Portuguese pastry, Lisbon, artisan craftsmanship
Fatias de Tomar: the sweet that demands a pan with a chimney
They look like slices of bright yellow bread left behind in syrup. They contain no flour, no leavening, and never see the inside of an oven: fatias de Tomar…
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Ameixa d'Elvas: the green plum named after a French queen
It is green, and that is not a flaw. In Elvas, in the Upper Alentejo, this plum is picked deliberately hard, before it is good to bite into. Everything else in…
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Rebuçados da Régua: the hand-folded sweet of the Douro pilgrimages
They smell of hot lemon and cooked sugar. At the foot of Lamego's baroque stairway, women still fold their sweets one by one on a greased stone, the way it was…
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Pastéis de Santa Clara: the cake from a convent that drowned
In Coimbra the nuns spent three centuries raising their floors before leaving the convent to the river. The building vanished under silt; the cake carrying its…
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Why Portuguese pastry is so yellow: the wine took the whites
Crack an egg and separate it. In Portugal, for centuries, the white and the yolk went their separate ways: one to the wine cellar and the laundry, the other to…
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O lanche: the Portuguese afternoon snack that borrowed an English name
Late in the afternoon, Portugal puts down whatever it is holding and sits for ten minutes. The moment carries a borrowed English name, though nothing about it…
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Marmelada: the Portuguese quince that gave marmalade its name
Raw quince is inedible. Cooked with sugar it becomes a paste you cut with a knife, and a word that left Portugal and changed fruit in England.
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Desfolhada: the night when a red corn ear was worth a kiss
In late September, northern Portugal husked its corn after dark. Village work, sung and washed down with wine, and one single rule: whoever found a red ear…
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The suitcase home: what Portuguese families bring back in August
In late August the same scene plays out in kitchens all over Brussels: a suitcase open on the tiles, a bathroom scale beside it, and someone counting out loud…
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