Food and Wine Portugal

Restaurant Review – Pizzaria Atlantis, Cabanas

admin — Wed, 08 May 2013 21:39:48 +0000

Pizzaria Atlantis was recommended to us by several friends as the next in our series of Portuguese restaurants to review. Situated on the riverfront in the pretty village of Cabanas, it has a large indoor area as well as a number of tables outside for lovely balmy Portuguese summer evenings.

We’ve tried a range of dishes and certainly haven’t been disappointed. The pizza is delicious and the thin crust makes a nice change from the deep-pan pizzas that seem to be ubiquitous in this area. There is a good range of choices on the menu and (purely in the spirit of undertaking a full review of course), we have worked our way through a fair number of them. Toppings are generous and I particularly liked the anchovy and capers combination.

The restaurant will also happily make up a pizza of your choice from their range of ingredients. When we asked for a chicken and pineapple pizza with chilli on, the result was a fabulously hot, spicy pizza, which was refreshing given the general aversion in Portugal to making really spicy dishes.

Good though the pizzas are, the real star of the show is Atlantis’ pastas. My personal favourite is the cheese ravioli, which is simple and delicious – very fresh and homemade tasting. The black spaghetti with seafood is also wonderful, full of flavour and packed with a generous helping of seafood.

The starters/sides that we have tried include a lovely, olive-topped bruschetta and a thin-crust garlic bread with rosemary. I’ve been racking my brains to find something to criticise about this place in order to give a balanced review, but the best I can come up with is that on occasion the garlic is unevenly distributed across the bread!

Despite it being relatively early in the summer for the tourist village of Cabanas, Pizzaria Atlantis is already packed most evenings, which is testament to the great food, friendly and efficient service and reasonable prices. Still, if you can’t get a seat the takeaway service is the perfect alternative.

The wine list offers a good selection. We tried a bottle of Mestro Franco red with our last pizza, which was the perfect accompaniment. There is also a varied selection of non-pizza and pasta dishes and, while we have yet to try everything on the menu, the salmon does deserve a mention.

Pizzaria Atlantis is an essential part of the local dining scene in Cabanas, offering fabulous food at affordable prices – very highly recommended.

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Restaurant Review – Orangerie, Moncarapacho

admin — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:25:33 +0000

This week we tried out one of the more expensive Portuguese restaurants in the area – the Orangerie at the luxurious Vila Monte golf and spa hotel in Moncarapacho. Nestled away in the countryside, it offers delightful views from its outdoor terrace, as well as a large indoor dining area. The vast, high-ceilinged venue encourages diners to speak in hushed tones, making this the perfect place for a quiet, romantic meal for two or for an upscale family occasion.

Portuguese restaurants – the view from Orangerie’s terrace

The Orangerie focuses on fresh, locally sourced ingredients, with dishes featuring a range of products grown organically on the estate, including herbs, citrus fruits, almonds and figs. The menu includes speciality dishes for two (which must be ordered in advance) and several set menus, as well as à la carte options. A children’s menu is also available, along with a range of vegetarian options.

Couvert, including the incredible olive oil

The meal began with traditional Portuguese couvert of olives, bread and olive oil for dipping. The olive oil was rich and fruity and the waiter informed us that it was pressed in Moncarapacho from olives grown on the Vila Monte estate. It was followed by a complimentary amuse bouche – a sort of tuna paste nestled within a tomato, which served as a gentle introduction to the fabulous meal which was about to follow.

Amuse bouche

Our party tried numerous starters, including pea soup, mussel linguini and crab salad. The pea soup was the highlight – it was delicious and incredibly fresh-tasting. The mussel linguini was ok but a little under-seasoned and perhaps an overly large portion for a starter. The crab salad was also quite good, although the delicate taste of the crab was somewhat masked by the stronger flavours of the other ingredients on the plate.

Pea soup

Lime sorbet dusted with icing sugar was served before the main course, to cleanse our palettes. Our main courses included monkfish with potato yarn (a wonderful combination of textures as well as great flavours), black pork tenderloin (rich and delicious), a fish ‘symphony’ (light and cooked to perfection) and veal medallion (incredibly tender and the highlight of our mains).

Beautiful main course

The desserts, which curiously had to be ordered at the start of the meal, were served following a complimentary mini sweet of rich chocolate cake. The desserts were a triumph: the chocolate mousse served with olive oil was utterly delicious, the fig parfait was light and fruity and the citrus cheesecake with carob and almond base was intensely flavoured. The cheese board was large and came with homemade jam, walnuts, strawberries and grapes. It featured some lovely, creamy local cheeses, which combined with the fruit and jam to create a wonderfully sweet treat.

Chocolate mousse

The meal was rounded off with coffee and complimentary petit fours – sticky carob morsels and dark, crunchy mini biscuits. The perfect end to an extremely good evening.

Cheese board

Overall this was a fabulous meal. The Orangerie is expensive (the cheapest main course is €20, while starters and desserts range from €8 to €15), so not somewhere where we will be dining often, but it makes a great venue for a birthday treat or other special occasion.

Petit fours

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Vinho Verde Wine Review – Vales de Ambrães

admin — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:43:26 +0000

Vinho Verde is a popular wine in Portugal. It is ‘green’ wine – a light, often slightly sparkling wine made from young grapes. It is the perfect accompaniment to fish, shellfish and other light dishes. It’s also a very refreshing wine to drink on lazy, long, sunny evenings.

Wine in Portugal – Vales de Ambraes

We have a couple of favourite vinhos verdes but I realised it was well past time to broaden our wine horizons and try a new one. As Vales de Ambrães was on offer in our local supermarket, it seemed the perfect time to try it.

Sadly this was not one of the best vinhos verdes that I have sampled. With quite a heavy, fruity flavour, it was more intense than I expected from a traditional green wine. The bottle recommended it as an accompaniment to white meat and, while it may have been nice with a meal, as a wine to sit and sip on its own it felt a little too robust. It also lacked the slight sparkle that is a feature of most vinhos verdes, coming across as more of a white wine than a traditional green one.

Overall this wine was ok, but not one that I will be buying again. It was telling that of the two of us drinking it, neither of us felt inclined to finish our first glass. Quite simply, there are better vinho verde wines in Portugal for this price or less.

Price: €3.79 in Continente

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Restaurant Review – Vert’in, Cabanas

admin — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:49:40 +0000

The newly opened Vert’in restaurant and bar makes an excellent addition to the foodie scene in Cabanas in the Eastern Algarve. Tucked away on the sun-drenched courtyard of the Pomar housing development, Vert’in offers fabulous French/Portuguese food in a relaxing setting. Diners can choose to eat in the coolness of the crisp white and green interior or enjoy the weather with an outside table.

Restaurant review – Vert’in

It being the first properly sunny day of the year, we choose to sit outside. Although we arrived a little late for a lunch sitting, the service was swift and attentive and two tables were quickly pulled together to seat our party of six.

The menu at Vert’in is impressive. As well as a long list of staple Portuguese main courses (including steaks, pork and a range of seafood dishes), the French owners had thought to include savoury and sweet crepes (to my delight), as well as a wide range of vegetarian options – something quite unusual for an Algarve restaurant.

Portuguese black pork – delicious

Between the six of us we ordered steak (rare), black pork, Portuguese prawn curry, a cheeseburger and two savoury crepes (we went for warm goat’s cheese, walnut and honey), plus a couple of side dishes. Without exception the food was excellent. The steak was fabulously rare, the curry creamy and full of flavour and the cheeseburger and chips kept my nephew very happy. The black pork was delicious and it was nice to see that our waiter checked when we ordered it that we knew what to expect (as it was a very fatty cut, cooked slightly pink).

The amazing crepe

For me, the stand-out item was the crepe. With the perfect balance of goat’s cheese, nuts and honey it was an absolute delight. It’s going to be difficult for me to try anything else on the menu next time we go there, now that I know how great the crepes are!

Portions were generous enough that we had no room for dessert, but we returned a couple of hours later to try out a couple of items from the extensive dessert menu. The tarte tatin and gooey chocolate pudding were very well received and the desserts were good enough that my nephew ended up having two.

Delightful desserts

The price for our main meal was reasonable (€100 including tip for six of us, although that didn’t include our desserts).

A good range of cocktails is also available from Vert’in and the drinks are clearly made with as much pride as the food. They can make for an expensive night out, but sipping one slowly after dinner won’t break the bank. The kiwi margarita is particularly recommended!

Cocktail

It’s unusual for me to write a restaurant review that is so complementary, but we really did struggle to fault Vert’in. The food, drinks and service were all very good. The only tiny error was that one member of our party received a milky coffee after her meal instead of the black coffee she had ordered. Even then, it was replaced without hesitation and with an apology from three different members of staff.

Despite being the newest restaurant in Cabanas, Vert’in has already made its mark. We will definitely be back – and soon!

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Portuguese Recipes – Arroz Doce

admin — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 08:21:39 +0000

One of my favourite Portuguese desserts is arroz doce (rice pudding), so when a friend discovered it on the wonderful Sami’s Colourful World blog, I had to make sure this was the next in my series of Portuguese recipes.

Arroz doce is a very typical Portuguese dessert, found in the majority of restaurants. It is flavoured with cinnamon and can be eaten hot or cold. My first experience of it was when our Portuguese neighbours brought a large bowlful upstairs for us as a gift, as part of a wonderful international food gift exchange that we had going with them until they moved away.

Portuguese recipes – egg yolks

The recipe below is reproduced from Sami’s blog, for which she has kindly granted permission. It is quick and easy to make and results in a wonderful, creamy dessert that we ate following Sunday dinner. As with many of the best and most traditional Portuguese dishes, arroz doce is extremely cheap to make. It uses store cupboard ingredients – the only thing I had to buy to make this was a single lemon.

The left over egg whites from this recipe can be used to make meringue – on this occasion my mother used them to make a delightful lemon meringue pie.

Lemon meringue pie

This is definitely one Portuguese recipe that will become one of my staples for entertaining family and friends.

Ingredients

125 gr short grain rice (I used risotto rice)
250ml water
Pinch of salt
1 stick cinnamon
Lemon rind strips
500ml milk
150 gr sugar
25gr butter
3 egg yolks
Grated lemon rind
Ground cinnamon

Portuguese recipes – arroz doce ingredients

Recipe

1. Boil the rice in salted water for 10 minutes.

2. Warm the milk with the cinnamon stick and a few strips of lemon rind. Strain the rice and add the warm milk and simmer until rice is cooked.
3. Add the sugar and butter and continue cooking for another 10 minutes.

4. Beat the egg yolks in a cup and add a bit of the warm rice mixture, mix well and add to the pan.

5. Remove the lemon rind and cinnamon stick and add some grated lemon rind, then simmer for 2-3 minutes stirring continuously.

6. Pour into a shallow platter or into individual bowls. Decorate with ground cinnamon and enjoy!!

Portuguese recipes – arroz doce

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Red Wine Review – Tázem Reserva 2009

admin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:59:32 +0000

A family member was given two bottles of Tázem Reserva 2009 as a gift, so we opened one over Sunday dinner in order to test it out.

This is a red wine from the Adega Cooperativa de Vila Nova de Tázem. Adegas cooperativas can be found across Portugal – they are wineries where local growers take their grapes, which are then processed and turned into wine as a community effort.

Red wine review – Tazem Reserva 2009

The Tázem Reserva 2009 is a wonderfully rich, dark red colour and it tastes as good as it looks – full of deep, fruity flavour. Having opened the first bottle just to ‘try out’ this wine, we quickly succumbed to the temptation of the second. This is a great wine to drink with hearty red meats – we had it with roast beef, which was perfect.

This is a bit of a mystery wine – I can’t find it in my local supermarkets, which is a shame as I would definitely like to drink it again. It has certainly inspired me to investigate more wines from the Adega Cooperativa de Vila Nova de Tázem. The adega describes itself as open, knowledgeable and passionate about unique and spectacular wines. If the Tázem Reserva 2009 is anything to judge by, this approach is certainly paying dividends!

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Portuguese Food on the Go – Ready Meals

admin — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:48:55 +0000

The last week has been frantic. I took on a little more work than I could really manage, with the result that meals were delayed and skipped while I sat tapping away at my laptop. My plans to spend hours in the kitchen experimenting with Portuguese desserts had to be shelved, but the week was not entirely lost food-wise, as I got to try out a very different kind of Portuguese food – ready meals.

Portuguese food – ready meals

This was not the first time I’ve tried a Portuguese ready meal (arroz de pato was one of the first ones I tried), but for the most part I have actively avoided them since moving here, as one of the reasons behind our move was to achieve a more balanced and healthy diet, using fresh, local ingredients. This week, all that changed and we loaded up the shopping basket with a selection of ready meals from Continente’s Fácil e Bom chiller cabinet selection.

We began by comparing two of the lasagnes, which with their peel-off-film-and-stick-in-oven approach were perfect for a rushed dinner. The pork mince lasagne was not very exciting. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, but there wasn’t anything exciting about it either – it was just a bog-standard pasta dish that served the purpose of stopping me from being hungry. The chicken and leek lasagne, on the other hand, was very good. It was full of flavour and had a lovely rich, creamy sauce. It is something that I would be happy to have in the fridge to tuck into for lunch on busy days.

Portuguese sausage rolls – rich and smoky

Our next item from the ready meal section was a vacuum-sealed packet of what appeared to be English sausage rolls. As sausage rolls are one of the foods we tend to crave from time to time, we couldn’t help but give them a try. They turned out to be at once similar and dissimilar to their English counterparts. The flaky pastry was beautifully golden, but the sausage meat inside had quite an intense smoky flavour, similar to farinheira, which is a Portuguese smoked sausage made from flour, pork fat and seasoning (and can be served as a kind of hot pâté – more on that some other time!). Although they sausage rolls were a little smoky for my taste, my husband very much enjoyed them dunked in mustard.

Another main meal that we tried was prawn feijoada (a kind of Portuguese bean stew that I recently learned to cook myself). This ready meal required plonking into a pan and sizzling it until it was hot – nice and easy to cook when you don’t have time to make a ‘proper’ dinner. The feijoada contained a generous helping of prawns, along with a few pieces of what seemed to be surimi, all mixed up in a pleasant-smelling beany sauce. As with the chicken and leek lasagne, the result was surprisingly good and again this is something that I would happily keep in the fridge as an emergency meal.

Continente garlic bread – a staple in my freezer from now on

Our other discovery this week, which deserves a mention at this point, is Continente’s own brand frozen garlic bread slices. These individual little round baguette slices are loaded with butter and garlic and perfect to keep in the freezer to accompany a quick pasta meal. The fact that they are individual slices is perfect, as you don’t have to cook a whole baguette and then waste it if you can’t eat it all. One bag is big enough for three meals and at just €2.29 I think it’s safe to say that we will always keep some of these in the freezer from now on.

Of course I will still enjoy spending hours in the kitchen cooking delicious Portuguese food and my own freshly made garlic bread whenever I can, but it’s good to know that there are some decent and relatively inexpensive alternatives available for when time is short.

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Portuguese Fresh Bread

admin — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 23:37:03 +0000

Fresh bread is an important part of the Portuguese diet. It’s also something that I have become rather obsessed with since moving here.

The range of breads available in Portugal is enormous. Our local shop, which is equivalent in size to something like a Londis shop or Spar in England, bakes nine kinds of bread and rolls daily. It also sells two different sorts of loaves and three different kinds of rolls from nearby local bakeries. A small range of pre-packed sliced bread and burger buns is available too, but as they cost far more than the freshly baked bread and taste far less good, I’m not going to refer further to them in this article.

Fresh bread – the variety is endless

I’ve always loved bread. As a child one of my favourite snacks was a slice of bread dipped in salad cream, but it wasn’t until I moved to Portugal that I began to appreciate the variety of textures and flavours that fresh bread can provide.

Bread is particularly important to the Portuguese diet. It is cheap, filling and versatile. When it begins to go stale – and fresh bread here does tend to go stale pretty fast, usually within 24 hours of being baked – it is used to make dishes such as açorda, a thick, creamy bread-based stew.

Corn bread, soda bread, tiny cheesy rolls, dark rye bread, bread with grains on top, bread with fruit baked into it – the list of fresh breads in Portugal is seemingly endless. One of my favourites is pão com chouriço, little rolls with slices of chouriço baked into them. Pão com torresmos is equally good, but features torresmos (like soft pork scratchings) baked into the bread instead of the chouriço.

Fresh bread – distinct regional variations exist

Another of my favourites is pão do céu – a light, almost cake-like bread. The version I prefer has a lovely delicate coconut undertone and is perfect eaten just on its own or smothered with a dark berry jam.

Such is the Portuguese love of bread that an enterprising chap in our village decided to sell it out of the back of a van. Every weekday he parks at the end of our road, puts a sign in the van window saying ‘pão quente’ (hot bread) and waits for customers. They come in droves, stopping on their way home from work to stock up on loaves, rolls and pão com chouriço still warm from the oven.

Portugal’s different regions all have their own styles and specialities of bread, so despite having lived here for over three years I still haven’t managed to sample it all. I’m going to try my best to do so over the coming years though, which no doubt will only serve to further my obsession with Portuguese fresh bread!

Image credits: Wikimedia
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Portuguese Recipes – Roast Octopus

admin — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 13:35:34 +0000

I had never eaten octopus before moving to Portugal and was surprised by the great quantity of Portuguese recipes that contained it when I moved here. I spent my early months in Portugal convinced that I was allergic to it, as well as being put off by its appearance. Gradual experimentation, however, proved that not only did I not have an allergy to octopus, it was actually a really succulent and tasty ingredient.

Portuguese recipes – roast octopus

It still took over three years before I dared to try and cook octopus on my own. I used a recipe from Piri Piri Starfish: Portugal Found by Tessa Kiros, which is probably my most-used Portuguese cookbook, whether for main dishes, delightful desserts or just quick snacks. I would recommend it for anyone who is experimenting with Portuguese cooking. You can get it here:

I had worried that the long cooking time for this recipe would result in a rather chewy meal, but the method of slow-roasting the tentacles in a lovely red wine sauce resulted in soft, tender octopus that went down extremely well when served as a family meal (the recipe below was enough for five of us).

As with all my favourite Portuguese recipes this is best served with slices of fresh bread to mop up the rich sauce, and as usual I made a few tweaks to the recipe based on personal preference and what I had in the store cupboard.

Portuguese recipes – roast octopus

Ingredients
700g frozen octopus, pre-cleaned and cut into pieces
Big glug extra virgin olive oil
2 onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tsp dried parsley
600g chopped plum tomatoes (tinned)
Small pinch piri piri chili flakes
750g potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
250ml red wine

Portuguese recipes – roast octopus

Recipe
1. Defrost the octopus and give it a quick rinse, then chop it into chunks of about 1 inch.

2. Heat the oven to 200C.

3. Heat the olive oil in a pan and sauté the onion for about 5 minutes, then add the garlic and cook for a further 2-3 minutes before adding the chopped tomatoes. Season and simmer for about 5 minutes, then stir in most of the parsley and all of the chili flakes.

4. Put the octopus and potatoes in an oven-proof dish and pour over the tomato mixture and wine. Prod everything around a bit to ensure it is coated and well mixed. Cover with foil and cook in the oven for an hour.

5. Remove the foil and cook for a further hour, turning the oven down to 170C.

6. Scatter the top with remaining parsley and serve.

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Red Wine Review – Quinta da Alorna 2009

admin — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:36:16 +0000

We selected this red wine based on how good the Quinta da Alorna Reserva 2009 had been. The Reserva had won the gold Mundus Vini medal and was delicious, so we were excited to find the regular Quinta da Alorna 2009 red had not only scooped the gold Mundus Vini 2011 medal, but also the gold Concurso Mundial de Bruxelas 2012 medal.

Quinta da Alorna 2009

Our expectations were not disappointed. This is a lovely, deep ruby red wine, which is full of big fruity flavours. It manages to be a robust mouthful, yet delightfully smooth at the same time. The bottle recommended it as an accompaniment to white meats, cheese and pasta, but personally I think it would stand up well to red meat too.

At half the price of the Reserva, this is a really good option for a low-cost red and it’s one that I’ll be buying next time we have guests for dinner.

Price: €2.98 in Jumbo

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