Once again I turn to my faithful soups. I know it’s still summer (just about!), but as I grew up all meals started with a soup and I want my kids to have the same healthy habit. The truth is I never tire of making soups and made this one this week because I had a chickpea craving. I love chickpeas! (I know I’ve said this before…). And they are healthy too, which is a huge bonus.
One of the staple foods of Portugal is salted cod or ‘bacalhau‘, as we call it. It may well be THE staple food. The tradition of eating salted cod is at least 500 years old and we pride ourselves in preparing salted cod in hundreds of different ways. Literally hundreds, and some claim thousands. Cod is the only fish the Portuguese don’t eat fresh and somehow the tradition has stuck to the point that buying fresh cod in Portugal is hard if not impossible but buying any other fresh sea creature that can be eaten is easy. We love our fresh fish but we wouldn’t have our cod any other way!