No. 28 - Cool Beans in Brazil!

This entry is going to be very short. I will not ramble. I am in the process of moving flat and so have many more important things to be doing than divulging the culinary attributes of Brazil. However I did make this nearly two weeks ago and I thought that if I don’t post this now, I’ll have forgotten what it tastes like, not to mention what I put in it.

This is a very loose interpretation of a Feijoada, or Brazilian Black Bean Stew.

Feijoada

In short, a sausage chili con carne made with black beans and without the chili. A fair description I think.

Note: I was yet again in Sligo for this one, making my parents fund the extensive shopping list once more and so I couldn’t get my hands on any dried black beans, or even tinned black beans for that matter, so I opted for (forgive me Brazil) black bean sauce - of the Chinese variety. Somebody should take away my right to have a food blog right now! I am terribly ashamed but it’s the closest I could get. To make up for my shortcomings, I also threw in some tinned mixed beans, I think there were kidney beans, pinto beans, probably some other beans and who knows? There may have even been some black beans in there too.

Warning: Vegetarians look away now.

Serves 8 - 10

1 large smoked sausage, say 500g, sliced

chorizo, 300g, sliced

300g Irish sausages, cooked and sliced

a few gammon steaks, sliced

any other meat you fancy, the more the merrier

1 large onion, sliced

a few cloves of garlic, chopped

1 tin of tomatoes

3 tins of mixed beans

1 large jar of black bean sauce

salt and pepper, to taste

Sauté the onion and garlic in some olive oil and then add all of the meat, beans, black bean sauce, and anything else I may have forgotten that is mentioned above. Stew for a couple of hours and serve with rice. And there you a have it, my woeful attempt at Feijoada and any carnivores wet dream.

          

No. 4 - Andorra the explorer!

Escudella

I thought that this would be a kind of mediocre dish. It sounds a bit bland – a sausage stew with some past – boring. But let me tell you right now this is delicious! A massive hit with Teresa and Gretta who came over for a little Come dine with me Ireland launch night (sad, I know) which whet our appetites nicely, and Luke raved about it when we had left over’s the next day (and not like his usual “this is great babe”). It's savage.

I found other, more traditional recipes that involved using additional chicken, ham and adding marrowbones and ham bones to the stew. The bone part, I left out (although Luke would have loved that) because this dish was thrown together last minute and surprise surprise, I had no marrowbones in the fridge. If you do want to use them, I think you put them in with the water and remove them before you add the sausages. I would like to think that the recipe below is an unfussy escudella for the busy 21^st century woman. A cop out? Maybe. A cheap, tasty alternative? Certainly.

Serves 5-6

6 cloves of garlic, minced

1 onion, sliced

5 carrots, sliced

1 red bell pepper, sliced

5 new potatoes, quartered

A handful of green beans (just because they were left over from Algeria)

250g pasta (a chunky variety)

8 – 10 big sausages

Pinch of saffron

Chopped coriander (I had no parsley, it will not grow on my ledge!)

Tsp paprika

Salt and Pepper

Get out your largest pot. Fry the onions and garlic for a minute and stir in all the vegetables.  Pour in recently boiled water until it’s a couple of inches above the vegetables. Throw in the saffron and paprika and season well with salt and pepper. Simmer until the vegetables are tender. This should take about 45 minutes although I forgot about them so they cooked for about an hour and a half.  The peppers disintegrated but the stock was damned flavorsome.

Fry up the sausages and slice them into chunks. Add the sausages, green beans and pasta to the vegetables and cook until the pasta is al dente. Keep an eye on it incase you need to add a bit more boiling water. (Traditionally you cook the pasta in water and add in at the end but this way the pasta soaks up all of the vegetable stock). Serve in bowls and scatter with the chopped coriander. Go wild on the black pepper.