Here, while varied from North to South, coastal and interior, there's a few quite common dishes:
- Salted and dried Codfish, boiled with potatoes and turnip tops. This is then covered in Olive oil on the plate.
- Octopus. Here there are 4 main ways to cook it, boiled, grilled, roasted and stewed, but the most common is boiled.
- Turkey. This is a more recent addition, that is gaining some traction.
- Ham, and the variations are too many to enumerate.
This is a small country, but because of the long ass dictatorship that promoted isolation and created absurd difficulties to traveling within the country, regions developed independently, creating their own specialty dishes, special cheeses, special bread, special wines, special desserts. All this comes together to create a plethora of options. In my case, with my parents meeting outside of Portugal, and coming from 2 very distinct backgrounds, even if the geographical distance was about 50 km, I've had 3 very distinct traditions to choose from. I don't really like any of them. LOL
So, this year, we'll have the codfish, for me and the wife, my kids will have Lasagna... because, why the fuck not...
Long ass educational post, sorry.
Peace
