When I was in Vasco de Gama territory, I became a culinary explorer and threw dietary caution to the wind. Like 10 Things I Ate in Morocco, they weren't all healthy or sustainable, but at least they were local. I wanted to leave all my issues behind, but that's like the pope trying to be an atheist when he leaves the Vatican. Not that I'm comparing myself to the pope. Nope. I can out-eat him any day.
1. Grilled Fish
My first meal in Portugal was this grilled dourada in a
charming, neighborhood Lisbon restaurant.
The fresh, simple ingredients among a backdrop of mellifluous Portuguese
chatter made for a truly memorable dining experience and was a portent of
Portuguese cuisine to come. Sharing the same coast
as Morocco, sardines also reign supreme here, but grilled dourada—aka gilt-head
bream—had a starring role on the menus of the day. I felt a little gilt-y not knowing if it was sustainable. But I knew it sustained me. Until dessert.
Top row: grilled sardines and dourada; bottom: grilled dourada and mackerel
Hey, side-dish czar of Portugal: How did you decide that boiled potatoes would be the national accompaniment for
grilled fish? Not that I'm complaining. Just questioning fish
authority.
2. Portuguese Vegetable Soup
This delicate yet hearty
vegetable soup was served with almost every meal I ate except breakfast. But if
it had been, I wouldn't have complained. Much like Morocco’s harira soup, this
really bowled me over in a simple, soul-satisfying way. While it was slightly
different each time, I’m surmising it was some combination of puréed potatoes,
carrots, onions, leeks, cabbage and kale.
Top row: vegetable soup; bottom row: vegetable soup
Don’t
let those motley colors fool you. Although it was alphabet-free, I swear it was
the same effing soup, give or take a few effs.
3. Bacalhau
Bacalhau is dried, salted cod
that’s a mainstay of Portuguese cuisine. It was introduced by sailors around
the discovery of the New World before refrigeration, and there's said to be
over 1000 recipes for it. Since Portugal is a huge seafaring country, it’s
ironic that all of the bacalhau is imported from Norway, Iceland or
Newfoundland. Every grocery store has a whole department devoted to this big,
gray, dried-out salty specimen (bottom left). A contender for the fugly fish
award, I could only bring myself to eat it camouflaged in the cod cakes and
cutlets that populated every menu.
Dried codpieces (from Middle
English: cod, meaning “scrotum”); cod
balls; cod cutlet
It may have taken balls to make bacalhau the national dish, but truth be
told, it was very tasty, thanks to something
called a deep fryer.
4. Baked Octopus
Just when I thought it was all about grilling and frying, a
baked octopus went and threw me eight curves in a rustic little restaurant in the city of Porto. This terra cotta
cookware was brimming with silky-soft octopus parts, potatoes, turnip greens
and carrots in a delicate, locally grown olive oil broth—the key to its sublime flavor and
succulence. The waiter had told me the baked octopus was their specialty, and
sure enough, he wasn’t pulling my arms.
Octopus always kind of creeped me
out until I had it swimming in fresh, fragrant, fruity Portuguese olive oil.
Sheesh. To think my whole life could've been different.
5. Cataplana
No, it’s not a big plate of pussycat. Cat-a-plana is a popular
seafood dish from Portugal’s Algarve coast. It’s also the name of the cookware
used to prepare it, like a tagine is both the name of the cooking dish and the
cooked dish. Traditionally a cataplana is made of copper and shaped like two
clamshells hinged at one end and clamped on either side. This heaping platter
of 'plana was chock-full of shrimp, clams, mussels, white beans and served over
rice. The beans aren't a traditional ingredient, but I guess the chef knew I
was a rebel.
It was earthy, oceany, heavenly, and humongous.
Afterwards, the ocean called. It was out of crustaceans.
6. Roasted Chicken
They love their crispy,
succulent chicken in these parts, so as a practitioner of livin' la vida local,
I pigged out on Portuguese poultry. Apparently half a chicken is the new single
serving, and when I had it in the seaside city of Cascais, I split it with my
dining companion. But when I ordered it again in Lisbon, I was flying solo, so
I adhered to my conscious culinarian credo: never waste an animal and shared it with my imaginary friend.
The waiter must've seen my imaginary friend since he brought the chicken out on a serving platter
with an extra plate. But since my friend turned out to be vegan, I
ate his too. Don't judge. I walked it off in search of a Pastéis de Nata.
7. Pastéis de Nata
Pastéis de Nata at a Portuguese bakery
Pastéis de Nata are Portuguese custard tarts, customarily sprinkled with powdered sugar and
cinnamon, that are in every bakery. They were introduced at the beginning of
the 19th century by monks at a monastery in Lisbon’s area of Belém.
It's said that convents and monasteries used a lot of egg whites to starch
clothes and they used the leftover yolks for cakes and pastries, resulting in
Portugal’s many confections. The original custard tarts, called 'Pastéis de
Belém' (pastries of Belém), became a business next door to the monastery in
1837 that still exists today. The recipe is still a secret, known only by the
master confectioners who handcraft the pastries in Belém.
Pastéis de Belém from the original shop
Pastéis de Belém’s to-go container; the original location;
packets of sugar and cinnamon
The original Pastéis de Belém shop
was swarming with tourists, but I endured the hungry masses and got a six pack
to go. I wolfed a few down that were still warm, but I thought the “mutt”
varieties of Pastéis de Nata from other bakeries seemed just as tasty and less
greasy at room temperature. Take a virtual tour of the Pastéis de Belém shop.
8. Pastel de Tentúgal
When I was in Coimbra (Portugal’s third largest city after
Lisbon and Porto), I saw this curious pastry that came from the nearby town of
Tentúgal. The recipe was conceived in a convent in
the 16th century and its laborious preparation hasn’t changed in 500 years. Made
from a dough similar to filo, the filling is a cooked egg yolk and sugar
mixture known as doce de ovos. An eight-pound lump of dough made of flour and water is set
in the middle of a white room with a white cotton-covered floor that looks like
a germophobe asylum. The dough is stretched to 15 feet, becoming
so sheer, you can see the crazy right through it. Watch the fascinating process.
Apparently the church didn't count sugar as one of the deadly
sins—unless you binged on a box of Pastel de Tentúgal. Read
David Leite's sweet account of this
pastry steeped in history and egg yolks.
9. Ginjinha
Technically, this is something I drank and not ate, but is there a law against counting the cherries? I sampled this traditional cherry liqueur in a
celebrated Lisbon hole-in-the-wall ginjinha bar from 1840
that's still owned by the original, fifth-generation family. Invented
by a friar in Spain, ginjinha is made from ginja berries (sour Morello
cherries), aguardente (Portuguese brandy), sugar, water and cinnamon and is
produced in the region
of Estremadura
just north of Lisbon. It may have tasted like an artisanal NyQuil, but by the
time I got to the cherries, the medicine had kicked in and I was feeling no
pain.
They
ask whether you want your ginjinha with or without the cherries. That's like
asking if I want olives in my martini, to which I'd reply, "Hold the
martini. I'll have a glass of olives." See the bar in action.
10. Port Wine
A
tawny Port apertif served before my baked octopus
Again, technically this is something I drank, but last time I checked, grapes were a food. The
city of Porto is famous for its Port wine, produced from
grapes from the Douro River valley—the oldest protected wine region in the
world. A fortified wine, Port is richer and sweeter with higher alcohol content
due to the addition of a neutral grape spirit called aguardente (the same one
used in ginjinha) to stop the fermentation. Served as both an apertif and
dessert wine, the most common varieties are ruby, tawny and white. I crossed
the Douro River to see the caves where the wine is aged and took a tasting tour of
Calem that included an authentic
fado music performance among the musty oak
barrels and old stone arches.
As I drank in the mournful notes of the fado
bouncing off those majestic barrels of Port, I knew Porto was my kind of
party.
A traditional boat that once transported Port
barrels down the Douro River
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