After a caipirinha or two, a cup of bean soup and a few of bites of the Brazilian cheese bread known as pao de queijo, the party was already going when the main attraction made its entrance.

Host Victoria Jones carried the star of the party, a heavy black clay pot, as if it held precious cargo.

In a way, it did. Inside the dish, feijoada, the national dish of Brazil.

For Jones and Debora Romo, the two days of preparation was also a labor of love and a chance to share their culture with friends.

“The last time I made it, it was for my husband’s family,” Romo said. “Every now and then we get together with people who have never tried it.”

For many of us in the United States, the Brazilian steakhouses are what we know of that country’s cuisine. During a recent seminar at the Culinary Institute of America here, visiting chef Rodrigo Oliveira of São Paulo spoke about the American success of the steakhouses, or churrascaria.

“We’re very glad with that,” he said. “But it’s only one face of our cuisine.”

The true face is the black bean and pork stew that has as many variations as there are Brazilian cooks.

The history of feijoada is a microcosm of the country’s story on a plate. The name comes from the Portuguese word for beans, feijão, and the origins of the dish lie in Brazil’s colonial history. As with x  many of the world’s great dishes, it goes back to the separation between wealthy and poor. In Brazil, the generally accepted story about feijoada is that it originated with the slaves taking the leftover parts of pork — the ears, tail, feet and so on — and cooking it with the beans that were a mainstay of their diet to create this stew.

Now, feijoada is popular throughout the country, with restaurants serving it on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Because the dish is so plentiful throughout Brazil, it’s easy to take it for granted. But away from the country, it suddenly becomes scarce, which brings saudade, or a sense of longing or homesickness for Brazilians.

Romo, a native of a small town who lived in São Paulo before coming here just after Sept. 11, 2001, didn’t realize how much she would miss the taste of home.

“When I first came here, I missed it. Then I started making it,” she said. “I had a cook in Brazil. I came here and people asked about dishes. I began to cook.”

When Romo came to San Antonio, she worked at the University of the Incarnate Word to help young people there learn about Brazil before they went to study abroad. She met Jones while studying for her master’s in educational administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She created a Portuguese language curriculum that is used at Fort Sam Houston.

Jones, a California native who was raised in Hawaii, later obtained her doctorate from Cornell, where she also learned Portuguese. After teaching at Cornell, she found a job as a professor and an associate dean at a business school in São Paulo.

During her five years there, she became a Brazilian, and holds dual citizenship. She came to San Antonio in 2005 to teach in UTSA’s business school.

She sometimes makes a very quick version, which combines pork ribs from Rudy’s barbecue simmered in canned black beans.
Jones had wanted to do a feijoada party for several months, and was finally able to schedule a date.

Usually, making feijoada takes two days. The first day is for cutting the meats and simmering the beans with aromatic vegetables, bay leaves and cooking the mixture until it’s soft. Even with a pressure cooker, it took a couple of hours of cooking.

The simmering breaks down the pork, and it especially crucial for the ears, tail and other funky parts of the pig that are essential for hard-core traditionalists.

In this case, the most unusual pork part was some neck meat. That was in addition to pork ribs, smoked pork and plenty of carne seca, or Brazilian dried beef that has a flavor reminiscent of a Spanish ham.

Day Two brings the final heating of the stew, along with making the side dishes — collard greens with plenty of onions, garlic and bacon, white rice and toasted manioc flour with onions, aromatics and other additions that may include bacon chunks, raisins, diced carrots and olives. Orange slices complete the serving.

“In Brazil, we call his matar saudade, to kill the longing,” Jones explained, as she tasted the feijoada and basked in the flavor of her adopted home.

“This gives it meaning,” Romo said, “to cook for people.”