The 2016 Summer Olympics, Carnival, The Girl from Ipanema, The Bossa Nova, Portuguese, The Amazon… these are things I know about Brazil.  Not much!  Until my virtual culinary globetrotting adventure lead me to Brazil, what I knew about Brazilian food fit into a thimble.

Enter Feijoada (pronounced fay-ZWAH-da), a Pork, Beef, Sausage (yes, all three) and Black Bean Stew.  Feijoada is the lusty, smoky Portuguese stew that Brazil adopted for its national dish.  Upon adoption, the Brazilian’s substituted black beans for the white or red beans used in the Portuguese version.

This stew, with surprisingly few ingredients, is robust in every sense of the word.  Serving with simmered greens and orange slices helps cut through all the meaty notes and makes the dish dance the Bossa Nova on your palate.

As a matter of preference, I use canned beans in most instances, because, frankly, using dried beans is a crap shoot!  So rather than risking an entire dish on beans that may never soften completely, I choose canned beans.

That’s right!  I’m sure that there are some cooks out there who would eject me from the kitchen calling this sacrilege, but I don’t care.  I’ve never had a semi-hard unappetizing canned bean, never ever :-).

As a result of my culinary globetrotting adventures, now what I know about Brazilian food fits into a jigger rather and a thimble!

The Bossa Nova… thanks for visiting Palatable Life.

Be inspired,
Diane