plate 8: portugal

I hopped on the destination degustation plane to Portugal this week and I. LOVED. IT. The food had so much muscle. Everything I cooked was laced with olive oil, garlic, onions and fresh herbs (apart from the Portuguese tarts of course) - all of which I think add scrumptious deliciousness to any plate.

On top of being powerful in flavour it was fairly exhausting to prepare, probably because I was cooking for six, not something I do often. My aunty was in town, though, so I wanted to cook for my family. As you may have read on my post last week, food is the best way to show the love. To the Portuguese, I'm sure having six people over for dinner is no great event - in fact, it's probably seen as a small gathering - but to me, in my little flat, it was quite a large-scale affair - we barely fit around my table. That being said, the almost five hours I spent prepping and cooking the feast was well worth the pain.

My lovely friend Sonia is Portuguese, so before embarking on my adventure I asked her advice for what to cook. She thoughtfully post-it-noted a number of recipes in Tessa Kiros's Piri Piri Starfish cookbook and confirmed they were all authentic, so I knew I was safe.

I settled on the national dish, bacalhau, which is salted cod. Usually bacalhau needs days of preparation to remove excess salt from the fish. But I didn't have days, I had six hours. The fishmonger assured me I could leave the bacalhau in the sink covered with cold water for this amount of time then have it under cold running water for half an hour before it was time to cook it. Please don't judge me for being environmentally irresponsible - it's all in the name of a good feed. The dish turned out fantastically in the end. I won't say it wasn't salty, but I like strong, salty flavours so to me it was great. My family agreed - even my dad who doesn't really like fish. (In hindsight I think he was just being the wonderfully supportive parental figure he is.) I baked the cod with potatoes, tinned tomatoes, garlic, onion, olives and olive oil, and my family and I seemed to enjoy it with as much gusto as the Portuguese. Apparently Portuguese folk love bacalhau so much that they have 365 ways to eat it - one for each day of the year. Now that's exhausting.

Sharing the plate with the cod was a side of black-eye beans cooked with capsicums, onions and, you guessed it, lots of olive oil and garlic. A second side of broad beans and chorizo - again cooked with loads of olive oil and garlic - was equally delicious. The plate was colourful and overflowing with flavour.

We were all suitably stuffed after the cod and two sides, but in our family dessert is a must so we all left room in our second stomachs for the piece de resistance - pasteis de nata: you'll know these as Portuguese tarts. If I do say so myself, they were amazing. Super easy to make (I followed a tried-and-trusted Women's Weekly recipe that a friend recommended), the custard had a smooth and creamy texture, and the flavour was sweet, but not sickly so. The best bit was that you didn't need to make your own pastry, but the tarts still featured that fabulous flakiness you get from a bakery-bought version. The only thing I thought they lacked was that famous blackened, caramelised top. Sonia thinks this could be rectified with a little blast under the grill after they've baked, so if you want to try that please let me know how it goes. And don't just let me know how that works - try the bacalhau, too, and let me know what you think. Happy cooking x