Last March, I took a trip of a life time. For ten days, I traveled around parts of Brazil, played concerts every day, sat on a beach, and immersed myself into Brazilian culture (please though, don’t ask me about my Portuguese, it is absolutely pathetic.)
Salvador:
Rio:
However, for as great of a time as I had in Brazil, I feel like I really missed out on a huge part of the culture, the food culture. Brazilian food is heavily based on meats, especially seafood, and I would venture to guess that instead of eating meat based meals, I ate my weight in fruit. I even had a hard time learning about food traditions while I was there because I had no interest in eating a lot of the food (which everyone else really enjoyed!)
So, for the second project food blog contest, I made the national dish of Brazil: Feijoada. While this rice and bean dish usually takes hours to prepare, mainly because of all the meat, this vegan version I adapted is delicious and gives me a way in to Brazilian food culture in a short amount of time!
- ½ cup brown rice
- 1 cup water
- ½ cup tomato sauce
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 medium onion
- 2 clove garlic
- 1 medium sweet potato
- 1 cup black beans
- 1 medium green pepper
- 1 small hot pepper (like fresno)
- 1 large tomato
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 2 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon thyme
- ¼ cup cilantro
- 1 cup veggie broth
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- none salt and pepper to taste
- In a medium pot, bring tomato sauce and water to a boil. Add rice and bring to another boil, cover and reduce to a simmer. Let cook for 25-30 minutes until rice has absorbed all the liquid.
- While rice is cooking, in a large skillet heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions, peppers, and garlic to the olive oil and saute. Once onions and peppers begin to soften, toss in veggie broth, sweet potatoes, thyme, cumin, and red pepper flakes. Let simmer over medium heat until sweet potatoes are cooked through and add in beans, tomatoes. cilantro, and lime juice. Continue to heat mixture for another five minutes. Serve with rice and with a sprinkle of cilantro .



























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