A Surprise Trip Filled With Food!

Just in case you need something to do while you're staying at home to avoid COVID-19, I thought I'd give you a blog post to read!

One Wednesday last month, my parents surprised us after school and said they were taking us on a trip. They made us guess where we were going and I'm the one who got it right. We were going to Portugal!

Our first day there, we took a walking food tour. One of my favorite things that we tried was called Pastel de Nata. These are custard tarts that are a Portuguese specialty. We went to a special bakery called Manteigaria, where our guide said they make the best version.

Most people sprinkle cinnamon on the tarts. We tried them both ways. I definitely liked them with cinnamon more!

Many Portuguese pastries are very sweet and based on a mixture of egg yolks and sugar. These were some of the other ones that I tried.

I liked this one that looked like a burrito!

My mom liked the one that looked like an ice cream cone!

Salted cod fish is very popular in Portugal. We tried it as Pastéis de Bacalhau, which are salt cod fritters. In this dish the salt cod is mixed with potatoes and onion.

The rice in Portugal was all delicious, cooked perfectly al dente! Do you remember what that means?!!

Another Portuguese specialty is tins of seafood. People in the United States usually think of tinned seafood as being not very appealing, but it's actually amazing the way that they do it in Spain and Portugal and I love it!!!!!! This store was one of the coolest stores I have ever seen. The entire store kind of looks like a carnival and this ferris wheel has seats made of tins. Also tins are stacked along all the walls from the floor to the ceiling!!

Our second day, we took a day trip to Sintra. We toured an amazing palace there, filled with secret passageways and gardens that looked like they were in a fairy tale. After that, we had lunch at Adraga Restaurant. It is located on the beach and I thought that the view was sooooo marvelous!

One of our favorite things that we had there was the clams. My brother liked them so much that we needed to get a second order!

But my favorite dish was the percebes. Percebes are goose barnacles. They're not served very frequently in the US (although they do have them sometimes at Uni!), but they're considered very special in Spain and Portugual. They look super freaky, kind of like creepy animal fingers. And you have to twist off an outer skin and then pull or bite them out of their shells. But I promise, they're really delicious!!

Don't these look weird?

Our next day we did another day trip to Setubal, and I think that this was everyone's favorite day of the trip. Once we arrived, we met our hosts, Artur and Teresa and they took us to the Mercado do Livramento, which is the biggest covered market in Portugal. It's totally amazing!! There are great pastries and beautiful fruits and vegetables, but the fish is the best part. I've never seen so many fish in one place. In the United States, supermarkets and fish stores really only usually sell a small number of fish (salmon, swordfish, haddock, cod, tilapia, tuna, halibut, bass etc). But at this market, there are fish displays longer than a city block and so many fish that I'd never even heard of!

This is just a tiny corner, but it looked as if the entire ocean was emptied into this market!!

This is a swordfish that was bigger than I am!

After the market we went to a beautiful kitchen that Art and Teresa use to teach cooking classes. We made so many kinds of amazing food using the ingredients that we bought at the market!! There isn't enough space to talk about everything, but these were some of my favorites.

First we made delicious roasted almonds. Art blanched them quickly to make them easier to peel. Then we roasted them with some olive oil and salt. Every single thing that we made with Art and Teresa was very simple, but very delicious. I think that's partly because the ingredients there are so fresh and good.

We also made mushrooms. First we peeled them with a sharp knife and cut the ends off. Then we quartered them and sauted them with a teeny bit of olive oil, and some mint and white wine vinegar and garlic. It might not sound like anything special, but it was!

These look basic, but they tasted INCREDIBLE!!!

My mom's favorite dish was quail eggs. We've made quail eggs at home and they're hard to break, but Art made it look easy! He cooked them all together in a pan with butter, and just covered it, instead of flipping them, to cook them through. Then he cut them apart and served them over thin toasts. They were buttery and delicious!

Rachel's favorite dish was the roasted tomatoes. Art cut them and I helped scoop out the seeds. Then we sprinkled them with salt and let them sit, to draw out some of the water. After a few minutes, we shook the salt off (we didn't wash them because that would defeat the purpose!) and drizzled them with olive oil and garlic. Then we roasted them in the oven. They smelled spectacular and tasted sweet and flavorful!

Teresa was in charge of dessert, and my sister helped her. They used egg yolks, whole milk, sugar, a teensy bit of flour and lemon zest to make a cream custard.

Right before eating, Art used a blow torch to caramelize sugar on top. It was similar to creme brulee.

Cooking with Art and Teresa was a phenomenal experience. They were so nice and we had such a fun day. It was one of the most special parts of our trip. If you ever go to Portugal, you MUST plan to cook with them!!

It is hard to believe that we ate dinner after that, but somehow we managed and went to Nunes Real Marisqueira. This is a very good seafood restaurant in Lisbon. We ordered lots of stuff, but my favorite was the shellfish platter.

There were so many different kinds of shellfish!!!!

They brought us all of these tools, to help with the shellfish! My mom had to take the hammer away from my sister!!

We didn't eat this crab, but I thought it looked amazing. I would have definitely ordered it if I had seen it before the end!!

Our last night, we had dinner at Cervejeria Liberdade and we definitely saved the best for last!! All of the food was amazing, but my favorite was the creamy local seafood rice. It was similar to paella but soupier. It was delicious.

We also had lots of raw bar, which was amazing.

Isn't this lemon juicer cool?? You squeeze it without getting your fingers all sticky and then pour the juice out.

I loved our trip to Portugal. The food was phenomenal and flawless. If you like traveling and seafood, Portugal is an awesome place to go!!!