Feijoada Incompleta

I’m very fond of Brazil, so much so that my sister calls me a Brazil nut. My first trip abroad was to Brazil (see here), I like the sound of Brazilian Portuguese, I admire futebol brasileiro, and I’ve even tried making the Brazilian national dish, which is a black-bean stew called feijoada (usually advertised in restaurants as feijoada completa). One is supposed to cook the beans for a couple hours and then take some of them out, mash them, saute them, and put them back. This is supposed to thicken the stew, but it has never worked for me.

But yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had a bunch of articles on Brazil in their Off Duty Section, and someone gave their recipe for making it. I can now see my problem: I didn’t saute enough of the beans to guarantee that it would thicken. See here. We shall see if this works. Even if it does, I make no pretense to doing the full recipe. It calls for garnishes involving odd items like farofa, which I’m not going to attempt to make. Plus, I put in my own meats which are different from that of the recipe at the link. Nor do I bother with the alcoholic drink they recommend, caipirinha. What I make is tasty enough on its own.

Comments

[Mark Spahn]

Is this dish related to what is known as "refried beans"? In an online search one time I learned that the "re-" in refried is from the Spanish word "refrito"(?) and does not mean "fried again" but "fried thoroughly/completely". So is "feijoada completa" just the Portuguese way to say "refried [beans]"?

[John Pepple]

No, it refers to the stew together with all of the accompaniments: the rice, the orange slices, the farofa, etc.

See here:

http://rootscuisine.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/feijoada-completa/

That's interesting, though, about refried beans. I've always meant to look that up, but never got around to it. Thanks!