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I first came across feijoada at cooking school, assisting one of the chef-instructors with a Food of the World event at the Winter Garden in downtown Manhattan.  I wasn’t involved in the cooking at all, just helping to serve it up at the fair under the (fake) palms trees.  As with many of my introductions to great grub, I was not impresssed with the batch of black bean stew we were dishing out, but I could tell that there was something great behind the pedestrian attempt.  Feijoada roughly tranlates as “bean stew”, and is the most famous dish from Brazil.  This stew has a very high rating in the Porcine Revolution, using much of the pig to flavor and tenderize the simple black beans.  This dish smells so good when it is cooking, you should make sure you have snacks around to munch on so you don’t slowly eat all the feijoada as it is being cooked.   Read more…

Beans, Brazil, Porcine Revolution

The nice folk at Buzio’s taught me this simple sauce to accompany my feijoada.  It gives a fresh kick from the raw vegetables and fresh lime juice.  But what makes this sauce apimentado are the fiery little red peppers.  Be careful using the peppers, because they are pretty hot.  Their flavor is a bit sharper than the bottles of Lousiana-style peppers in vinegar you may have seen.  Chop up some onion, bell pepper, celery and litte cilantro.  Add a few peppers, olive oil and lime juice and mash up a bit.  This can used in placed of a Mexican salsa or as a spicy relish.  Use it as a garnish for a regular black bean soup, too.  This sauce is easy to throw together while the stew is finishing. Read more…

Brazil

Buzio’s is the place to go if you want to make a feijoada.  They sell all the meat you need in their two freezers, and have everything else to complete the dish right there.  The people who work there are super-friendly, and were happy to share their method of cooking up the famous bean stew.  This is the spot to pick up Brazilian magazines, candy, clothing and items related to their soccer team, as well.  I also learned how to make molho apimentado at Buzio’s. Read more…

Brazil, NYC Food Places