A priori Feijoada

So this Saturday I plan to try and make Brazilian Black Beans, or Feijoada, while the Vegan girlfriend is away. In short, it's lots of pork cooked in black beans which is then served with white rice, orange slices, and other Brazilian specific garnishes(more on those later).

Best International Recipe is my source. Now, this particular cookbook hasn't been so dyno-mite as others by the same people... as I've mentioned before... however good things have come from it, and I implicitly trust the Cook's Illustrated method, despite the occasional setback. I've completely read through the recipe and their justification(following the recipe without knowing why has been my downfall in many instances), so I'm going to put up some bullet points and the ingredient list ahead of time.

Guidelines:

• Serves 8-10 people (Whoops! I should see if anybody wants to come over!)
• No soaking of the beans (!?)
  
• Salt the beans at the start
  
• Baking soda is key for color
• Bacon instead of ham hock for general flavor
• Brown the various pork products before adding to beans
• Add browned pork products at times based on their cooking time

Ingredient List:

• 4 oz bacon
• 1 med onion
• 4 med garlic cloves
• 10.5 cups water
• 2 lbs black beans
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 2 lbs pork tenderloin
• 2 baby back ribs (2.5 to 3 lbs each)
• 1/4 cup vegtable oil
• 1 lb linguica sausage

Note that the ingredient list doesn't include the things like white rice and oranges or Brazilian specific garnishes.

Photo by Flickr user su-lin used under a Creative Commons license