There is something so inherently ritualistic about eating together: when the company is great, the whole thing almost becomes like a free jazz concert where everybody brings something different to the table (a great dip as a starter, some fruit, an amazing wine to accompany the dish) and where everything just sort of blends together…
What after all of these years of cooking still fascinates me the most is the ephemeral nature of summer ingredients: peaches, apricots, peas, snow peas, broad beans, sprouting broccoli, cherries, the best, most plump and fleshy tomatoes… It’s summer in Portugal and all of a sudden the markets and vegetable shops are brimming with it…
This is a recipe that all started a few weeks ago when visiting the tapas bar Sr. Guilho and had a delicious “callos”, a tripe stew cooked with chickpeas and chorizo, rich with smokey tones from the tender chorizo and pimenton. It tasted more or less the way it did when I had it in Spain…
It was a cold Saturday evening when we went astray in a neighbourhood that we – after the sad loss of Crêperia da Ribeira – tend to avoid these days: Cais do Sodré. Time Out has taken over the area by creating the “perfect” gastronomic shopping centre, Mercado da Ribeira, offering a vast choice of dishes…
Even though I’ve been living in Portugal now for over 5 years, I can still get incredibly nostalgic for the chips stands (Americans: read “French fries”) that you have on the market square in the cuteness overloaded city of Bruges, my home town. Or just walking into a chip shop after a long night out drinking beer…
In my experience, this recipe feeds about 4 hungry people if you mix the sauce in with about 500/600 grams of al dente cooked spaghetti. Don’t be silly and do like the Italians do: add the sauce to the pasta in the pot, mix everything and make sure the pasta isn’t too wet with your sauce.…
Lisbom 