Cape Verde

Africa · This week's dish comes from Santiago (Praia)

About Cape Verde

Cape Verde's island cuisine is anchored by cachupa, a slow-cooked stew of corn, beans, and meat or fish that's the national dish. Portuguese and African roots meet over grogue (sugarcane rum) and Atlantic seafood.

Cachupa is a hominy stew and it has a class system: cachupa rica with several meats and sausage, cachupa pobre with what there is. The best-known version is neither, but the leftovers refried the next morning as cachupa refogada with a fried egg on top, which is what most Cape Verdeans mean when they talk about it.

Grogue is distilled from sugarcane juice at small mills called trapiches, mostly on Santo Antao and Santiago, and it turns up neat or in ponche with honey and lime. The islands are dry and volcanic, with little fresh water and a long history of drought and emigration, so much of what is eaten arrives by boat and the sea supplies the rest.

The wider picture: Fifty-four countries of tagines, stews, and fire-kissed grills.

This week's dish: Jagacida (Cape Verdean Rice and Beans)

Rice simmered with beans, onion, garlic and bay until glossy and tender, the everyday jag of the Cape Verde islands.

Serves 4 · Prep 10 min · Cook 35 min · Difficulty: easy

See the full recipe: ingredients, steps and dietary swaps →

Grown-up jobs: any step that uses a hot stove, oven, boiling water, or a sharp knife is for a teacher or parent. Children can measure, mix, and assemble.

Discussion prompts

1. Find Cape Verde on a world map or globe. It sits in Africa. Which oceans or neighboring countries does it touch, and roughly how far is it from where you live?

2. Jagacida (Cape Verdean Rice and Beans) comes from Santiago (Praia), in Cape Verde. Read its ingredient list together. Which of those foods do you think are grown or raised nearby, and how might the country's climate and landscape explain that?

3. Read the short story behind Jagacida (Cape Verdean Rice and Beans). How have the people, trade routes, and history of Cape Verde shaped what ends up on the plate there?

4. Compare Jagacida (Cape Verdean Rice and Beans) to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Cape Verde about how they make and share it?

5. After you cook Jagacida (Cape Verdean Rice and Beans), add Cape Verde to a classroom map and give it a stamp. Write down one fact about its food or geography that you did not know this morning.

🌍 Spin the Globe · Geography through food · spintheglobeofficial.com/for-teachers

🍽 Open the full Jagacida (Cape Verdean Rice and Beans) recipeServings dial, dietary swaps for every table, and its own print button.

🍳 Kitchen SchoolShort lessons on the core skills the recipes lean on.

📋 More teacher resourcesThe printable passport, how to run Country of the Week, and every country page.