Food in Portugal, Life in Monção

The first two elements to get squared away in any new country are: Language and food. I am on a crash course on Duolingo to learn Portuguese, especially since this may be where we end up. Duolingo is a free app you can use to learn almost any language in quick easy lessons you can fit into your schedule. I can manage a lesson during a bank of TV commercials. 

As a general rule, if I do not know what the word or phrase is in Portuguese, I use the Spanish one. The pronunciation is likely the same, but the spelling will be different. If not Spanish, then it will be the Italian word. “Bye” is “Tchao”, which is pronounced the same as the Italian “Ciao”. Portuguese seems to be right smack in the middle of those two languages. Plus a little latin: “Cattle” in Portuguese is “bovine”. 

Portuguese Food

I made the mistake of not writing about the unique foods of NZ while we were new to the country. After we had been there for so long, nothing seemed unique anymore, we were so used to it. I will not make that mistake with Portugal. And another thing about New Zealand, I thought New Zealand did not do good cheese. Now I am missing the Tasty cheese. Most cheese in Portugal is soft and mild, or extremely hard. Turns out New Zealand cheese was not so bad after all. 

Portugal is a dine out culture. Restaurants are packed at lunch and dinner times. Luckily for us they do not eat as late here as across the border in Spain, where you couldn’t expect to dine out before 9pm. 

There are a couple dishes unique to this little town that we will be trying. One is a lamb and rice dish, cabrito con arroz: roasted all day and served only on Sundays (except probably during the tourist season). Sold out before we arrived last Sunday, we will try again this weekend. 

The second is a pastry shaped in a ring about three inches in diameter and sugared. Think skinny donut. This is only available on market days, which is Thursday. Except in the tourist information office, where we discovered them.

Seafood is a staple. Portuguese eat lots of other seafood from grilled sardines to octopus, a lot of octopus, Portuguese rely on the sea. As the expert mariners Portuguese always were, this is not surprising to us. We are used to the grilled sardines from the beach side cafes in Andalucia, they are the same here. Big (for sardines) roasted whole with olive oil. Tinned sardines are also gourmet here.

Bacalhau, dried salted cod, is the go to food in Portugal. It was the traditional way to preserve cod for sale. Even though they do not need to do that anymore, it is still the way cod is sold. Interestingly, cod is not a native fish of the water around Portugal. It usually comes from Finland. Possibly it was brought to Portugal by Vikings and the cuisine habit has stuck for the centuries since. It has to be reconstituted before cooking it. We had some and it is surprisingly good when prepared right. Not dry and not salty. We will try cooking it ourselves, wish us luck; buying it is going to be a trick too. 

Desserts

Pastéis de nata. When folks heard we were coming here, everyone told us about the pastries we must try. Pastéis de nata are an egg custard tart. The crust is flakey like puff pastry. They do not look like much: the custard burns on the top a bit, but they do taste good.

Bolo de Bolacha. Translated directly it is cookie cake. It is Portugal’s version of Tiramisu. Basically store-bought cookies soaked in coffee, with layers of sweet butter cream. 

Harvest Time

Wine we be covered in a future postcard – we just haven’t drunk enough of it. Crush is underway as I write. That means roads clogged with tractors loaded with grapes. And as we have found, a lot of grapes littering the paths. 

But what we were not prepared for was that the bulk of the businesses would be closed. Many restaurants grow their own grapes and make their own wine. So they must close to get out and pick and crush this week. All the wait staff must be in the fields. Even other businesses: the medical lab for example, are operating at reduced hours. This is important these days as travelers need pre-flight covid tests with very little leeway for scheduling. We seasoned travelers know we need to research each country’s holidays and school breaks, but this one caught us unprepared. 

Monção, Northern Portugal

If you were a tourist in Porto and wanted to take a day trip to an “authentic” Portuguese town, you may end up in Monção (“Mon Sow”). It is one of many walled towns dating back centuries. There is everything a tourist needs nearby: walk the walls; an 18th century palace to tour (picture below); a 2000 year old roman bridge still in use as the main thoroughfare through a small enclave (picture above); a rail line made into bike trail; vineyards on gentle slopes, wine to try. There are also a few settlements in the area that are celtic and date back to 800 BC. Now Moncao is a town of about 19,000 residents, I do not know if that counts all the french holiday homes. It seems this is a summer residence for many, many French. 

Vila Nova de Cerveira

As an outing one of our new friends in Monção took us to visit a nearby town that is decorated in an abundance of crochet. Yep people crochet their doorways, business crochet their signs and there is an ongoing exhibition of crocheted mannequins. Vila Nova de Cerveira is another town whose beginnings were a walled fortress over the Minho River. 

We absolutely love this area of Portugal and are seriously thinking about residing in this country. Portugal ticks a lot of boxes: easy travel to other places in Europe and the world, learnable language, affordable, good food, and the cherry on top – lots of cycling. We see cyclists, both road and mountain, all over the place. Mark has gotten his bike legs back on a borrowed bike.