This marvellous staple of the Portuguese kitchen is a rich bean stew with pork and sausages that makes an excellent one-pot feast. You might find it’s perfect for midweek …
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f you are trying to incorporate more beans and pulses into your diet, as I am, then this robust, one-pot feast, which food writer Edite Vieira describes as “a marvellous standby of the Portuguese kitchen”, is one to bear in mind. Though each region has its own variations, “basically”, she explains, “feijoada is a rich bean stew with pork and sausages”. The Brazilian version, often cited as that country’s national dish, is the product of the West African “love of beans”, according to the Oxford Companion to Food, with some suggesting that it’s a South American creation that travelled to Europe along with returning colonisers. Others insist with equal fervour that the dish was “born in the north of Portugal, and imported and adapted to what was available in Brazil”. Like so many such homely favourites, its precise history will probably ever remain a mystery; what’s important is that it’s simple to prepare, easy to adapt according to taste and budget, and very satisfying.
Unlike in Brazil, where black beans rule the roost, there’s no apparent consensus on the best variety here. David Leite, whose family hails from the Azores, uses white beans, Vieira butter or kidney beans in her book The Taste of Portugal, Leandro Carreira’s Portugal: the Cookbook calls for butter beans, while chef Nuno Mendes writes in Lisboeta that he likes to use “a combination of butter beans, red kidney beans and cannellini”. Though my testers, to my slight surprise, show a strong preference for the sweet, earthy kidney bean, go with whichever you prefer – and, most importantly, whichever look the freshest.
