Feijoada Battle Is Ovah!
This is how everything about me works, so why shouldn't it apply to cooking? I read about feijoada somewhere and was instantly smitten by the description of Brazil's national dish, something about "a rich blend of layered flavors" or maybe "four or five kinds of meat." I Googled around and nothing looked terribly simple, and a lot of recipes called for pig ears or whole trotters or such, which would strain our mediocre area grocers to the limit even if I wanted to eat a pig ear, which I don't, much. So I forgot about it until Christmas, when I was looking to see what wine I should be serving with the roast lamb. (I went with a Beaune. Sue me.) And in one of my BookExpo finds, Perfect Pairings, right after it told me I should have found a robust California red Zinfandel instead, I found a recipe for feijoada made with Accessible Meat. And there was much rejoicing, and I swapped Gumbo Battle out on the calendar for Feijoada Battle, and did a little more Googling around, and swapped in some ideas from elsewhere, and made it last weekend.
FEIJOADA, CHICAGO STYLE
Serves 8, or 6 if three of them are gamers
1 LB dried black beans
4 pieces thick-cut bacon (8 half-pieces)
2 large onions (or 6 small onions), chopped (in practice, they were more "slurried," since I had the food processor out anyhow and I always get carried away with the pulse function)
2 red bell peppers, seeded and chopped (swapped in for green peppers, since gnosticpi doesn't like green ones)
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 TSP cumin (my idea, based on a terrific Moosewood recipe for Brazilian Black Bean soup)
2 bay leaves (near-universally agreed on by the Internet)
2 TSP salt
1 TSP pepper
1/4 TSP cayenne (you can go hotter, but that's not the point of the stew)
1 QUART? of chicken stock (or water, if you want, or a mix, which is what I wound up using as I stupidly ran out of chicken stock)
2 TSP peanut oil (I almost never use anything else for frying pork)
2+ LBS pork shoulder, cut in 1-1/2" cubes (I wound up using about 2.5 LBS of boneless pork ribs, which were on sale)
1 LB chorizo (again, I went with the "mild," mostly for mollpeartree, and I can't regret it. If you can't find chorizo anywhere, I suppose a spicy Italian sausage would work.)
1 LB Polish sausage (swapped in for the linguica recommended by the recipe)
1 CUP dry red wine (I used the Yellowtail Cab-Merlot I keep around for such things)
1 CUP fresh-squeezed orange juice (you can probably use the carton kind, but gnosticpi went kind of crazy at the produce store)
2-3 OZ machaca or carne seca, shredded into tiny bits (this is the only real "exotic" ingredient on the list, and sad to say it really does add a whole hell of a lot of flavor; I got mine from a carniceria in Pilsen. I suppose in an emergency any dried beef or beef jerky would work.)
Soak beans in water overnight; drain. In a big pot, fry bacon over medium heat; remove bacon. Fry onions and peppers in bacon fat for 8 MINS or until soft. Add garlic, saute for 2 MINS more. Add seasonings, beans, and chicken stock to cover by 1-1/2". Bring to "gentle boil"; reduce heat to low, cover. Simmer for 30-40 MINS, until beans are tender but not mushy. Use a measuring cup to pour off excess liquid -- you're not making soup. (And yes, your heart will weep at pouring all that tasty bean water away.) Puree two ladles-full of beans from pot in the food processor, return them to the pot to thicken it.
Mix the OJ and the wine in a cup.
15 minutes or so before that, heat peanut oil in a big skillet over high heat. Fry up pork (in batches if need be) until golden brown, call it 7-8 MINS. Transfer pork to now-thickened bean pot. Fry up Polish sausage (whole) for 5-7 MINS, then remove, slice into rounds, and toss into bean pot. Lower heat to medium, saute chorizo (which, if it's at all like mine, will simply disintegrate) for 5-7 MINS, spoon it up and add it to the bean pot. Add the bacon (remember it?) to the bean pot. This is the fun part: Go back up to medium-high or even high heat and deglaze the skillet with the OJ-wine mixture, scraping up all the burnt pork and sausage bits, and pour the whole pan-juice megillah into the bean pot. Add the machaca to the bean pot. Mix up well, cover and simmer on (very) low for 60 MINS, every so often sneaking in "to make sure the beans aren't sticking" but really to stir and smell.
Serve over rice, with orange segments on the side. gnosticpi brought blood oranges for this garnish, which were pretty decadent, but the point is just to eat the oranges in between bites of the feijoada; the citrus cuts through the grease, kicks up the flavors, and doesn't leave you feeling (as) bloated and awful.
Modesty forbids me to go into rapturous detail, but it Worked. The most amazing thing about it was the way that the Polish sausage served as kind of a repository for all the flavors in the pot, almost like tofu except, you know, made of meat and grease. I'm tempted to try making a winter vegetable stew with Polish sausage to see if it does that all the time. But yes, long story short, wondrous good; the leftover goo makes the world's best rice and beans even without leftover meat. (But there is leftover meat.)
And I don't think the absence of pig ear hurt the final product one little bit.
FEIJOADA, CHICAGO STYLE
Serves 8, or 6 if three of them are gamers
1 LB dried black beans
4 pieces thick-cut bacon (8 half-pieces)
2 large onions (or 6 small onions), chopped (in practice, they were more "slurried," since I had the food processor out anyhow and I always get carried away with the pulse function)
2 red bell peppers, seeded and chopped (swapped in for green peppers, since gnosticpi doesn't like green ones)
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 TSP cumin (my idea, based on a terrific Moosewood recipe for Brazilian Black Bean soup)
2 bay leaves (near-universally agreed on by the Internet)
2 TSP salt
1 TSP pepper
1/4 TSP cayenne (you can go hotter, but that's not the point of the stew)
1 QUART? of chicken stock (or water, if you want, or a mix, which is what I wound up using as I stupidly ran out of chicken stock)
2 TSP peanut oil (I almost never use anything else for frying pork)
2+ LBS pork shoulder, cut in 1-1/2" cubes (I wound up using about 2.5 LBS of boneless pork ribs, which were on sale)
1 LB chorizo (again, I went with the "mild," mostly for mollpeartree, and I can't regret it. If you can't find chorizo anywhere, I suppose a spicy Italian sausage would work.)
1 LB Polish sausage (swapped in for the linguica recommended by the recipe)
1 CUP dry red wine (I used the Yellowtail Cab-Merlot I keep around for such things)
1 CUP fresh-squeezed orange juice (you can probably use the carton kind, but gnosticpi went kind of crazy at the produce store)
2-3 OZ machaca or carne seca, shredded into tiny bits (this is the only real "exotic" ingredient on the list, and sad to say it really does add a whole hell of a lot of flavor; I got mine from a carniceria in Pilsen. I suppose in an emergency any dried beef or beef jerky would work.)
Soak beans in water overnight; drain. In a big pot, fry bacon over medium heat; remove bacon. Fry onions and peppers in bacon fat for 8 MINS or until soft. Add garlic, saute for 2 MINS more. Add seasonings, beans, and chicken stock to cover by 1-1/2". Bring to "gentle boil"; reduce heat to low, cover. Simmer for 30-40 MINS, until beans are tender but not mushy. Use a measuring cup to pour off excess liquid -- you're not making soup. (And yes, your heart will weep at pouring all that tasty bean water away.) Puree two ladles-full of beans from pot in the food processor, return them to the pot to thicken it.
Mix the OJ and the wine in a cup.
15 minutes or so before that, heat peanut oil in a big skillet over high heat. Fry up pork (in batches if need be) until golden brown, call it 7-8 MINS. Transfer pork to now-thickened bean pot. Fry up Polish sausage (whole) for 5-7 MINS, then remove, slice into rounds, and toss into bean pot. Lower heat to medium, saute chorizo (which, if it's at all like mine, will simply disintegrate) for 5-7 MINS, spoon it up and add it to the bean pot. Add the bacon (remember it?) to the bean pot. This is the fun part: Go back up to medium-high or even high heat and deglaze the skillet with the OJ-wine mixture, scraping up all the burnt pork and sausage bits, and pour the whole pan-juice megillah into the bean pot. Add the machaca to the bean pot. Mix up well, cover and simmer on (very) low for 60 MINS, every so often sneaking in "to make sure the beans aren't sticking" but really to stir and smell.
Serve over rice, with orange segments on the side. gnosticpi brought blood oranges for this garnish, which were pretty decadent, but the point is just to eat the oranges in between bites of the feijoada; the citrus cuts through the grease, kicks up the flavors, and doesn't leave you feeling (as) bloated and awful.
Modesty forbids me to go into rapturous detail, but it Worked. The most amazing thing about it was the way that the Polish sausage served as kind of a repository for all the flavors in the pot, almost like tofu except, you know, made of meat and grease. I'm tempted to try making a winter vegetable stew with Polish sausage to see if it does that all the time. But yes, long story short, wondrous good; the leftover goo makes the world's best rice and beans even without leftover meat. (But there is leftover meat.)
And I don't think the absence of pig ear hurt the final product one little bit.