Brazilian Rice & Beans with Adidas City Runner Gabi Stripoli
Awesome for pre or post run! A staple of the Brazilian Diet - recipe and text supplied by Gabi!
Brazilian "every day" food is rice + beans as a "base" of the meal. On the side if you aren't vegan, normally you would have some sort of protein (chicken / steak / fish), plus a side salad or vegetable. So the meal is well balanced. Great with a curry or stew type dish too. Why not try a Brazilian Moqueca?
Fun Story:
There's a whole country divide of what goes on top: rice or beans. A bit like scones - Jam on cream or cream on jam? Or that Magnum ice cream post!
Ingredients
Rice (white is more Brazilian traditional, brown rice works too)
Pinto or black beans (it also works well with red kidney beans)
1 onion (half for the rice, half for the beans)
5 cloves of garlic (same, half for the rice, half for the beans)
2 tea spoons of sea salt
Olive Oil or vegetable oil
Recipe Instructions
Preparation:
You will need to let the beans soaking overnight - the night before, just put the raw beans on a big bowl and cover them with water (room temperature), like, 4cm above the beans "line" on the bowl. When you wake up in the morning, check if they have absorbed all the water and add more so that it covers like, 4cm on the bowl. The water will become the "sauce".
First thing will be put the beans to cook on their own water in a big pan. It will take roughly 40-45minutes.
Dice the onion and the garlic in very small pieces beforehand.
Rice:
A splash of olive oil on the pan, medium heat, then add half of the onion, diced. When it gets golden add the garlic. When the garlic starts getting a bit golden (it will smell amazing!) add the rice and fry it for a few min (3-4 min).
Then, cover it with 4 cups of water, and add a tea spoon of salt, reduce the heat to low and let it simmer until it's dry. Don't touch this pan at all - especially if it's white rice. it will prevent the rice from sticking.
Once this is cooked, turn off the cooker and put a lid on the pan, and let it sit for 5 minutes.
This Brazilian rice is super simple, but doing it like this gives it the garlic-onion taste.
Beans:
After the beans are cooked, do the same again: olive oil on a pan, first the onion, then the garlic. If you want to be indulgent you could add some sort of meat/fish here.
Then, add the beans and the water.
Note: In São Paulo they use the pinto beans, whereas in rio black beans is more common and traditional.