Portuguese

Maritime, garlic-and-coriander-rich Iberian cooking distinct from its Spanish neighbour. Bacalhau (salt cod, the famous "365 ways"), caldo verde (kale-and-potato soup with chouriço), sardines, octopus and seafood rice (arroz de marisco) anchor the savoury table; pastéis de nata, queijadas and arroz doce close meals. Olive oil, smoked paprika, bay, coriander, lemon and piri-piri chillies do the seasoning; cataplana, slow-braised stews and grilling over coals dominate the techniques.

15 recipes

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Recipes

Açorda Alentejana

This is the Alentejo's classic morning-after breakfast and lunchtime supper: a thin garlic-and-coriander broth ladled over chunks of stale country bread with a poached egg slipped in at the end. You start by pounding fresh coriander, garlic, salt and olive oil into a paste in a wide bowl, then pour boiling water (or light stock) over it to make a fragrant broth. Stale bread goes in to soak up the liquid, eggs poach in the same broth for the last minute, and the whole bowl comes to the table warm enough to steam but cool enough to eat with a spoon. Stir the yolk through your portion as you eat. It is the cleanest, most aromatic 15-minute bowl of bread soup you will ever make.

30 minutes Serves4

Arroz de Pato

Arroz de pato is Portugal's answer to paella, except baked rather than simmered, and the rice picks up a top crust of crisped chouriço at the end. You poach a whole duck for two hours with onion, bay, cloves and lemon peel until the meat falls apart, then strip the meat off the bones and put the bones back to extract another half hour of flavour from the stock. The strained duck stock cooks the rice, the shredded meat folds back in, and the whole thing goes into a baking dish under a layer of paper-thin chouriço slices. Twenty minutes in a hot oven and the top emerges deeply burnished, the chouriço slices crisp at their edges and slick at their centres. Sunday lunch, ideally with a heavy red from the Douro.

3 hours 25 minutes Serves6

Bacalhau à Brás

Bacalhau à Brás is the dish Portugal turns to when the salt cod, the onions and the eggs all need to find their place in one pan: scrambled together with a tangle of fine matchstick chips so the whole thing reads as somewhere between a hash and a loose carbonara. The salt cod needs the usual day or two of cold soaks to draw the salt down, then a brief simmer to soften it; the onions take their time in olive oil with a few smashed garlic cloves until almost jam-like; the matchstick chips (palha) are fried separately so they stay crisp. Everything comes together in a wide pan, the eggs are whisked in over a low heat, and you stop the moment the eggs coat the cod and potato like a sauce. Never let them set firm. Olives, parsley and a wedge of lemon at the table.

45 minutes Serves4

Bifana

Bifanas are Portugal's national lunch sandwich, sold at every counter from Lisbon to Porto. Slices of pork loin (paper-thin, across the grain) marinate for a couple of hours in white wine, garlic, paprika, bay and black pepper, then go into a screaming-hot pan with olive oil and a knob of butter for sixty seconds a side. The marinade reduces in the pan to a salty, winey sauce, which gets ladled over a halved papo-seco roll along with the pork. Add mustard, or a squirt of piri-piri, and you've nailed it. Eaten standing at the counter with a glass of Sagres beer, or in Porto with a Super Bock.

2 hours 30 minutes Serves4

Caldo Verde

This is the soup Portugal eats in winter and at every wedding, christening and Christmas Eve: a velvety potato base, a confetti of impossibly thin kale shredded in right at the end, and a few slices of chouriço floating on top to flavour the broth. You sweat onions in olive oil, simmer potatoes in stock until soft, blend the lot smooth, then drop the kale in for the final two minutes (which is when the colour brightens and the texture stays alive). Lay the chouriço on top, drizzle olive oil at the table, tear bread in. It is a five-ingredient soup that depends entirely on the quality of the olive oil and the kale being cut almost transparently thin, ribbon by ribbon.

50 minutes Serves6

Cataplana de Marisco

A cataplana is a hinged copper clamshell pan, and the seafood stew named after it is one of those dishes where the cookware does the work. You build a base of onions, peppers, sliced chouriço, smoked paprika, tomato and white wine in the bottom of the cataplana, then layer clams, mussels, prawns and chunks of firm white fish on top, clamp the lid shut, and steam it all for less than ten minutes. The lid lifts at the table to release a cloud of paprika-and-wine-scented steam, which is the entire point of the dish. If you do not have a cataplana, any wide pan with a tight lid does the same job. Coriander and lemon at the end, crusty bread for the broth, and vinho verde for everything else.

55 minutes Serves4

Piri Piri Chicken

Piri-piri chicken is the dish that travelled from Mozambique to Portugal to the high street, and the original is still the best: a whole chicken spatchcocked flat, marinated overnight in a vivid red paste of bird's-eye chillies, garlic, paprika, lemon and olive oil, then grilled hard over charcoal until the skin is darkly blistered and the meat just-cooked through. The marinade itself takes five minutes in a blender. The bird wants a minimum of four hours in it, ideally overnight. A home broiler on max works if you do not have a barbecue, but the smoke from the coals is half the dish. Serve with a second bowl of the same marinade as a sauce, a green salad, and chips.

5 hours Serves4

Polvo à Lagareiro

Polvo à Lagareiro is the dish the olive-press workers (the lagareiros) ate at the press during the harvest, and it is still glorious: tender octopus and small smashed potatoes baked together under a generous slick of olive oil. You simmer a whole octopus for an hour with onion and bay until you can pierce a thick part of the tentacle with a knife and feel no resistance. The potatoes parboil, then get punched gently with a wooden spoon so they crack but stay whole. Octopus and potatoes go into a wide oven dish, doused with olive oil, garlic, paprika and bay, and roast hard for 25 minutes so the edges char. The olive oil at the end is not a garnish but the dish itself, and it wants to be the best you have.

2 hours 25 minutes Serves4