Our Holy Week Family Tradition: Cooking Bacalao 🍲

For as long as I can remember every Holy Week, my deeply Catholic family would abstain from eating meat. Instead, we'd have veggie 🥗 versions of usual dishes we have for our daily meals but the highlight of the week will be when grandma will cook "Bacalao".

The tradition dates back to Spanish times when our ancestors adopted it from the Spaniards who were looking for a way to go meatless and at the same time have a tasty and satisfying meal. Bacalao means codfish 🐟 in Spanish and is the protein of the dish. Some recipes have them cooked as is while some have the fish meat picked into flaky pieces. My grandma cooks the latter.

I wanted to capture how lola cooks it but I woke up a bit late 😪 so I wasn't able to capture the whole process. But I have enough to share that'll give you an idea how it's done. Mind you these are just my observations, a more accurate recipe will be linked at the end. 😊

The usual ingredients are:

• Dried codfish or daing - soaked in water overnight to remove the saltiness & the meat picked from the bones
• Tomato sauce/paste (free advertising for Del Monte, they should send me something 😁)
• Peppers, cut up like on the right above
• Diced carrots
• Olives
• Black pepper
• Diced Potatoes
• Bay leaves
• Rosemary leaves

Fish meat, bay leaves & potatoes go into a casserole filled 70% with water and stir. 🥄


Add the diced carrots to the mix after the fish meat & potatoes are cooked. 🥕

Mix then leave to simmer for a few minutes - video above


Add the tomato sauce when the carrots are cooked well. 🍅


Stir to mix the sauce. 🥄


Add the black pepper...


the olives...


the cut peppers...🔪🍎


and the rosemary leaves.


Mix the ingredients 🥄


Then leave to boil for a few minutes.

** Video Above **


Open the lid, turn down the heat and do a little taste test. 😋Adjust seasoning as needed


And voilà , we're done! 😄


You can choose to serve with bread or rice. We chose to eat with bread. 🍞

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Ok so I promised a more accurate recipe and here it is!
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bacalao-guisado-codfish-stew-recipe-1952080
It has a few differences but it's close to what my lola cooks.

I hope you enjoyed my lola's cooking demo. 😊

What do you usually do during Holy Week as a family?

Do you have any traditions that you keep in the Lenten Season?

Do share I'd love to know! 😃

⭐

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