiste Debret, one the travellers that best depicted the countryin the 19th century, both in images as in words, described with precision the food of thepoorest Brazilian social classes in his monumental work published in France in 1839:Looking at the humble dinner of the poor merchant and his family, we can see with

astonishment that it is composed solely of a miserable piece of jerked beef, about 3 to 4square inches; its cooked with lots of water and a handful of black beans, which greyish

flour, very substantial, has the advantage not to ferment in the stomach.

Beans with fatbackis the national dish of Brazil, wroteThomas Ewbank in 1856.In 1865, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz informed us about a meal that she had eaten: To starthey gave us black beans prepared with some jerked meat (meat salted and dried underthe sun). This is the essential food of all Brazilian meals. There is no house, be it thepoorest, without its feijoada, nor the richest of the houses that can exclude from its tablethis dish, about which people from walks of life manifest the same pronounced

appreciation.

The aboriginals of Pindorama, name the native people gave to Brazil, did not mixedvarious foods in the same pot. A dish of maize had only maize, beans only beans. Meat

dishes only carried meat. Stews with various vegetables, pulses and meats, all mixedtogether in the same cauldron, rendering flavors to each other, is a culinary techniquetypical from Europe. From this we can conclude that the Brazilian feijoada was bornfrom a Portuguese cooking technique with the ingredients available in colonial Brazil.

The Cozinheiro Imperial (The Imperial Cooker), a cookbook used by the Brazilian courtand the upper classes before its independence from Portugal, does not mention feijoada.On the other hand, the Cozinheiro Nacional (The National Cooker), published between1874 and 1888, after the independence, already describes a more complete version of thedish, but not yet escorted by the traditional accompaniments of today: Put the chosenbeans, picked and washed, in a pot with water, salt, a piece of salted fatback, some

sausages, fresh pork meat, jerked beef, salted meat, two sliced onions, and a clove ofgarlic; let it boil four or five times and being it cooked and the water reduced, serve it.

From the homes, feijoadabegun to be served also in restaurants all over Brazil. In 1848the newspaper Dirio de Pernambuco announced the selling of fatback meat, special forfeijoadas, at 80 ris per pound. On January 6

th, 1849, the newspaper Jornal doCommercio, from Rio de Janeiro, announces that the recently inaugurated restaurantNovo Caf do Commercio, that is located besides the coffee-shop Coffee and Milk, will


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serve every Tuesdays and Thursdays, as asked by lots of clients, The BeautifulBrazil ian Feijoada.

The great ethnographer Luis da Cmara Cascudo once said the feijoada is not only a dish,it is a whole menu. And everything indicates that this menu, with all its accompaniments

(manioc flour, rice, sliced oranges, stir-fried collard greens) was born in Rio de Janeiro.The place was probably the carioca restaurant G. Lobo that operated in GeneralCmara Street, downtown Rio. This establishment, founded at the end of the 19thcentury,was closed in 1905. Who tells us the whole story is the author Pedro Nava, in his booksCho de FerroandBa de Ossos.

Everyone in Brazil knows that feij oada completa has conquered the heart and belly ofBrazilians from North to South. But, what about the tourists that have never had contactwith it, how would they react when faced with the masterpiece of the BraziliangastronomyOne thing we already know: that many tourists that will visit Brazil duringthe World Cup and the Olympic Games have already heard some words about feijoada.

For instance, as early as 1981, The New York Times had already published an excellentarticle in the column Fare of the Country, named FEIJOADA, THE PRIDE OF THEBRAZILIANS. Blogs, web sites, and social media, with the World Cup and Olympic

Games in mind, talk more and more about the practices and customs of the Brazilians andalso about their typical fares. Maybe some of those tourists have already tried asimplified version of feijoada, served in Brazilian-style restaurants scattered in big citiesaround the world. What one knows for sure is that tourists in general love to makegastronomical travels. Europeans, especially the French, Portuguese, and the Spanish,but also Chinese and Latin-Americans, are quite used to consume or at least to see someof the ingredients that compose feijoada, as pig ears, snouts, trotters, and little tails. Onthe other hand, the British, Swiss, Germans, Canadians and Americans (exception maybe

to the Southerners, that love their soul food and chitterlings), among others, have acertain disdain for those ingredients. The late poet Vinicius de Moraes, diplomat thatknew quite a lot about foreign cultures, maybe have thought exactly about this pointwhen he was putting in verses his famous recipe for FEIJOADA A MINHA MODA(feij oada my way):

De carne-seca suculenta With succulent jerked beef

Gordos paios, ndio toucinho Fatty sausages, glossy fatback

(Nunca orelhas de bacorinho (But never ears from a suckling pig

Que a tornam em excesso opulenta!) That would rend it excessively opulent!)


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Maybe this is the care to take if one wants feijoada to be more widely accepted byforeign people: to present those exotic ingredients apart ears, snouts, trotters, andtailsas their gelatinous texture is not universally accepted. Some purists would say thisgest is sacrilegious. Others would find this an excellent way to initiate as many people aspossible to the Brazilian national dish. One has to think about the pros and cons of this

action but we guess this could result in more costumers willing to try the feijoadacompleta if this simple gest is done before presenting the dish, without really altering theintegrity and originality of the recipe.

To finalize, what would be the real, the authentic recipe for the feij oada completaImpossible to say. There are as many recipes of feijoadaas there are cookers in Brazil.We offer here a standard version that will certainly please the biggest number of eaters.

Last but not least, we could again quote Vinicius de Moraes:

Que prazer mais um corpo pede What pleasure could a body ask

Aps comido um tal feijo? After having eaten those beans

Evidentemente uma rede For sure an hammock

E um gato para passar a mo... And a cat to caress ...

And maybe we could leave here one more wish: that Brazil could largely export allessential items for preparing feijoada, so everywhere in the world Brazilians longinghome and new adepts to the national dish could remember Brazil, its people and its food.

And bom apeti te!

Recipe

Ingredients(for 8 portions)

1 kg (2 lbs) black turtle beans, picked, cleaned and pre-soaked for at least 8 hours

1 kg (2 lbs) salt-cured dried beef or jerked beef

500 g (1 lb) salted pig tails and ears

500 g (1 lb) salted pig trotters

250 g (1/2 lb) smoked or salted pork spareribs


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250 g (1/2lb) cured or salted pork loin

2 cured pork sausages, like sweet Spanish chorizo, cases removed and cut into thickslices

2 Portuguese sausages, cases removed and cut into thick slices

250 g (1/2 lb) smoked beef tongue

150 g (1/4 lb) bacon

15 ml (3 tbsp.) vegetable oil

1 whole head of garlic, the cloves chopped very small

2 medium yellow onions, chopped small

3 bay leaves

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

How to do

Clean very well all the salted meats, removing excess fat or any silver skin ortendons adhered to it. Let them soak in fresh water, in the refrigerator, at least 8hours or the day before.

Next day put the meats, separately, in cold water, let the water boil, remove fromthe fire and drain very well. Both the preliminary soaking and boiling are meantto reduce the amount of salt and fat. As result, thefeijoadawill be much lighterand digestible.

Meanwhile put the soaked and drained beans in a big cauldron, add all the salt-cured and smoked meats, except the sausages, and the bay leaves. Add fresh waterto cover completely. Let it boil, cover the pot, them reduce the flame to theminimum heat and let it simmer slowly for several hours, or until the beans arealmost completely tender. At this point add the sausages. To test the degree ofdoneness of the beans put one bean between your fingers and press; if you caneasily smash the bean and the resulting paste has no more raw taste, it is done.

In a frying pan put the bacon cut into cubes with the oil and heat slowly until thebacon exudes some of its fat and starts do brown. At this moment add the onionand garlic then raise the flame to medium and cooked until fragrant, mixing allthe time. Do not let the garlic and onion take color.

Add this sofrito of bacon, garlic and onion (this is called refogado inPortuguese) into the pot along with the beans and meat, mix very well and let itsimmer for another half hour. Stir from time to time with a long handled woodenspoon as after seasoning the feijoada it has a tendency to stick in the bottom of the


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pot. Season to taste with black pepper and taste for the salt. Usually it is notnecessary to add any more salt.

To serve, cut the meats into smaller pieces and arrange them in a platter, alongwith the pieces of sausage. Put the beans in a soup tureen or in a deep bowl. InBrazil there are specially designed pottery meant to present and serve feijoada.

Serve immediately, very hot, with all the accompaniments.

Accompaniments: fluffy rice, pepper sauce orpico de gallo, toasted manioc flour, collardgreens stir-fried with garlic, slices of navel orange. Drinks: caipirinha with theappetizers (the ones that are usually served before feijoada are fried pork skin orchicharrones, fried fresh sausage slices, and fried manioc root) and very cold beer withthe feijoada.

And bom apeti te!!!!

Notes:

The meat products required for feijoada can be found in Latin-American orPortuguese specialty groceries. Manioc flour can be found in Latin-American orAfrican groceries. Fresh manioc root can be found in Latin-American or Asianmarkets selling fresh produce.

Some cooks use only garlic for seasoning the feijoada. Others add at the lastmoment, just before serving, the juice of one or two freshly squeezed oranges.The orange juice has the effect of giving a more round and less fatty taste in themouth, in more or less the same way some drops of vinegar round the taste of richsauces.

About the author

Sandra Mian has a degree in Food Engineering from Campinas State University(Unicamp, Brazil) and is consultant for the food industry and appliance manufacturers,with extensive contributions in the areas of global trends and food trends, new foodproduct development, food fairs (Europe, North America, Latin America), food historyconferences, among others. She lives in Canada and part of the year in Brazil.

Contact:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Bibliographical references

AGASSIZ, Professor and Mrs. Louis, A journey in Brazil. Boston: Ticknor and Fields,1868.

ANDRADE, Margarette Sheehan de. Brazilian cookery. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2001.

BARBARA, Danusia. Feijo. Aromas e sabores da boa lembrana. Rio de Janeiro: Senac,2002.

CMARA CASCUDO, Lus da. Histria da alimentao no Brasil. Belo Horizonte:Itatiaia, 1983.

COZINHEIRO NACIONAL, ou, Coleo das melhores receitas das cozinhas brasileirase europeias: para preparao de sopas, molhos, carnes.../ reviso Geraldo-Gerson deSouza e Maria Cristina Marques So Paulo: Ateli Editorial: Editora Senac So Paulo,

2008.

DEBRET, Jean-Baptiste. Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Brsil. 3 Volumes. Paris:Firmin Didot Frres, Imprimeurs de lInstitut de France, 1839.

ELIAS, Rodrigo - Breve Histria da Feijoada - Revista Nossa Histria, ano 1, n. 4,Editora Vera Cruz, So Paulo. Fevereiro de 2004.

EL-KAREH, Almir Chaiban. Comer papagaio e ser brasileiro: receitas culinrias econstruo da identidade brasileira. Trabalho apresentado na 35th InternationalConference of the International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition

(ICAF), Birds as Food: Cross-Cultural and Health Perspectives, realizada em Sopron,Hungria, do dia 13 ao 15 de julho de 2012.

EWBANK, Thomas. Life in Brazil. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1856.

FRIEIRO, Eduardo. Feijo, angu e couve: ensaios sobre a comida dos mineiros. BeloHorizonte: Ed. Itatiaia, 1982.

GRAHAM, Maria. Voyage to Brazil. London: printed for Logman, Hurst, Rees, Orme,Brown, and Green, 1824.

HOUAISS, Antnio. Magia da cozinha brasileira pra deuses e mortais. Rio de Janeiro:Editora Primor Ltda, 1979.

LODY, Raul. Brasil bom de boca: temas da antropologia da alimentao. So Paulo:Editora Senac So Paulo, 2008.

LUCCOCK, John. Notes on Rio de Janeiro and the Southern parts of Brazil. London:Printed for Samuel Leight, in The Strand, 1820.


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MINISTRIO DAS RELAES EXTERIORES. Flavors from Brazil. Feijoada: a shorthistory of an edible institution. N. 13.

MORAES, Vincius. Feijoada minha moda, in Para viver um grande amor. LivrariaJos Olympio Editora - Rio de Janeiro, 1984.

PAPAVERO, Claude. Dos feijes feijoada: a transformao de um gnero comestvelpouco apreciado em mantimento bsico brasileiro. Trabalho apresentado na 26 ReunioBrasileira de Antropologia realizada entre os dias 1 e 4 de Junho de 2008 em PortoSeguro, Bahia, Brasil.

SANGIRARDI, Helena B. Nova alegria de cozinhar - 8. ed. - Rio de Janeiro: Bloch,1988.

SEIDLER, Carl. Dez anos no Brasil. S. Paulo: Livraria Martins, 1835.

SILVA, Paula Pinto e. Farinha, feijo e carne-seca: um trip culinrio no Brasil colonial.So Paulo: Editora Senac, So Paulo, 2005.

VIANNA, Hildegardes. Antigamente era assim. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 1994.

feijoada in the spotlight of tourists during the world cup

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