Country 28: Cabo Verde

There are 16 countries of the world starting with C.

The first of these is Cabo Verde (or Cape Verde), off the coast of Western Africa in the Atlantic Ocean. Cabo Verde is an archipelago consisting of 10 main islands and 8 smaller islets.

Some facts about Cabo Verde:

• The land area of the islands equates to roughly the size of Cornwall, and has roughly the same population as Cornwall too.
• Cabo Verde gained independence from Portugal in 1975, and Portuguese remains the national language.
• Apparently, eating in public without sharing food is considered rude.
• Cabo Verde was a shared country with Guinea-Bissau after independence, until 1980.
• There are more Cabo Verdeans living abroad than on the islands themselves.

I was excited to try something from Cabo Verde. We've eaten two countries from mainland African food before this one (Burkina Faso and Burundi), which was mostly beans, so it was nice to eat some more fish with different flavours.

I loved this entire meal - we both did. The cachupa had lots of different textures from the chickpeas, potatoes, and fish, and the pasteis con peixe were absolutely divine. It did take a little while to cook all together, but I'm getting better at my time management now, so I started on the pasteis first and got them pretty much ready to go before I started on the cachupa, and then while the stew was simmering, I started to fry up the pasteis. It was delicious. And actually everything was pretty easy too, no specialised ingredients either which meant I didn't need to do a grocery shop just for this country. 

On the menu today we have:

• Cachupa - sometimes served with meat, this stew is glorious, full of potatoes, chickpeas and fish. Warming and delicious.

• Pasteis con peixe - the Cabo Verdean version of empanadas, stuffed with tuna.