Recettes Cape Verde

Cachupa

Cachupa is the national dish of Cape Verde, a slow cooked stew of hominy corn, several kinds of bean, root vegetables and preserved meats or fish. Every island has its own version, every family has its own version, and Cape Verdeans are clear that no two pots are ever quite the same. Corn and beans are the constant. Beyond that it takes in cassava, sweet potato, collard greens or kale, and whatever protein is to hand: corned beef, salt pork, chouriço or linguiça, or freshly caught fish. It reflects an archipelago where imported preserved meat and locally caught fish sat alongside a limited range of crops, and where nothing was wasted. The name is contested in the diaspora. In Cape Verde itself only cachupa is used, on any island, while some Cape Verdean families who have been in the United States for generations say munchupa, and the disagreement between the two runs along generational lines. There is also cachupa rica and cachupa pobre, the rich and poor versions, distinguished by how much meat goes in, and leftover cachupa refried with egg and sausage the next morning is called cachupa refogada and is regarded by many as the better meal.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

4 hr 30 minMediumCape Verde

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Caldo de Peixe (Cape Verdean Fish Soup)

Caldo de peixe is the Cape Verdean fish soup: white and sweet potatoes cooked with onions, peppers and tomatoes, with fish added towards the end. It is winter food on the islands and it is built entirely around what an Atlantic archipelago has to hand. Cape Verde sits several hundred miles off the coast of Senegal, and its cooking reflects that position exactly, Portuguese in structure and vocabulary, West African in ingredients, and shaped throughout by the fact that fish is abundant and almost everything else has to be grown on volcanic islands with limited rainfall. Sweet potato alongside white potato in the same pot is a very Cape Verdean move, and it gives the broth a background sweetness that plain potato would not. The soup is deliberately unfussy. There is no stock, no wine and very little seasoning beyond the vegetables themselves: the broth is made by the fish and the potatoes as they cook. That is characteristic of island cooking generally, and it means the quality of the fish matters more here than in a heavily seasoned soup. This recipe came into the archive through the Smithsonian's 1995 Festival of American Folklife cookbook, to which Cape Verdean Americans contributed recipes as part of preserving their heritage. That provenance is worth recording.

1 hr 5 minEasyCape Verde

Recette de Nympha · Africook