Are you far from home and missing Portuguese home cooking? Do you find yourself longing for a hearty 'sopa de legumes' – thick vegetable soup? Do you dream of 'porco alentejano' – a stew of pork with clams and small roast potato chunks? Or maybe you are yearning for 'caldeirada – a fish stew like bouillabaisse using up all the odd fish brought back in the nets by fishermen? Perhaps it's a creamy goat's milk cheese from Beira Baixa, the province between the Serra da Estrela and Spain, which pops into your mind, making you salivate with nostalgia? Well if you're in Britain now you might just be in luck.
Picture courtesy of Adriano Carapeto'
To read the rest of the atory, click here
Remember the Portuguese custard tart that brought back memories of long past sunny days in Lisbon? (See Pasteis de nata for the story.) Well, I saw that tart together with Beira Baixan cheese and Casal Garcia 'vinho verde' - lightly sparkling young wine from the north of Portugal - in a corner of St Sampson's Square during York's annual food festival.
It's not long since I was last in the Minho and I shall be there again soon as I know the plans of our house (see the archive for the story of our house near Ponte de Lima) are now with the local council for approval but all the same, standing there in the middle of my home city of York, I felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for some nourishing Portuguese peasant food. Don't feel insulted by the word peasant; as in France, good, frugal, sustaining food has always been cooked in the countryside for the people who are the backbone of Portugal.
So, you may ask, where did this Portuguese feast come from? Step forward Adriano Carapeto.
Terragourmet stall - courtesy of Adriano Carapeto
Sr Adriano previously of Loule but latterly of Liverpool is a man of many parts. After studying law in Lisbon, he spent five years in the army followed by a stint working in the department of investigation in the Criminal Police Force. After that he spent ten years as an estate agent with an office in Quinta do Lago in the Algarve.
Two years ago, Sr Adriano and his partner Diane, who is from Liverpool, began to ask themselves why it was that the British friends who visited them in the Algarve would rave about Portuguese food but were unable to find it anywhere in England – with the possible exception of London.
Picture of Portuguese cheeses courtesy of Adeiano Carapeto
So if the weather is cold and dank and you are stuck in Britain while the summer holidays seem a long way away, why not 'matar saudades de Portugal' by visiting the Terragourmet stall when it comes to town? My husband for one is thrilled at the idea of being able to buy 'presunto' , the Portuguese equivalent of Parma ham, when we are here in Britain. He's addicted to it and lunch in Portugal is often crusty bread with presunto and cheese followed by fruit and coffee.
Carving presunto - picture courtesy of Adriano Carapeto
For more information about Portuguese food in the north of England why not look at the Terragourmet web site? www.terragourmet.net
What do you miss most about Portugal when you are away? Write in and tell us.
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Just on the outskirts of Porto near the Rio Douro is Villar D'Allen, a 19th century villa boasting a comprehensive collection of around 600 camellias, my Mum's favourite tree and hence the reason for our visit.
To read more about Julie and her Mum's visit, click here.
If you were to design and build a castle, isn't this exactly what you would draw: a square keep, four turrets with little conical hats on top, a crenellated wall with arrow slits. It's almost a perfect Lego design. Yet this is no Lego, it's a historic castle standing on a hill in Santa Maria da Feira, a region just south of Porto.
Against the sun the castle manages to look severe, threatening even but that is because we were there at the wrong time of day and couldn't stay for better pictures – we were due at a meeting in Porto later.
To see more about this castle, and its importance in Portuguese history, click here.
What is it that makes us interested in something? Is it our genes? Or maybe our surroundings? Our childhood experiences? Who knows? One thing that is certain is that some people experience an overwhelming fascination which may be incomprehensible to others. Most of us, for example, find entomology a bit of a turn off. Beetles and greenfly? Who cares as long as we can rid our gardens of them? Other interests, even if we don't share them, are more understandable.
Here I'm going to share with you the obsession of Dr Lopo de Carvalho, a doctor who lived in Geraz do Lima just off the southern road from Viana do Castelo and its suburb of Darque to Ponte de Lima.
To learn about his special interest, click here.
You won't see too many flesh and blood shoeshine boys in Ponte de Lima, not even ones as well coifed as this one. I'm delighted to say that our little town is thriving and provides plenty of good work without young men having to clean someone else's shoes.
We also have an entrepreneurial mayor who has encouraged people into the town by sponsoring every sort of festival you can think of, from the Festa de Sarrabulho, a local dish made from pork offcuts and rice stewed in pigs' blood and the Festa do Vinho Verde, a green wine festival, through exhibitions of science and technology for students to wedding dresses and accoutrements. Some festivals are more appetising to an outsider's taste than others: what about a festival of lampreys? I find the fish so ugly that it puts me off but others claim it is really tasty. Whatever your particular interest, though, there will be a festival for you in Ponte de Lima, so all summer long the town bustles with locals and visitors.
To find out where this charming, old fashioned scene of a city gent and shoe shine boy fits into the picture, click here.
Today I'm taking you to the village of Brufe, high in the Serra Amarela, the Yellow Mountains, by the border with western Spain. Mind you, when I was last there, at the end of a brutally hot summer, the land was so parched that it wasn't so much yellow as pale fawn.
There is an old English saying, "When gorse is out of bloom, kissing's out of fashion." I don't think kissing has fallen out of fashion in Portugal yet and so, if you look carefully, you will always find butter-yellow gorse in bloom somewhere in the mountains as well as a host of other wild flowers and shrubs.
To find out why we are going to Brufe, what we shall see on the way and what we find at the end of the ride, click here.
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