COMIDA PORTUGUESA
© BY-SA 2.0/ Derek Tam/ flickr
Portuguese food is easy but various at the same time. Especially are they know for their seafood. What you will notice also, they eat a lot of meat too. Portugal is one of the countries, after Denmark and Spain which consumes the most meat in whole Europe, 92,62 kilograms per person in average. „Frango com piripiri“ - is only one of the many different meat dishes you will find here.
The distance to the sea is one of the reasons, why you will find also always fresh seafood with high quality in the restaurants. One of them is the cord fish, a famous national dish of Portugal „bacalhau“ - there are existing 365 different types of recipes. So you can eat “bacalhau” everyday! This may be the reason why Portugal is one of the countries which consumes the most of “bacalhau” in the world. They even consume that much, that in Norway are existing three companies who are only producing for the portuguese market. It is like this: the portuguese love their „fiel amigo“ - this is how they like to call him, their loyal friend. The various recipes are the evidence that bacalhau can taste totally different, depending on its preparation. Raw, grilled, marinated, boiled, you can use him for starter, soups, main dishes, salads and even for dessert. One really common dish is for example the pastéis de bacalhau, which you can buy at almost every corner in the “Padarias” and eat it as a snack during the day. Probably there is now coming up the question why exactly this fish, next to salmon, tuna and others, is not be missed in any portuguese restaurant? Since almost the 10. century in history, cord fish belongs to the portuguese cuisine, like the pasta does to Italy. It once helped to survive in the early days and is now one of the traditions and part of the well-being in Portugal.