Jan/Feb/Mar 2021 The English Language Food Magazine For Portugal Lovers Everywhere SOUP BAGELS ALMONDS DO YOU SPEAK +++ T HE CHARM AND HISTORY OF CHOCOLATE?? BEAUTIFUL BOYFRIEND SCARVES TABLE OF CONTENTS IN EVERY ISSUE FEATURES 10 Wine Vines Food For Thought Black Sheep Lisboa/ 7 RealPortugueseWine.com Lucy Pepper, Eat Portugal 13 Not From Around Here Av’s Pastries & Catering The Secret Ingredient Is Always Chocolate 21 15 Let’s Talk Chocolate Master PracticePortuguese.com Pedro Martins Araújo, Vinte Vinte Chocolate 17 My Town Dylan Herholdt, Portugal Soup’s On: the Simple Life Podcast/ The Definitive Guide To 28 Portugal Realty Portugal’s Soup Scene 19 Portuguese Makers Amass. Cook. Lenços dos Namorados/ Aliança Artesanal Product Spotlight 38 52 Perspective Portuguese Rice David Johnson Guest Artist The Legend of the 12 41 Eileen McDonough, Almond Blossom Lisbon Mosaic Studio AB Villa Rentals Fado: The Sonority 43 Of Lisbon getLISBON Reader Recipe 45 Vivian Owens >>> Turn to pages 48-50 for Contributors/Recipe List/What’s Playing in Your Kitchen<<< FROM MY COZINHA The local food and flavor magazine for I don’t know about you, but these last several months I’ve been doing a lot of English-speaking Portugal traveling…in my mind. I catch myself lovers everywhere! staring into space, daydreaming, reliving some of my excellent adventures and planning an extensive Relish Portugal is published four multi-country train excursion across times a year plus two special Europe. I see friends on Zoom and, in editions. reality, my outside exploits are no more exotic than a trip to the grocery store or All rights reserved. No part of this a takeaway café. But in my cozinha? publication may be reproduced, That’s where I can really travel. distributed, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, including From ethnic soups to fridge staples (I just made dill electronically, without the pickles, tough to find in the Portuguese grocery) to prior written permission New York-style bagels topped with Norwegian smoked of Relish Portugal. salmon to chocolate in many forms, the kitchen is my new agenda. Even with the circumstances we find ourselves ©2021 Relish Portugal in, I’m still curious, eager to discover the backstories of some of my favorite dishes and ingredients. That’s what I Permission and info requests: have for you inside these virtual pages. [email protected] Who knew the rich traditions of Portuguese soup? And Advertising/PR and distribution: chocolate, did you know there’s a cacao belt on this [email protected] planet? I love a little sweet with my afternoon café and enjoy small almond cookies from my local bakery. When I Subscriptions: relishportugal.com translated them, I got “creepies.” They’re actually called arrepiados and super easy to make. Check out the recipe https://relishportugal.com on page 41. facebook.com/RelishPortugalMag A while back I asked you to tell me what Portuguese @relish_portugal ingredients you’d like me to look into for our Product Spotlight section. Many of you said rice and it’s pretty interesting. See what I mean, page 38. And because love is in the air—hello St. Valentine—I've got a couple heart-focused stories you might like. From soul-shattering fado (page 43) to the vulnerability of traditional boyfriend scarves (page 19), the language of love isn’t always spoken aloud. Meantime, here on the continent, I’ll continue to try new dishes, practice self-care, and unearth my roll-aboard, just in case. Stay safe, eat well, and watch out for those two vaccine side effects my friend joked about: Have something to say? hope and optimism. [email protected] For you, meu amor. Cocktail Hour Mixing Portugal Amarguinha: Pale yellow with an intensely aromatic scent of spiced almonds and hints of citrus, the Bitter Almond delicate Amarguinha, an Algarvian liqueur, is made from an old recipe that’s been passed down for generations. It begins with rigorous Liqueur selection of the best almonds available in southern Portugal and ends with a period of maturation carried out in oak casks. Traditionally, Amarguinha-lovers enjoy it as an aperitif or a digestive just before bed. It’s also excellent with a squeeze of lemon or served with a café and an almond cookie. Here at Relish Portugal we like to mix it up a bit, making a decedent, easy to make at home cocktail that we call Jogo da Laranjinha. Jogo da Laranjinha is the Portuguese version of bocce ball, especially popular in the Alentejo and Lisbon regions. The laranjinha (a small orange ball) is tossed down the court. Then players roll or toss larger wooden balls toward the laranjinha in an attempt to be the closest ball to the laranjinha once all the balls have been Relish Portugal’s played. In addition to official courts, you might find Jogo da Laranjinha being played on a sandy ocean or river beach. Jogo da Laranjinha Love On The Rocks, Portuguese-Style Simple to make delivering a subtle, delicious taste, our made up Southern Portugal cocktail uses two of the region’s finest products—bitter almonds and flavorful oranges —to produce an exceptionally lovely cocktail. It’s got a kick. If desired, take it down a notch by omitting the vodka, replacing it with additional Amarguinha. Fill a rocks glass with ice. Add Amarguinha and ½ shot Armarguinha • vodka and stir. Top with freshly-squeezed • ½ shot high-quality vodka Algarve orange juice and give it a final stir. • freshly-squeezed orange juice Garnish with an orange slice and start sipping. 4 | RELISHPORTUGAL.com | JAN/FEB/MAR 2021 Now You Know Quiosque Corner It’s not unusual in Portugal to come across Nestled in Lisbon’s beautiful urban a large agricultural property, a lovely farm, garden, Campo Mártires da Pátria, atop estate or country house, resplendent with a the esplanade and among the ducks, cement-scroll arched entryway and hand- peacocks, and fountains, settle in for a painted tiles announcing it’s name, often café or cool beginning with “Quinta”. with so many beverage at “quintas” we began wondering about its one of the genesis. city’s funkiest quiosques, It turns out that the farms were let out for Mosca da rent of one-fifth of its produce–fifth is Fruta. You’ll quintus in Latin–hence they became be tickled to known as quintas. discover this isn’t an ordinary quiosque but With Easter (Páscoa) just around the a tiny trailer in the shape of a perky fruit corner, Susan Korthase and some fly. The atmosphere is super chill, inviting Americans&FriendsPT are on the lookout you to sit a while and take in everything for something resembling a HoneyBaked special about outdoor café living in ham. We were stumped so we turned to Portugal’s capital city. our American living in the Alentejo expert, Maureen Ferguson of Grape Olive Pig. Here’s what she said: “I asked my purely Portuguese husband Taste the Algarvian Sun about a HoneyBaked-style ham and he looked at me like a deer in the headlights. I Between December and April, stores and stalls are overflowing with fresh, don’t think this type of cooked ham exists juicy, delicious Algarve-grown citrus in Portugal. However, my good friend who fruit. Think oranges, mandarins, is half Portuguese and half British tells me toranjas (grapefruit), lemons, and limes. that there is a British butcher in the Oeiras Citrinos do Algarve PGI (protected area that carries these types of things as geographical indication) are an well as good sausages etc. Also, you might anticipated delight. check Talho do Campo. It’s a French butcher in Campo de Ourique, Lisbon In the Algarve, Portugal’s primary citrus that has fabulous items, including hams growing region, the fruit is left to ripen but probably nothing honey baked.” on the tree, picked at the moment of sweet perfection. And to make things even better, Algarve oranges have a juice content in the neighborhood of 30-50 percent, some of the juiciest Have you ever come across the specimens in the world! abbreviation “q.b.” when reviewing a Portuguese recipe and were stumped? We Next time you have an opportunity to did and found out that q.b.—usually after pick up some of this extraordinary an ingredient—means quanto basta (as citrus, go for it. needed or to taste). For example, sal q.b. is simply salt to taste. JAN/FEB/MAR 2021 | RELISHPORTUGAL.com | 5 DON’T MISS A SINGLE ISSUE OF https://RelishPortugal.com FOOD FOR THOUGHT Ode to the Grocery Store Lucy Pepper || Illustrator, Animator, Graphic Designer, Writer, and Co-Author of EAT PORTUGAL with Célia Pedroso Thank heavens for old cities, where it is hard to find a space to stick a supermarket in the city center, for that is how the grocery store survives. It’s there 12 hours a day, six days a week, waiting for me to remember what I forgot. After just a few visits, Dona Ana began to tell will offer you the cheapest versions of me to go and get things for myself, even from biscuits, just in case you like them. Behind behind the counter if necessary, when she the counter is the cash register, the new kind was busy with someone else. If she is sitting where you bash the screen with your on a step at the back of the store, doing her knuckle, categorizing everything as you go or accounts, then I can leave her the right scan it with a barcode scanner. It makes her money for the eggs that I have found in the laugh because it only reads the codes mysterious side room.