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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Belmonte synagogue
We are once again in the Beira Baixa town of Belmonte, home of the man who had brought about the evangelisation of Brazil. (http://www.me-n-youinportugal.com/index.php?blog&nid=98) But Catholicism was not the only religion deeply held in Belmonte, Judaism was there too and, just up the hill from the statue of Pedro Álvares Cabral, is the old Jewish quarter of the village.
What I am about to tell you is a story of deeply held faith and extraordinary, almost incredible, tenacity. It starts more than 500 years ago, at the time of the reconquest of Spain by the Catholic Kings, Fernando of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, contemporaries of that same king who had favoured and then forgotten Cabral; Dom Manuel I.
To read the extraordinary story of the Jews of Belmonte, click here
You can see Belmonte with its imposing castle from a long way off. Dominating the region with its 360° view, it was once an outpost built and manned by Portugal's early rulers to defend the state against invasion from Spain. However, unless Portugal's much more powerful neighbour was showing serious aggression, it is unlikely that any Belmonte resident ever met the king or any members of his court - or indeed anyone else from further afield than a few kilometres around - because the settlement was so remote and difficult to reach.
Despite its historic isolation, however, Belmonte is not without history. There is a fascinating reason why we chose to make a special effort to go to there and a curious fact that we discovered upon arrival. To find out first about the curious fact, click here.
The year is almost over and the land in the Minho is being cleared of the detritus of last year's harvest. Whippy strands of grape vine, bereft of leaves, are being swept into piles and set alight. This evening, in the hamlet of Esmorigo, I counted seven spires of smoke coming from fields and gardens. Most of the time, the air being still, the smoke rose straight to the sky, looking like sacrifices made by Abel. In this picture, one or two fires seem to have been set by Cain!
To see more of my thoughts as I walked past Calheiros and Esmorigo, click here.
The Radium Hotel from afarThough the ruin is large, I almost missed it because I was looking for the wrong shape in the wrong place. I had been told that it could be mistaken for a castle, which seemed quite likely as Portugal boasts hundreds of ruined ones atop outcrops with a good view of the surrounding countryside.
The ruin I was searching for, however, turned out to lie well below the crest of a granite hill and to look more like one of the abandoned mills of my native Yorkshire than a castle.
To find out more about this ruin and its curious history, click here.
Between our house and the sea there's a long, rounded mountain ridge. Though its lower slopes are clothed with eucalyptus and pine, it's a bald mountain, the bare granite crown enlivened with just a little scrub in between the boulders. It looks inhospitable, as though no one would choose to live there, yet as we drive through the foothills and start to climb, we see a homemade sign: "Em Cabração, Lítio não." Translated, that reads as, "No Lithium in Cabração."
Cabração is one of several villages that subsist in the Serra D'Arga, villages which though modernised in many ways, still cling tenaciously to tradition. And none of them is happy about the idea of mining on their mountain.
To read more of the Serra and one of the villages which are fighting a threat to mine lithium, click here.
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