The Return of a Friend

There’s an interesting paradox in Portugal’s gastronomy: our national dish is made with an ingredient that doesn’t exist in our country. In fact our fishing boats have to go far into the North Atlantic to bring us this much loved fish we call Bacalhau (codfish, in English). However calling it fish sounds somewhat reductive to us. Firstly, we consider it neither fish nor meat: it’s just Bacalhau, a self-sufficient entity which creates its own category in the pantheon of good food. But treating it as mere food is something that in our view doesn’t dignify it properly. In fact we make our relationship with Bacalhau something much more personal than just that, something made evident by the fact that we quite often lovingly refer to him as our faithful friend. Perhaps because, in spite of the distance that separates us, he pays regular (even if somewhat forced) visits to our table.

In Saramago’s book The Stone Raft the Iberian Peninsula gets cut off the rest of Europe by some unexplained geological cataclysm and starts sailing adrift in the Atlantic. After a near-collision with the Azores islands the Peninsula, now itself an island, swerves to the north. As the characters anticipate the freezing landscapes of the Artic, someone points out, in a solacing way, that thus Portugal would at least be closer to its beloved Bacalhau.

Apparently the Vikings brought it here even before the existence of the country, so we ate it before we were Portuguese. It is thus as ancestral as its presence is familiar here, its triangular shape being one of the most intriguing things I can remember form my early childhood: such a strange fish, I thought, headless and all, how on earth does it manage to swim like this? I didn’t know anything about the drying and salting process then…

According to a common saying, there are 300 different ways of cooking it. I suppose that is slightly exaggerated, but the actual diversity bears testimony to the endless creativity of the Portuguese people. Bacalhau is traditionally poor people’s food, and so it remains in our national conscience even if its rising price makes it an extravagant delicacy nowadays. And, despite regional variations in preference, it is the main ingredient on our Christmas table, simply boiled with potatoes, cabbage and golden olive oil: a happy marriage of northern and Mediterranean Europe, proving the composite and cosmopolite nature of the Portuguese people.