thehealthyhistorian:

Tonight’s dinner was a typical Portuguese meal. The literal translation would be “Cod with all of them”. It’s dumb, I know. We eat this a lot during the winter time and most families eat this on their Christmas eve dinner.

It’s basically a bunch of boiled veggies (Portuguese kale, cabbage, carrots, chickpeas and potatoes), boiled eggs and boiled salted cod (that has been in water for about 2 days, to remove the salt), all smothered in olive oil, in the true Mediterranean style. 

We also have a version with meat, we call it a Portuguese Boil, and it’s basically the same veggies (but switch the chickpeas with white beans) with beef, pork, chicken and a lot of sausages (basically chorizo and blood sausage).

And now my mom is making “old laundry” with the leftovers. We basically chop up all the veggies, cod and eggs and turn into a salad to eat on the next day.

You can sure tell how poor this country is by its food. But I still love my poor people food.

Most traditional food is “poor people food”:

Viennese Schnitzel: use old breadcrumbs to pretend your piece of meat is thicker Escargots: eat snails, because you can’t even afford the salad they feasted on Calves Brains: well that’s all that the butcher would give after selling of intestines, liver and kidneys to the “richer poor”

Yet all these are now “traditional food” somewhere. Some are even considered delicacies. Goes to show, cheap food must not necessarily be bad food.

In fact the most ingenious cooks are not those that can cook a 12 course meal with ingredients for thousands of €/£/$ but rather those that can take a few simple ingredients and envision them in a deliciously unusual combination.