Feijão – beans!
When thinking about typical Brazilian food, the first thing that springs to mind is rice and beans. Here the name for beans is feijão [pronounced: fay-zhow] and they are eaten with almost every meal. If you come to Brazil and don’t like beans then you are going to end up hungry (in fact I found this to be true in most Latin American countries with the exception of Argentina where you can very happily live solely on the sublime steaks).
Of course there are many different varieties of bean:
- Here are some amazing coloured beans I saw in a market in Xela, Guatemala
The most popular beans in Brazil are feijão preto, black beans. These are not the pungent black beans you find in Chinese food and in fact resemble something closer to kidney bean.
Other brands of bean are available…
The traditional way to cook these is in a pressure cooker – quick and easy – no need for all that overnight soaking hassle. I had never used a pressure cooker before and was petrified of blowing up the kitchen (and myself), so I did some searching and found clear instructions at www.cucabrazuca.com (here is the recipe). It’s simple (The Brazilian version of the phrase “Easy as A-B-C” is “It’s rice and beans”) and if you have a pressure cooker the whole thing can be finished in an hour.
As you can see, the beans begin life small, shiny and black…
…but by the end of the cooking process they’re a brown-red colour and many of them will have split open.
The bay leaf (folho de louro) is essential – without it the beans will be rather dull
So there we have it. They’re healthy, very tasty, cheap and filling! In fact, when unexpected guests drop round at mealtime, the host says “I’ll add some water to the beans” to make it go further (this is what Chico is singing about in the song I linked to at the top of the page). And they actually get better after a few days sitting around in the fridge, becoming thicker and more tasty. It is important to have plenty of salt (I am often told off by my wife for adding too little) and adding some fiery chilli oil makes them even better.
And once you’ve made beans, you are 95% of the way to having another dish – caldinho de feijão [cal-jeen-yo de fay-zhow] (black bean soup). This is really good and one of my favourite Brazilian dishes. Fry some bacon, garlic and chillis, then add the cooked beans and blend in a food processor until smooth. Serve it up in little cups, sprinkled with crispy bacon bits, spring onions and coriander. I also add chilli oil to this. It’s really good.
Caldinho de feijão
OK, that wraps up beans for the moment. Later on I’m going to look at farofa (a delicious fried/toasted manioc flour which almost always accompanies the beans), feijoada (the classic Portuguese/Brazilian pork and bean stew, almost like a black bean version of cassoulet). I’ll also tell you about some of the great snacks you can pick up from street stalls such as bolinhos de bacalhau (yummy fried salt-cod balls), pão de queijo (ultra-cheesy cheese bread), and many more.And I’ll cover the Kilo restaurants and the all-you-can-eat meat madness of the Rodízio.
On the drinks side of things, I’ll look at cachaça (and the caipirinha of course – I have been diligently researching both!), Brazilian beer and some of the weird and wonderful fruits you encounter in the many traditional fruit juice bars across the country.
These are Cashews. The nobble on top of the ‘apple’ is what later becomes the nut we know and love
More weird fruits – some are great, some are just OK…
Love the feijão post! I am a big fan myself and find it hard to imagine a happy life without it. The black beans are only more popular in Rio, I think – if you go to São Paulo, for instance, the most popular are the brown beans, and funnily enough, they are called there "feijão carioquinha", whereas we call them "feijão paulistinha", of course. And at last, one useful tip: feijão no espeto in Bar Urca. The bar itself, if you haven´t been there yet, is worth a visit – it has the most beautiful view of the guanabara bay and botafogo beach! They fry the beans, turning them into little bolinhos de feijão, and put them on a stick. Delicious!
Hey Karin! Strange that no one wants to take credit for the brown beans! Blaming them on each other hey? And a BIG thank you for the Bar Urca tip – bolinhos de feijão on a stick?! Yum! I'm going to try these at the earliest opportunity :)
You should! Invite me when you go, I wouldn't mind spending another afternoon at Bar Urca…
No way – those are cashews?? What happens to the 'apple' once it's been separated from the nut?
I know! The weirdest looking things right? I have a picture on facebook of them growing on the tree (here). Apparently you have to be a little careful with the nut part as it can be poisonous if you don't treat it correctly. The 'apple' part is really popular here as a fruit juice – a bit like pear juice I suppose (personally I find it a bit dull).
Ok I wonder how i missed this post while going through all posts!
1) The fruit above has very unique taste which is tough to explain, nothing like cashew, can be sour at times, gets a bit pulpy with times. once the nut is separated from fruit, people make juice of the fruit or eat just like that (At least in india)
2) the nut itself in basic form is poisonous. Proper way of getting cashew is, first collect all green colour whole cashew, Firts dry them in sun.. Then roast them with skin ( i have mostly seen in household level, not industrial level). At household level we used to roast them on coal. When you roast them a liquid oozes out which is the poisonous stuff. After it is roasted you basically take out the blackened skin and you get cashew with another skin layer , which you again dry out for day in sun and then clean it of that remaining skin which pretty husky. And voila you have your cashew!
Hi Vim,
Thanks so much for this information – how interesting! I heard that in Central America they make a rather potent alcoholic drink from cashews too, but I'm not sure if that is from the fruit or the nut (probably the fruit I guess).