Feijoada!

At the end of the day, Megan and I caught up with some of the other professors/graduate students from KU to have dinner. Given that it was Saturday, what better day to try feijoada! We ended up walking toward the upscale neighborhood, Leblon, and decided to give the restaurant Galeto do Leblon a whirl.

Feijoada is a very traditional dish in Brazil that constitutes an entire meal. A properly prepared feijoada includes black beans slowly cooked with a variety of meats, in our case dried tongue and pork offcuts, and seasoned with garlic, salt, onion, and oil. The stew is then served with white rice, finey shredded kale, fried farofa (manioc flour), and orange slices.

Feijoada finds its roots in Portuguese cooking, which is renowned for incorporating a wide variety of meats and vegetables; fried farofa (inherited from the indigenous) as well as kale are both favorite among the Portuguese. The African influence in the feijoada comes into play with the spices and the tradition of using pork offcuts, which was the only part of the pig that was given to the slaves.