Tomatoes stuffed with sardines and black eye beans / Tomates recheados com sardinhas e feijão frade

The legendary Portuguese sardines are known for their depth of flavour. Even in their canned state, these are little gems of Portuguese flavour. This recipe uses sardines to enhance a traditional salad of black eye beans, onion, parsley and olive oil.

Confit cod / Bacalhau Confitado

A confit is simply a method of slow cooking in fat or oil. The great variety of high quality Portuguese olive oil is a great excuse to try a twist on the traditional salted cod. This recipe brings together three classic ingredients of Portuguese cuisine: bacalhau, garlic and olive oil.

Confit Cod/Bacalhau Confitado

Snapper with cockle sauce / Pargo com molho de berbigão

Inspired by Bulhão Pato’s coriander, garlic and shellfish magic, this is a flavourful and delicious approach to serving fish filets. The make or break aspect of this is to get the right flavour balance in the shell fish stock. The method works equally well with fillets of bream or bass.

Snapper with Cockle Sauce

Prawn Rice/Arroz de Camarão

The archetypal Portuguese wet rice, flavoured by a rich prawn stock is a must in any coastal restaurant. The capacity for producing a perfect arroz de camarão can make or break a chef’s reputation.

As with most prawn and shrimp dishes, the secret is to extract as much flavour as possible from the shells and heads. To cook with shelled shrimp meat is no more than a allusive reference to the unique taste of this remarkable seafood. Frozen at sea prawns are the most practical way of guaranteeing good results as sourcing fresh prawns is usually rather tricky. This recipe achieves its richness and flavour through the preparation of a stock used to cook the rice. The same stock can be used as a basis for a prawn velouté soup (creme de camarão).

 

Prawn Rice/Arroz de Camarão

Algarve Squid/Lulas à Algarvia

Algarve Squid/Lulas à Algarvia

The Algarve region in the south of Portugal is renowned for guaranteed good weather, high levels of tourism but also excellent sea food, especially if one avoids restaurants serving chips with everything… This is an extremely simple recipe for small squid which brings out their natural salty taste and soft texture. Like with all squid cooking, timing is everything!

Serve with simple boiled potatoes and greens.

Mussels “Bulhão Pato”/Mexilhões à Bulhão Pato

 

Mexilhões à Bulhão Pato/Mussels Bulhão Pato

 

A variation of the classic clam dish, this works equally as well with mussels. This recipe based be used as a base for preparing mussels vinaigrette.

Grilled Salted Cod with Olive Oil/Bacalhau à Lagareiro

Given the ubiquitousness of salted cod (bacalhau) in Portuguese cuisine, this blog has admittedly few references to it so on to the task of remedying that with a classic dish from the centre of Portugal (Beiras region) – Bacalhau à Lagareiro. Lagar is the portuguese term for olive oil press and lagareiro referring to the worker of the press. This recipe, not surprisingly, is very much about putting the best quality olive oil (azeite) at the centre of the dish. Together with flavourful garlic and “punched potatoes”, this is one of those simple combinations of flavours and textures that is characteristically Portuguese. As with most bacalhau recipes the cod needs to be soaked beforehand. Soaked cod freezes well so you can soak a larger batch and  freeze individual tranches.

Bacalhau à lagareiro