Vegetarian feijoada (Brazilian beans)

The Daring Cooks challenge for October was a Brazilian meal – feijoada with vinagrete, farofa, collard greens and hot sauce. Feijoada is traditionally a meat-based dish with beans, so I vegetarianised it but included veggie sausages for something resembling authenticity. I used vegetable stock for flavour and couldn’t get the traditional black beans so subbed them for others. All in all, it was a tasty meal… but I would probably use a substitute for manioc flour if I were to make farofa again – the taste was great, but it was a bit too sandy in texture for us – our hostess says you can use other flours or even dry breadcrumbs so we’ll try one of those next time.

My son’s girlfriend is Portuguese and she tells me that a variation on this meal is also traditionally eaten there – her dad sourced the collard greens and manioc flour for me (thank you, Sr S!) and D’s help in the kitchen was greatly appreciated! It was a lot of fun learning about a new cuisine and I loved sharing kitchen time with family.

My version obviously varies quite a bit from the original, so if you want to see the real thing check out the pdf (link below) or enter the blog checking lines below into your favourite search engine to see what my fellow Daring Cooks came up with.

Feijoada

Ingredients

2 cans beans (I used red kidney beans and black eyed peas)
4 bay leaves
1 onion, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
4 veggie sausages, sliced about 1cm thick
olive oil for frying
approx. 1 litre vegetable stock
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Drain and rinse beans and place in a large pot. Cover with stock, add bay leaves and bring to a simmer.

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet and fry onion and garlic until fragrant and softened. Add the sliced veggie sausages and fry until golden.

Add contents of skillet to beans, making sure everything is covered with stock.

Add salt and pepper to taste and let simmer until liquid has well and truly thickened – a couple of hours, at least.

Vinagrete

Ingredients

1 large bell pepper (capsicum), diced
1 large tomato, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1⁄2 cup white wine vinegar
1⁄4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon water
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Put all the ingredients into a bowl and stir well to combine. Press down on the veggies, the liquid should come almost to the top of the mixture, you want everything pretty much immersed.

Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Farofa

Ingredients

120g butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 cup manioc flour
salt & pepper to taste

Directions

Melt butter over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook for a few minutes until they start to brown.

Lower the heat to medium, toss in the manioc flour and stir well.

Cook, stirring for minute, add a pinch of salt and pepper and keep stirring and cooking until the manioc flour has become golden, about 3-5 minutes. Be careful not to brown too much.

Collard greens

Ingredients

4 – 6 collard leaves
1 large clove garlic, crushed
olive oil, for frying

Directions

Wash collard leaves, cut out the stem, and cut in half. Stack all the halves on top of each other and tightly roll them up together. Keep a good hold to keep everything together and start slicing very thinly through the tube to get nice fine slices.

When everything else is ready to serve, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and fry until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add all the collards at once, and stir to coat with oil. You can add a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for only about a minute, you just want to them to start to soften, evenly, over quick high heat.

Hot sauce

Ingredients

1 tsp (or more, to taste) Tabasco
2 tbsp liquid from feijoada
1 tbsp liquid from vinagrete

Directions

Mix everything together in a small bowl. Serve with feijoada, as desired.

 

 

Daring Cooks blog-checking lines: Rachel Dana was our October 2012 Daring Cooks’ Challenge hostess! Rachel brought Brazil into our lives by challenging us to make Feijoada and Farofa along with some other yummy side dishes traditionally served with Feijoada, which is a delicious black bean and pork stew.

Download the printable .pdf here