Let's dive into this one. Most of the ingredients were easy to find, and some sent us on an adventure. The vegetables were: cabbage, squash, plantain, onion, sweet potato, corn, and tomatoes. We actually went to an African market to find dry hominy and African yams. They had neither of those things... but the market itself was fascinating. 

In place of dry hominy, I chose frozen corn. I added an extra sweet potato in place of African yams. Okay, on the real, I had no idea yams were different from sweet potatoes. Turns out, in the United States, the term "yam" is used interchangeably with sweet potato. Real yams are actually an entirely different tuber; they are native to Africa while sweet potatoes are native to the Americas. Yams are less sweet than sweet potatoes and had I known that before, I would have opted to replace the yams with russet potatoes. Sorry for the aside... yes, I am boring for finding this incredibly interesting.

Anyway, I used salt pork, stew meat, and sausage for the meats. The recipe called for chorizo, but as with the yams, the chorizo that I am familiar with is not the same chorizo in Cape Verde. American chorizo is ground, never dried, and comes in a tube. Spanish chorizo is a cased, dried blood sausage. The more you know. 

Lastly, I used red beans and lima beans. They were easy to find, and now, I have enough dry beans to feed an army. 

The recipe I used: https://www.organicfacts.net/cachupa.html

I started by soaking the dried beans in water overnight. When I was ready to make the meal, I cleaned the soaked beans and added them to a pot with corn and bay leaves. I covered everything with water and set it to boil and then covered it to simmer for an hour. In the meantime, I browned all the meats, chopped the veggies, and added everything to saute together. Once the meat and veggies were soft, I added it in with the beans. Finally, I added the canned tomatoes. All of this simmered for three hours, and then it was ready! Much like the other lusophone, or Portuguese speaking, country we did (Brazil), we ate this with a side of rice. 

Let's discuss a couple of blunders. 

First, the plantain was nowhere near ripe. I had no idea ripe plantains were black. Turns out it can take weeks for plantains to ripen at home. Oops. 

Next, I WAY overcrowded the vegetable and meat pan. I literally didn't have a pan big enough for all of that mess. Thank goodness it didn't affect the final product. 

Mason and I actually sat for a while trying to figure out how to describe the taste of this cachupa. It is definitely hearty, and it is 100% a stew. When Mason walked into the kitchen to get his bowl, he remarked, "It smells like feet in here." The beans gave the stew a distinctive smell, but I can confidently say that it doesn't taste like feet. I mean, most confidently. I don't actually know what feet taste like.  

I would say the underlying flavors are beans, pork fat, and tomatoes. The textures of this meal were varied. The meat was tender, the sweet potato and squash melted in my mouth, and the beans and corn had enough give to be different from anything else. I didn't use any seasonings save for salt and bay leaves. Somehow, it was still flavorful. Salt pork (fat) can make anything taste good, though.  Mason says the meat was the only redeemable part of this meal. He went back and fished out meat to eat for seconds... that's my husband, y'all. Honestly, I didn't like the sausage at all. I wish I had omitted it. 

I will probably never make this again. It wasn't bad, in fact, it was pretty good; however, it was not good enough to justify the effort. 

I would say 3/5 and Mason says 2.9/5.

For more information on Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) go to: https://www.britannica.com/place/Cabo-Verde