Don't Cry For Me, Argentina - OK, Brazil. Or Portugal. Feijoada for Cowardly Americans.

I love an excuse for comfort food as much as the next person, but I'm getting pretty darn sick of winter by now. What?! Another 3-5 inches of snow?! I'm beginning to run out of ideas, and had to dig into the Comfort Food Archives for tonight's dinner - another former favorite that we've somehow forgotten about (I blame all the Ginger Chicken)(and now are you wondering if there really *is* a Comfort Food Archive?).

Feijoada is a black bean and meat stew, another one of those dishes that originated with poor people desperate to find something filling to eat. It traditionally it includes such tastiness as pig's feet and ears - which makes me glad that these recipes evolve over time and can be adapted for modern tastes. I'm not particularly concerned about authenticity anyway, because it's cold and snowy and I spent all morning cleaning the house and mostly I just want to throw something into a pot and ignore it for a while. And I want to have lots of leftovers for lunches. There are about a zillion different versions of this, but as per usual I'm going with Mark Bittman's interpretation, which has ingredients that are easy to find and not scary to eat (unless you're a vegetarian, in which case living in my house would make you very sad indeed).

While this recipe is perfectly good with canned beans, it's nice to soak and cook dried ones (assuming you have them on hand and can spare the time, or aren't afraid of your pressure cooker). Beans that you've cooked yourself can hold up to more handling and are all-around less smushy; not a big deal in this particular dish, but sometimes it really does make a difference. It's also much cheaper to cook your own, since canned beans will cost you at least twice as much.

This is one of those dishes that feeds a crowd - as written it will easily fill up 8-10 hungry people

Fake Feijoada 

about 1 1/2 lb. dried black beans, soaked and cooked, or roughly 8 cups canned beans (figure on a cup and a half per can)
2 cups broth or water
1 generous tablespoon cumin
1 large orange
1 lb. sweet italian sausage, cut into chunks
1 lb. pork butt (or other fatty cut - chops are usually too lean), cut into 1-inch chunks
2 large onions, chopped
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 cup dry red wine
1/2 cup orange juice
salt and pepper

Heat the beans and stock in a large pot with the cumin and some salt and pepper. Peel the orange and put the peel in with the beans.

In a large skillet over medium heat, brown the sausage chunks on all sides (don't worry if they're not cooked all the way through). Add to the pot with the beans. Brown the pork in the same skillet, then add to the beans.

In the same skillet, cook the onions until they're soft, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic, cook another minute or two, and add to the beans. (The original recipe calls for adding a chopped red bell pepper with the onions, which is very pretty and tasty but will poison my husband. Alas.)

Turn the heat up to high and add the wine to the skillet, stirring and scraping any bits that stuck to the pan, until the wine is reduced by half. Add to the beans. Stir in the orange juice and add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over rice. Chop up the orange sections and use them for garnish, unless you've realized you forgot to buy orange juice this week, in which case you can use it for the juice in the recipe.