Feijoada (Brazil)

Feijoada is a dish consisting of bean stew with meat, usually served with rice. It is a dish originating in northern Portugal, and which, today, is one of the most typical Brazilian dishes. In Portugal, kitchen with white beans in the northwest (Minho and Douro Litoral) or red beans in the northeast (Tras-os-Montes), and usually also includes other vegetables (tomatoes, carrots or cabbage) with pork or cow, which can be pushed together chorizo, blood sausage or sausage.

In Brazil, it is made of mixture of black beans and various types of pork and beef, and comes to the table accompanied by manioc flour, white rice, steamed cabbage and sliced orange, among other ingredients. In Portugal, this version of feijoada is known as the Brazilian feijoada, it is also common to find it in the menus of Portuguese restaurants, in addition to Portuguese feijoada.



History

The most widespread popular explanation of the origin of feijoada is that you - the coffee plantations, the gold mines and sugar mills - provided the slaves the "leftovers" of pigs, when they were carneados. The cooking of these ingredients, with beans and water, would have given rise to the recipe.

 This version, however, does not hold, whether in culinary tradition, is the lightest historical research. According to Carlos Augusto Ditadi, expert in cultural affairs and historian of the National of Rio de Janeiro File, writing in Gula magazine, May 1998, the alleged origin of feijoada is only contemporary legend, born of modern folklore, a romanticized view social and cultural relations of slavery in Brazil.

The food slave standard does not differ fundamentally in Brazil eighteenth century. Still based on the cassava flour or corn made with water and a few additions, ie, which had been established since the early days. The slave society of Brazil in the eighteenth century and part of the nineteenth, was constantly plagued by the shortage and high cost of basic foods as a result of monoculture, the exclusive dedication to mining and slave labor, not being rare deaths from malnutrition including the death of own masters.

The slave could not be mistreated simply because cost expensive and was the basis of the economy. Should eat three times a day. Usually lunched at 8 o'clock in the morning, having dinner at 1 o'clock and dined around 8 or 9 o'clock at night. In historical references on the menu of the slaves, we see the clear presence of polenta corn meal, or cassava flour, in addition to beans seasoned with salt and fat, served very thin and the occasional appearance of some piece of beef or of pork. Some orange harvested foot complemented the rest, which prevented scurvy. Sometimes, at the end of good coffee harvest, the foreman of the farm could even give a whole pig slaves. But that was the exception. There is no historical reference recognized about a humble and poor feijoada, made inside the most sad and starving slave quarters.

There is also a receipt of purchase by the Imperial House of April 30, 1889, in a butcher shop in the city of Petropolis, State of Rio de Janeiro, in which one sees that consumed-green meat, veal, lamb, pork, sausage, sausage blood, liver, kidneys, tongue, brains, ox entrails and guts sauces. What proves that they were not only slaves who ate these ingredients, and they were in no way "remains." On the contrary, they were considered delicacies. In 1817, Jean-Baptiste Debret now report the regulation of Tripeiro profession in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which were hawkers, and who supplied these animal parts in cattle slaughterhouses and pigs. Debret also reports that the brains went to hospitals, and liver, heart and tripe (cow, oxen and pigs) were used to make polenta, usually sold for slaves gain or blinders in the squares and streets. This practice, which appears in Rio de Janeiro, is called "mush to Bahia", mainly because it takes in its composition, palm oil (palm oil).

Therefore, its creation and name has to do with ways of making Portuguese the regions of Extremadura, the Borders and Tras-os-Montes and Alto Douro, blending beans of various kinds - less black beans (of American origin) - sausages, ears and pig's foot. In fact, cooked are common in Europe, as the French cassoulet, which also leads beans in its preparation. In Spain, the Madrid-based stew and Asturian stew and, in Italy, casseruola or breaded casserola are prepared with chickpea. Apparently, all these dishes had similar evolution to the feijoada, which has increased over time, to become the present-day plate. House Krab noted that his formula is still in development.

The feijoada already seems to be well known in the early nineteenth century, as evidenced by a notice published in the Diario de Pernambuco, in Recife, from August 7, 1833, in which a restaurant, Hotel Théâtre, newly opened, informs that Thursdays would be served "feijoada to Brazil." On March 3, 1840, in the same newspaper, Father Carapuceiro published an article in which he said:

In families where the real cuisine known whether, where take-watering lungs, it is usual practice and comezinha convert the feijoada Eve dinner fragments when they call burial of the bones [...] They throw in a large pot or cauldron remains of turkeys, roasted piglets, bacon and ham fatacões withal good jerky vassalhos vulgar ceará, everything will mix with the indispensable beans: everything is reduced to a grease!

In 1848, the same Diario de Pernambuco already announced the sale of "fat meat, suitable for stews, 80 reis a pound." On January 6, 1849, in the Jornal do Commercio of Rio de Janeiro, it is reported that the newly installed eating house "New Cafe Commercio" next to the bar of the "Coffee of Fame with Milk" will in all Tuesdays and Thursdays, at the request of many customers, "Bella Feijoada Brazilleira".