Chefs discover treasures of Portuguese fare: Influential cuisine makes its way into North America

Nation's Restaurant News,  Oct 28, 2002  by Bret Thorn

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One of the last bastions of unexplored Western European cuisines is trickling into the United States, often accompanied by its varied and reasonably priced wines.

The cuisine of Portugal is riding a wave of enthusiasm about Mediterranean cuisine, even though Portugal isn't actually a Mediterranean country since its coastline is on the Atlantic Ocean.

Although Portugal is a small country, its role as an early sponsor of global exploration has meant exposure to a wide array of flavors and techniques. With colonies in South America, Africa, India, Southeast Asia and China, Portugal was an entrepot for many spices that its cooks could play with.

Portugal also influenced the rest of the world. Guy Hulin, executive chef at The Cincinnatian hotel in Cincinnati, points out that the Portuguese brought coffee, which originated in Africa, to Brazil. Brazil now produces about 75 percent of the world's coffee. The Portuguese also brought chili peppers from Brazil back to Africa, India and Southeast Asia.

But decades of dictatorship and slow economic development in the 20th century kept the country relatively isolated until about 25 years ago. That means that Portugal's regional, ingredient-focused cuisine has remained largely intact.

Many Japanese give the Portuguese credit for teaching them how to make tempura. The Portuguese do indeed have their own batter-fried vegetables. Their peixinhos da horta, or fried "garden fish," are made from string beans.

At Alfama, Portuguese restaurant in New York, co-chef de cuisine Francisco Rosa says the traditional batter for his peixinhos da horta is made from flour, eggs, beer or wine and olive oil, and it is lightened with beaten egg whites. The beans are blanched, battered and deep-fried.

Some American chefs forgo blanching the string beans. That's the case with the "string bean tempura" at The Red Cat in New York, where they're one of the restaurant's signature items. Erik Cosselmon, the chef at Cetrella Bistro and Cafe in Half Moon Bay, Calif., didn't blanch them either when he served them as an hors d'oeuvre recently, sprinkled with fresh parsley, garlic oil, salt and pepper.

"They were picked that morning from our local farmers," he says.

Alfama has launched a series of "regional gastronomic weeks," designed to highlight the variety of the country's dishes. For one week of each month Rosa and Manuel Rocha, his co-chef de cuisine, explore a region and offer a tasting menu.

They started in the south with Algarve, the southernmost strip of the country. That was the last Muslim region to be conquered by Christians, so it still has a heavy Moorish influence, Rosa says. Algarve is the home of the cataplana, the large clamshell-shaped cooking dish that behaves somewhat like a pressure cooker. Food--usually seafood--is combined into a sort of stew in the cataplana, which then is sealed and cooked.

"It's forbidden to open the cataplana before you bring it to the customer," Rosa says. That way the food's aroma hits diners with full effect. At Alfama they served ameijoas na cataplana, a traditional dish of clams in white wine, garlic, tomatoes and onions, garnished with chopped chorizo, or chourico, as it is called in Portuguese.

Hulin credits the Arabs for inventing the Cataplana. He also says they planted rice, almonds, figs, apricots, lemons and oranges.

Almonds are, indeed, widespread in Algarve, and for dessert Alfama offered toucinho de ceu, or "heaven's bacon." For that dish, sliced, blanched almonds are added to a hot, simple syrup. The syrup then is added to beaten egg yolks, along with a spoon of fine bread crumbs. The dish then is baked.

Tuna also has been traditionally plentiful in Algarve, and the fish recently has been making a comeback, Rosa says.

The mountains separating Algarve from Alentejo, the region north of there, is known for its lamb and goat stews. Cilantro and oregano are the most common herbs of Alentejo, which actually is less known for its food than for its parties, Rosa says, especially its bullfights, though sometimes they are centered around the slaughtering of an animal, which usually is roasted whole.

The region also is the home of acorda, a stew made with bread as well as with cod, shellfish and cilantro.

Lisbon, the capital, and the resort of Sintra as well as the coastal cities of Nazare, Obidos and Peniche are in the region of Estremadura. The area is known for its custard pies, known as pasteis de nata. The crust of the cakes is made similarly to French puff pastry, but soft butter is used. It's spread on two-thirds of the dough. The third without butter is folded over the central third, and the other third is folded on top of that. That process is repeated, and then all of the dough is spread with butter and rolled. That dough lines individual molds that are filled with custard and baked at high heat, so the dough becomes crisp before the custard boils.

Rosa says the region also is known for its sardines and other fish, even more so than the rest of the country, and for its steak. Portugal's version of tempura also is from Estremadura.