Brazilian Black Beans/ feijão
Regina, I want to learn to make black beans and rice. I know how to do the rice part already. Your photograph is very helpful, because I thought
there might be more than one type of black bean. We use canned black kidney beans here for making chili. Do people use canned beans for this black bean dish?
Here in Brazil we always use black beans seeds. We cook the seeds with the meats (sausage, dry meat (this one is not
from the porc), porc ribs, and other portions of the porc, that I do not know the name in English). When all is cooked and the black beans seeds are soft and the sauce seems a black
chocolate, we put some of this mix into a pan where were fred bacon, onion, pepper and garlic and let the mix fry a little time. After this rejoin this portion of the mix
into the first pan and let it to boil carefully so it does not burn. We do not join orange juice on this mix, we have sliced oranges and farofa and borecole to eat with the
black beans. Sometimes
we only put dry meat to cook with the black beans, it is the black beans that the majority of Brazilians eat daily. In this case, no orange, farofa or borecole, only white rice.
From: Regina Pinto |
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From: Martha Deed Dear Regina--
Good morning!
When I looked at your lunch, my mouth began watering, and I wanted black beans and rice.
So, I made the rice again according to the recipe in the cookbook you gave me, but I used your suggestion of putting in a few tomatoes and then adding
fresh parsley at the end, and I sprinkled shredded parmesan cheese on it.
The black beans -- I combined a couple of different recipes, so I may have committed major cooking crimes. This is what I did:
I cut up four slices of bacon and cooked them until nearly crisp.
Then I added and sauteed an onion (chopped coarsely), 2 garlic cloves (finely chopped), 1/2 green pepper (finely chopped).
When the onion had turned a little golden, I added 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, and 3/4 teaspoon of ground cardamon (fresh ground by me
from seeds I had on hand), and salt.
Then I added 3 cans of black beans and a cup of water and cooked that for 20 minutes.
Then I added some good sherry and orange juice -- and cooked that for another 15 minutes letting the liquid boil off until I had what looked like the right consistency.
Then we ate it with the rice, and all three of us were very enthusiastic. But -- is it the way you cook it (or if you don't cook it yourself, is
this the way you like it)?
I found the recipes on the web. Some looked as if it would take two days to make, because you start with dried black beans. Other recipes looked as if they
would be bland unless you drowned the beans in a very hot sauce (their suggestion). Essentially, what I did was to use the seasonings from the complicated recipe and the beans preparation
from the simple recipe.
Here is what it looked like
Does this look at all familiar? Or have I made phony Brazilian black beans and rice? |
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To: Martha Deed Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 2:56 PM
Subject: Re: Brazilian Black Beans and Rice
Dear Martha,
Good afternoon!
Your lunch also made my mouth beagan watering! And it increases after I read your description. The colour of the bean is very similar to the bean which is more
used in Rio, because other regions of Brazil use other kind of beans. The way of doing it, only is different because you used beans from cans and we always use the drain seeds. I have
already told you about the making of black beans here in the previous email, I only forgot the salt, you have to put it in the first pan, but very carefully because the majority of meats that
are used are salt meats. I think you used more tempers than us (1 teaspoon ground cumin, and 3/4 teaspoon of ground cardamon).
I will tell you that the cumin and cardamon made a beautiful flavor. The recipe said it was an Afro-Brazilian style of cooking.
What I think is amazing is that you joined cherry and orange juice!!! I imagine that is the first time that someone did this, very creative!!!
It was Bristol Cream Sherry -- a dry sherry -- that I added, and it was very very good. |
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