Brazil: Feijoada, Pão de Queijo and Brigadeiros

For me, this meal represented the year 2020- some parts were pretty good and some parts were reallly bad, but at the end of the day I was reminded of what truly matters. See, when I started writing this post, I realized I only had 3 semi-usable photos and I was disappointed to have nothing to show for all my hard work. But then I thought about how much fun I had sharing this meal- we had sweet friends over for dinner and it was JUST what we needed.

During all the craziness of COVID we have felt very lonely, bored and generally lacking in community, so the few times we’ve been able to get together with friends through 2020 have felt SO special and meaningful! And who needs pics anyway when you’ve got good food, good wine, board games, music and a little dancing at the end of the night??

This meal was such a perfect reminder of what’s important- sharing life with loved ones. I love how food brings people together and that’s a huge reason why I started doing this cooking experiment- to be able to share cultural and culinary experiences with friends. I grew up eating meals at a crowded and loud table, with everyone talking/laughing/arguing over each other and you were guaranteed to have at least 3 conversations going on at once. While this overwhelming type of mealtime may not be for everyone, I love the idea of food not only filling our bellies, but also filling our hearts and souls by building community and relationships. Isn’t that what life is all about?

Now, for the food! For this South American and Portuguese-speaking country, I made the national dish of feijoada, which I was excited to make after seeing it featured on The Final Table. It’s a black bean and pork stew, typically made from what most of us consider meat scraps (tail, ears, feet, etc), but I just couldn’t bring myself to make it that way. We hardly eat meat anyway, so such a meat heavy stew was already going to be A LOT. I ended up finding a recipe with more “normal” meat cuts, which I’m sure isn’t the most authentic, but it was still really good!

I also attempted pão de queijo, which is Brazilian cheesy bread, and I didn’t think they turned out great. Everyone else liked them alright, but I felt they were wayyy too chewy. Either I did something wrong or I just don’t like them lol!

Lastly, I made brigadeiros, which are chewy, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate balls made of cocoa powder, condensed milk and butter. They’re usually rolled in chocolate sprinkles, but there are other variations as well. These were so yummy but, to be honest, they looked like poop hahaha!