The cod, being innocent, is ‘guilty’ for changing the habits and customs of entire populations. Find out how in this work by Elisabeth Townsend, which ends with recipes to whet readers’ appetites.
Some foreigners have noticed the curious incongruity of Portugal’s national dish having as its main ingredient something that does not exist in our country. While this is obviously true, it does not invalidate the fact that this is where the most delicious and varied culinary uses of this fish that lives far away, in the cold waters of the North Atlantic, occur.
It’s their favorite diet that makes their meat so tasty: capelin (whose roe is considered a delicacy in Asian cuisine) and herring. His preferences also include crabs, lobsters, starfish and shrimp. Occasionally, as it eats everything, it swallows old boots, dolls, lint of wool and human dentures, and some people even claimed, at the beginning of the 17th century, to have found a literary work in three volumes in a cod’s stomach; as it was intact, it was donated to the University of Cambridge (it may be a fisherman’s story, but it is indisputable that there are inedible books).
In “Cod – A Global History”, Elisabeth Townsend sails around the world in search of cod, revealing how its fishing began in the time of the Vikings, extended to the Basques and Portuguese, and giving us insight into the way in which His influence has changed the habits and customs of entire populations since then.
“Bacalhau”, published by Bookbuilders, translated by Pedro Bernardo, demonstrates how the history of the world is closely linked to that of this fish, involving explorers, slaves and traders, in addition to fishermen, of course. The author ends by whetting readers’ appetite with a selection of contemporary recipes.
Here is this week’s reading suggestion from the Palavra de Viajante bookstore.
