One of my favourite cuisine is Brazilian food. It started when I was a student back in France. Many celebrations happened in this Brazilian restaurant: it was festive, convivial and cheap. AND the food was amazing. That’s where I discovered Feijoada. This black bean stew is one of my favourite dish ever: filling and super tasty. I was very happy to discover a few years ago a very good Brazilian restaurant in London (I’m sure there are plenty, but this one was the one for me) in Camden, aptly named Made in Brazil. I don’t know how many people I’ve dragged to this place to indulge in some serious feijoada loving.
But with the baby being a… baby (3 months since yesterday!) and us living in South London, it is impossible for us to go back to this restaurant at this time in our life, leaving me pretty much feijoada-deprived.
I had a look at some recipes online to see if it was do-able at home. It does require plenty of stuff, and some ingredients are not readily available here.
So, if I can’t make a proper feijoada dish, maybe I could make something close enough? And indeed I could!
I started by frying a chopped onion and then added some lardons (I love lardons!). When that was properly fried, I added a tin of black beans (with the water). I added a bay leaf and a generous sprinkle of oregano, no salt, but a good pinch of pepper. I poured that in a casserole dish that can go in the oven, over a tenderloin of pork that I had previously browned on all sides. Covered the dish and braised for about 1 hour.
It was divine and close enough to what a feijoada can be to calm my craving. I will definitely do that again!
