OK, kids, you ready for FearfulJesuit's somewhat authentic Brazilian rice and feijoada recipe? It's tasty, it's cheap, it's pretty good for you, you can eat it every other day for weeks without getting sick of it, it's actually pretty fast, it's kind of authentic, it's perfect college student or general tight-budget chow.
You will need:
a) an onion
b) a head of garlic
c) some olive oil
d) white rice (I suppose you can use brown but I've never done it)
e) black beans (a plain can of them will do)
f) meat of some sort (optional for vegetarians). Pork sausage is traditional, but you could use something else. I use chorizo sausage and occasionally some stewing pork, which is the cheapest cut you can get and bland as hell, but adds protein.
You can use dry beans and do whatever you do to dry beans. I don't usually have the time, unfortunately, and canned black beans with a bit of salt are already pretty tasty. If you use a can of black beans, it'll take you about 30-40 minutes to cook this.
The Rice
Turn your stove on medium and put a saucepan on top of it. Take some onion- around a quarter cup per serving is about the usual- and mince it. Add a little olive oil in your saucepan- a tablespoon or less will do. Wait for it to heat up a bit, then throw in the onion and a clove of minced/pressed garlic.
Once they've been crackling nicely for a bit, but are not brown, add the rice, about half a cup per person if I recall correctly. Stir it around until it's shiny (that means there's oil on it) and sticks together in little clumps. Add twice as much water by volume as you have of rice, and a bit of salt (to taste). Stir it once but no more, set it to boil (medium-high works) and let it go for a while. Once it boils, turns it down a bit and wait for it to absorb all the water and have the consistency of good rice. Fluff it with a fork and you're done. Meanwhile, you'll have been making...
The Feijoada
This is bean stew, basically. There's no truly canonical recipe for it (there are much more complicated ways of doing it than I'm presenting here), especially with regards to the meat- Brazil has only been anything approaching a rich country for the past decade or so and is still awfully poor in a lot of places, so using the cheapest pork, or any meat you can get your hands on, is probably the most "traditional" way of making feijoada. However, pork sausage is the usual way to make it in restaurants. Chorizo is a good approximation in the US.
First, do what you did with the rice- chop up some onion and sauté it in a bit of olive oil (not too much or you'll get scum on top- two tablespoons is plenty) with a minced clove of garlic, on medium heat. Then add the beans. You may as well just dump the whole can in there- you can rinse the beans in a colander to keep the salt down (and bear in mind that Brazilian food can be very salt-heavy), but you'll want to add a bit more water if you do that. You can chop up the pork and put that in too at this point, as much or as little if you wish, and turn the heat up a little bit. While it heats up, take a wooden spoon and smush lots of the beans against the side of the pot. This will release the inner bean-mushiness, which will boil into the water and give you a nice creamy broth. Once it hits boiling, you can turn it down a bit and let it sit for a few minutes to finish creaming the smushed beans.
One can of black beans will make enough feijoada for two light eaters or one famished one. Traditionally you can serve it wish some orange slices on the side.
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Topic: Food Thread: Kitchen Chemistry (Read 579527 times)