Feijoadas grandes

Last summer I was totally knocked up and not good for much. Thank god I still had the presence of mind to a) grow a vegetable garden that included scarlet runner beans and b) utilize some of October's nesting instinct to harvest all of the beans and dry them instead of squandering all that precious energy on retarded shit like vacuuming all of the lampshades.

Scarlet runners (Phaseolus coccineus) are one of my favorite garden plants. I've been growing them for awhile, both for their beauty and their flavor. Hummingbirds love them (in flower), and they make a tasty alternative to flagiolets for cassoulet. They resemble a butter bean or a cranberry bean in flavor, but for this application - in fact, Brazil's answer to cassoulet - I was shooting for a more fashionable alternative to a black bean.

Feijoada is the national dish of Brazil, but variations exist in Portugal as well. Brought to the country by slaves, it traditionally uses black beans and less-popular cuts of pork such as snouts, ears, and trotters. As is typical of peasant fare, the dish has evolved over the years to include a wider variety of meats (depending on the cook and the country in which she lives), though still primarily features pork products cooked with black beans. Mine uses smoky piggy meats such as linguiça sausage and smoked ham shank, a Mexican langoniza (like chorizo, but with beef and pork), bacon and corned beef brisket (looked for carne seca, but was unsuccessful).

Since mine had only been dried for a few months, they didn't need much soak. I let them sit long enough for the skins to wrinkle, though I could've left them overnight. I didn't see the need, though, since I was planning on using a pressure cooker for at least part of the cooking. I think I probably had about 2 or 3 cups of dried beans all together (they filled a pickle jar 3/4 of the way).

I heated my large crockpot over medium-high heat and added 1/4 lb of bacon, one whole linguiça sausage, 1/2 lb of langoniza (left whole) and a 1/2 lb corned beef brisket (without the corning spices) placed fat side down to render out that tasty fat. Meanwhile, I chopped a large onion and minced 4 cloves of garlic and added them to the pot to brown in the rendered fat. I tossed in 4 bay leaves and a dried red chile and then the beans, the ham shank and about 3 or 4 cups of water (I didn't think to measure). You really don't need to add any salt because the meats contribute plenty, but besides that, salt toughens the beans and stalls cooking. You can always season at the end if your arteries really need a stiffy.

I cooked the whole lot at between 10 and 15 psi for about 30-45 minutes, until the beans were tender and the ham shredded off the bone. The beef should be tender enough to yield to the slight pressure of a knife; slice it and the sausages into thick slices and luxuriantly drape the meats over the beans.

Serve with rice, collard greens, orange slices and caipirinhas (a cocktail of cachaça, sugar and limes).

Rigatoni Bolognese with olives and chiles

It's been so hard to muster the energy or interest to cook, what with fatigue and nausea running the show. Pasta with red sauce seems to be accepted without a hitch, and requires nearly no effort, particularly when I have one last, treasured jar of homemade Bolognese from the homegrown heirloom tomatoes of last summer, canned with homeground beef chuck and fresh herbs. This last jar of sunshine was the end of an era.

This bastard lovechild between puttanesca ("the whore's") and Bolognese came from my need to taste red sauce with a little bit of saline fattiness of olives and the protein punch of beef. Chile flake (Korean, for flavor in addition to moderate heat) kicked it to a high hum.


Lots of grated parmesan and crusty bread to swab out the last smear of sauce is a no-brainer.

Lasagna Bolognese

Lasagna always seems like such a fuss, and I'll admit it, I usually just go for a frozen one. It always seems like too much work to make a real one, from scratch, and frozen ones aren't that bad (if you avoid the orange grease stain that is Stouffer's). So it's kind of ironic that I made this last night, because real work at my real job was eating my figurative baby and I needed to be able to put something in the oven for an hour and forget about it.

This is why I took the time to can my tomatoes last summer. It was precisely for this reason. I can totally shirk my duties without feeling like a lazy wife or a shitty blogger, because technically, this is homemade sauce. (Not that any of you should ever feel bad about using store-bought sauce. I'm just an over-achiever.)

This is why I grow and sauce my own tomatoes, grind my own beef and can my own Bolognese sauce. I'm banking my time and energy in canned food form, to withdraw at a future, overworked date. A good thing, too, is a box of no-cook lasagna noodles, already snuggling in my pasta drawer amongst my jars of summer sun. A bag of baby spinach and a cube of extra firm (silken) tofu got blitzed to stand in for ricotta (adding a spoonful of creme frâiche for dairy twang, and a little sea salt and fennel seed for flavor).

A nutmeggy bechamel layer, noodles, Bolognese (heated through with some leftover sausage and mushrooms), noodles, spinachy-tofu smoosh, noodles, then all remaining sauce, topped with shredded mozz and parm*. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Wait, it looks like I had to cook after all...

Serve with a juicy Spanish grenache and unmitigated languor.






*Note: this got a little on the extra-browned side of melty, but was still good. I just added extra cheese when it came out of the oven. Next time I'll cover to bake.

Curry okra and green tomato pickle

A couple months ago, before the tomatoes were really getting good, I accidentally knocked a few off the vine trying to get to my beans or something. These were my first tomatoes, so I valued each one like my firstborn and I brought them in, even though they were just green. I could try to let them ripen on the counter, I guessed.

I also had a dozen or so baby okra with which I was smitten. They were 2 inches long, all covered with velvety lanugo, and I couldn't bear to cook them, such was their effect on the maternal parts of my limbic system. I'd seen Marc at No Recipes do a smoked paprika okra pickle (inspired by the artisanal pickles of one Rick), and remembered crunchy pickled okra is such a wonderful thing. Since okra is a vegetable enjoyed in Indian cuisine, I figured some curry and chili wouldn't hurt it.

I tucked the cherubic okra into the jar with some sliced onion, garlic and red chili, and tipped in some peppercorns, mustard and coriander seeds, and a bay leaf or two. There was still so much room in the jar - I looked around and saw the green tomatoes on the counter and the lightbulb went off. I sliced them into thick wedges and slid them into the jar.

I heated up some regular white vinegar with salt, a bit of sugar (just enough to take the edge off the heat, not enough to taste), and a nice spoonful of curry powder. I added a splash of water to balance the acidity, and poured it over the vegetables. Lid and back of the fridge, cut to last week.


I pulled them out of the fridge last week and gave a taste. Oh, man, these are a thing. Just straight from the jar, or dipped in hot sauce, if you really want a spanking. Fortunately, I prefer the green tomato over the okra as a pickle, because I have shitloads of them, and they're free. Oh, the okra is good, don't get me wrong - I just like the crunchy green tomato more.

I can't wait to see how these go with a Bloody Mary - maybe one of my jars of homemade tomato sauce will get turned to Bloody Mary mix?