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Portuguese Cooking: The Authentic and Robust Cuisine of Portugal
Carol Robertson shares her fascination with the country and its cuisine in lively journal entries and delightful drawings, while David Robertson's evocative photographs provide a look at the wonders of the Portuguese landscape and culture. The result is a personal travel book for lovers of good food. Portugal is blessed with a flavorful and complex cuisine that brings together influences from Europe, Africa, and the Muslim world. The simple-to-prepare dishes rely on pork and seafood of all kinds, as well as tomatoes, olives, kale, hot and sweet peppers, garlic, mint, and the silken magic of virgin olive oil. Treat yourself to a true taste of Portugal.
166 pages, Hardcover
First published July 6, 1993
17 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 23, 2020
Awesome read I love the history with the recipes thank you this made this book very special and the recipes are great.
October 24, 2024
Fast reading, light travel essay and cookbook of Portuguese cuisine. The first part is essays about the travels of author Carol Robertson and her companion David in Portugal. Each “Stories of Portugal" is about four pages long, detailing what the two saw and experienced, included some history and culture, and definitely what they ate, each story closing with a menu of items and the page numbers to those particular recipes in the second part of the book.
There are twelve “Stories of Portugal.” They are respectively about the fishing village of Nazaré (which sounds quaint and sleepy in this book published in 1993 but I understand now is a major seaside resort), the castle/hotel of Vila Nova de Milfontes (sounded neat but hard pass for me on using chamber pots), the Algarve region of southern Portugal (I learned about cataplana, a name referring to both a recipe and the vessel it is cooked in; sort of a pork and clam stew), Lisbon (learned about caldeirada, a fish soup), Aveiro (“the Venice of Portugal” with its distinct rice paddies and moliceiro boats, learned about ovos moles, a sugar and egg yolk sauce that can be eaten as a dessert by itself or over fruit, cake, or torte), the Roman ruins at Conimbriga (south of the city of Coimbra), pousadas (government maintained inns inside restored castles, monasteries, and other historic structures), Alcobaça (famed for its pottery), a story on the Portuguese Age of Exploration and on food from Goa, a story on Costa Do Sol and the Estremadura province, the Moor-built medieval fortified town of Obidos, and Lisbon again (this time learning about in addition to landmarks like Belém Tower, açorda, a bread soup of Moorish origins, the recipe one with clams and shrimp).
The “Recipe of Portugal” are divided into different categories such as soups and seafood. Bacalhau, the dried salted cod so traditional in Portuguese cuisine, gets its own section, starting off with Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá, said to the most popular method of bacalhau preparation, a casserole with eggs, Calimata olives, garlic, olive oil, onions, potatoes, and bacalhau).
There is a section of color photos in the middle of the book but aside from a few decorative black and white drawings, the recipes are not illustrated. There is an index.
There are twelve “Stories of Portugal.” They are respectively about the fishing village of Nazaré (which sounds quaint and sleepy in this book published in 1993 but I understand now is a major seaside resort), the castle/hotel of Vila Nova de Milfontes (sounded neat but hard pass for me on using chamber pots), the Algarve region of southern Portugal (I learned about cataplana, a name referring to both a recipe and the vessel it is cooked in; sort of a pork and clam stew), Lisbon (learned about caldeirada, a fish soup), Aveiro (“the Venice of Portugal” with its distinct rice paddies and moliceiro boats, learned about ovos moles, a sugar and egg yolk sauce that can be eaten as a dessert by itself or over fruit, cake, or torte), the Roman ruins at Conimbriga (south of the city of Coimbra), pousadas (government maintained inns inside restored castles, monasteries, and other historic structures), Alcobaça (famed for its pottery), a story on the Portuguese Age of Exploration and on food from Goa, a story on Costa Do Sol and the Estremadura province, the Moor-built medieval fortified town of Obidos, and Lisbon again (this time learning about in addition to landmarks like Belém Tower, açorda, a bread soup of Moorish origins, the recipe one with clams and shrimp).
The “Recipe of Portugal” are divided into different categories such as soups and seafood. Bacalhau, the dried salted cod so traditional in Portuguese cuisine, gets its own section, starting off with Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá, said to the most popular method of bacalhau preparation, a casserole with eggs, Calimata olives, garlic, olive oil, onions, potatoes, and bacalhau).
There is a section of color photos in the middle of the book but aside from a few decorative black and white drawings, the recipes are not illustrated. There is an index.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews