This week we visited Portugal. We made these wonderful pasteis de nata to cap off one of the best Worldly Wednesday meals we’ve had in a very long time. Even Neil asked for seconds on his Portugese Fisherman’s Stew.
We were really excited for this one, as you can probably tell from our overachieving menu. We have a friend from Spain, and he suggested these pastries. I have a secret ambition to be a really good baker – sometime I’ll tell you all about the time I volunteered to make 5 pies for the first Thanksgiving I attended with my in-laws (then my boyfriend’s parents), and I had never made a pie before. So when I saw these pastries, I knew I had to get my hands on them and totally disappoint myself once again (just kidding, the pastries were incredible)
Fun Facts about Portugal
Portugal is situated on the westernmost shore of Europe, and the entire country orients itself toward the sea with Lisbon and Porto stacked on the North Atlantic shore. Portugal is home to the world’s longest running bookstore, the Bertrand Bookstore, which was established in Lisbon in 1732 Often overlooked in our history classes, this nation has been around since Ancient times, notably due to its mastery of the ocean. This kind of history gets me pretty jazzed, thinking of Ken Follett-style stories of Portugual wrestling back its nationhood in 1640 from Spain.
In researching Portugal, we found that it owes much of its early development and to its ability to preserve cod by salting and drying it so it can be available on vast sea-explorations starting in the 14th Century. This bacalhau is a mainstay of Portugese culture. We weren’t so sure the kids would be interested in it, and Everlywell declared Andrew super-sensitive to cod, so we opted for the next best sea-faring recipe, Leite’s Culinaria’s Fisherman Stew. Speaking of kids, if you’re looking to have one in Portugal, apparently you may only select from a list of 80 names – and to deviate from this list constitutes child abuse. Fascinating.
It’s a Dinner Party!
Also, this was our first Worldly Wednesday dinner party. Do you guys also say dinner party when you have one guest over for dinner? Just us?
My friend came prepared with lots of fun Portugal facts for dinner, which was a nice treat for us. She told us fun facts that we immediately forgot.
Now, it was a bit hard to pay attention to her, with Sam, my two year old, getting out of his booster seat every 30 seconds to grab a piece of cheese (not on the menu, Sam), and Neil chasing our puppy Pepper around the table. But the facts were a very nice thought.
Either way, we tried to this one up right. And it turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. Half of it was fabulous, the other half was fine but not great, and the kids were absolute chaos.
We fell in love with the scenery and views of the streets, and this is definitely a place we’d love to visit in person. Instead, we opt for the next best thing as we travel from home!
Getting Started
Get yourself in the mood with one of these two playlists. Give yourself a bit of extra time to cook these meals, and this might be one for Worldly Wednesday on a Saturday (don’t worry, we won’t tell!). Easy Listening: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3DRL7wXMQcnfaHd6eW1ILL?si=255f53e87fed4def
Or, Portugese Top Hits – for, well, the hits https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6sSDwZCMnILlhfHnK0pxaW
Once the evening hit, having done some of the prep work over lunch (see below), I threw on this lovely Portugese cafe playlist – we highly recommend it while cooking, it made me feel like I was in some kind of rom com with Meryl Streep making pastries in my beautiful Nancy Meyers-styled Portugese bakery. Maybe I just stole the plot of It’s Complicated with a Portugese twist, but that’s a movie we would watch.
Ahh, but there I was, relaxing, cooking, dreaming of her rom com inspired life, and in comes Andrew and the two little Tasmanian devils, throwing coats and shoes wherever they land as they are running through the house, pulling things down from the walls, screaming. They’re cute. I tried to keep calm and continue to making dinner, but of course, the timeline fell apart and we ate dinner about an hour later than intended.
Your Turn
Now it’s your turn. Focus on dessert first, making the dough/base for the pasteis de nata. You’ll thank us later. Then get things ready to go on the rice dish, maybe starting at about the same time you do the stew. Hopefully you have enough stove space! Here are the recipes broken down:
If we were to do this all over, we would prep the dough and the veggies early in the day or even the night before. We would also prep the custard for the pastries earlier in the day, and get those all ready to go in the oven. Then we would start about an hour and a half before I wanted to serve dinner and go in this order: 1) put the potatoes in the oven, 2) start the rice, and 3) start the stew.
The version of the pasteis de nata recipe had approximately 335 steps of rolling, buttering, folding, and rerolling. But I am telling you, it was WORTH IT. These pastries were one of the best things I’ve ever made in my life. Maybe even one of top things I’ve eaten, ever. I really don’t think I’ve ever been this proud of myself, you guys. And I won my 5th grade spelling bee. So, yeah.
Dessert first: Pasteis de Nata
Pasteis de nata (custard tarts) – mix of two:
- Filling from this: https://spanishsabores.com/pasteis-de-nata-recipe/
- Dough from this: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/269064/portuguese-custard-tarts-pasteis-de-nata/
I prepped a lot of the meal during lunch break because she knew it would take a lot of time. I started by skimming all of the recipes and figuring out how much prep I could do early, and then making a bit of a timeline for the evening for when I needed to start cooking each menu item.
First, the dough for the pastries. If you’re going to make your own dough, you can do it the night before. It was definitely the most time consuming part of this meal. But man, it was some deliciously flaky, buttery dough.
Them: “Roll the dough into a square.”
Me:
Them: “Roll the dough into a rectangle”
Me:
Does anyone actually know how to roll a ball of dough into a square? Or is that just something they put in recipes to make you feel inadequate? Either way, I think my hourglass figured friends would say this is the better shape.
But whatever, Holy Custard Tart! This blend of recipes was absolutely incredible. This decadent dessert was the perfect ending to our first Worldly Wednesday Dinner Party, and will certainly be the lasting memory we have from this evening. We’’ve never baked something at such a high temperature, but goodness it was perfect. We could not speak highly enough about this dessert.
Entree: Portuguese Fisherman’s Stew
Portuguese Fisherman’s stew https://leitesculinaria.com/7678/recipes-portuguese-fishermans-stew.html
This dish was fantastic, though the ingredients were a bit pricier than we had planned. It asked for multiple types of good seafood, as well as Saffron! Neil was really interested in the cooked mussels, and actually enjoyed opening the shell a bit more to get to the meat inside.
I LOVED this stew. It was not really complicated at all – it just required a lot of pretty fancy ingredients. So again I admit to you, dear reader, and to the people of Portugal that I skipped the cod and the clams. There are good reasons, so please just hear me out. I did learn in my research that the national food of Portugal is Bacalhau, which is dried and salted codfish, that can be prepared and served in different ways. I also learned an interesting fact from my friend that the Portugese were some of the most successful early explorers of the world because they figured out how to salt-cure cod, and it allowed them to stay out on their boats voyaging for much longer than others and not return home for food. Cool, right?
So the reason I did not use cod in this recipe is that Andrew is allergic. We try to be as authentic as possible, but not to the detriment of our health and safety. And the clams, maybe not as great of an excuse, but the store didn’t have any left, and I already felt a little scammed from the price of the mussels, sausage, and saffron threads.
Saffron!? What is this, gold?
A note about saffron threads: WHAT?! Why are they so expensive?
Andrew and I were a bit perplexed by the mussels. I bought them from the butcher counter at our local grocery store, and didn’t think to ask a lot of questions. The recipe said to “scrub and debeard the mussels” and that’s when I thought “maybe I’m in over my head here.”
But it didn’t appear that these mussels actually had beards, so we ran some water over them, scrubbed a bit, and threw them in the stew. They opened up just like the recipe said they would and they turned out to be SO good. I love trying something new like that and it works out – that doesn’t happen to me often (although see my bragging about the pastries later in this post, and you will probably not believe me. But trust me, this was a weird night).
Other than that, the stew is really easy, you essentially just throw everything into the same pot! Love a one-pot meal. I will absolutely be adding this stew to our go-to recipes – but maybe trying with canned clams, or a variety of different seafoods, to keep it more affordable.
Side 1: Arroz de Tomate
Arroz de Tomate (Tomato rice): https://foodandjourneys.net/portuguese-tomato-rice-arroz-de-tomate/
We only had sweet sticky rice and long grain brown rice on hand that day, so we opted for brown rice which requires a little bit longer cook time than the recipe calls for. We really mistimed this and only started cooking it when the stew was almost done. So next time, we’ll plan ahead. The flavors were fantastic though the rice was chewier than we would have wanted (but again, our fault, not the recipe’s).
Also, I will say one thing here that will probably get me banned from Portugal forever – but I did not use fresh tomatoes for the Arroz tomate. There was this whole thing where we needed tomatoes for three different recipes this week, and I miscalculated when buying groceries, and suddenly I had no fresh tomatoes. So I… I…. I used canned. I’m sorry!!! Ok?! I did it. And I admit, everyone is correct, fresh would have been way better. BUT. This is my life. Sometimes we don’t have fresh tomatoes, and I spent a billion hours rolling dough, and I am going to be okay with canned.
After these major mistakes, this recipe included the biggest failure of the night. I started it WAY too late. I also already mentioned that I used canned tomatoes – and the problem is that I was rushing too much to drain them, but it added a lot of extra liquid that had to boil off, so it took longer than expected. It actually turned out pretty well, and the flavor of the rice was fabulous, but just needed to be started sooner.
Side 2: Batatas a Murro
Batatas a Murro (Smashed potatoes) https://leitesculinaria.com/356965/recipes-portuguese-smashed-potatoes-batatas-murro.html
This dish was so simple and delicious. They are essentially baked, lightly squished, garlic fingerling potatoes. We’re definitely going to incorporate this dish into our everyday cooking. Perfectly cooked and perfectly flavored. Parabens to the Portugese for this one!
Everything for the potatoes were completely prepped at lunchtime, so all I had to do was throw them in the oven for an hour. They were delicious but I actually wish they got a bit crispier – so next time I would probably broil for a couple minutes there at the end. I also thought Neil, my four year old, would be much more into smashing the potatoes at the end. I think he thought we were hurting their little potato feelings and kept asking “but why are we smashing them mom?” The kid has a soft spot for spuds.
In all, this is a pretty extravagant dinner. It required a lot of ingredients and time. But man, it was fabulous. Would be great for a fancier date night or dinner party. If it’s just for a casual night, maybe pick one or two of these things to do at a time.
The After-Dinner Entertainment
Videos:
From there, we plopped down on the couch to watch some YouTube. I’m a sucker for high-quality drone footage, so of course that’s what we’re queuing up on the Worldly Wednesday – Portugal page. I loved the shore and the gorgeous rolling hills:
Portugal 4K – Scenic Relaxation Film With Calming Music
We watched a super cool video that just made you feel like you were walking through the streets of Porto, Portugal. My friend thought that people probably walked on the treadmill and watched something like this, which is brilliant:
And finally, here’s a quick video of a family doing the real thing:
Family Friendly things to do in Lisbon, Portugal (Tram 28, Tuk Tuk Tour, Timeout Market, Cascais)
In all, we loved every second of this evening. Please comment for any notes or suggestions, but honestly this is one that we think we did right, especially if you make some of the modifications that will make this a truly memorable cultural feast.
