Snacks

3 recipes

Chouriço Assado

This is the sort of thing you'd order in a Portuguese tavern after the third glass of wine, when the host decides you need a bit of theatre. A whole smoky chouriço sits in a small clay dish (a pig-shaped one if you're being properly Portuguese about it, or any heat-safe dish with high sides), gets drenched in brandy, and is lit with a long match at the table. Blue alcohol flames lick at the sausage for eight or ten minutes, the paprika caramelises into the rendered oil, and the kitchen fills with smoke. Then the flames die, the chouriço gets sliced thick, and you mop up the oil with a basket of bread. You can do this at home in an iron skillet. Light it carefully, mind the your eyebrows, let it burn out on its own, and serve hot with bread, olives, and another glass of whatever you're drinking.

15 minutes Serves4

Pasteis de Bacalhau

These are the little salt-cod fritters you'd order at a marble counter in Lisbon, sitting with a glass of vinho verde while the bartender slides a plate across with no ceremony. The recipe itself is simple, dry mashed potato through flaked bacalhau with onion, garlic, parsley and egg, then a brief fry, but it does start the day before because the salt cod wants 24 to 36 hours of cold water soaks to draw the salt out. That step is the one thing you cannot shortcut. Once the cod is desalted, everything else is an afternoon's work: simmer the cod, flake it through warm potato, shape into the three-sided football "quenelles" that are the Portuguese signature, and fry until amber. Eat them warm with a wedge of lemon and a dish of piri-piri on the side.

36 hours 55 minutes Serves6

Rissois de Camarão

Rissois are the half-moon prawn fritters you'd see in the glass cabinet of every Lisbon snack bar, sold a couple at a time with a paper napkin. The dough is unusual, closer to a hot-water pastry than a normal flour-and-fat dough: you bring water, butter, lemon zest and salt to a boil, dump the flour in all at once, and stir hard until it pulls into a smooth elastic ball. Tip it onto a floured bench, roll paper-thin, cut into discs, then fill each with a spoonful of quick prawn-and-béchamel mixture, fold into a half-moon and crimp the edges. The béchamel needs to be properly cold before you fill, otherwise the dough won't hold its shape. Once they're breaded and frying they cook fast: two minutes a side until amber and crisp. Eat them warm, ideally with a chilled vinho verde.

1 hour 20 minutes Serves6