In Portugal -2

Once upon a time, rather a long time ago now, when I was a poor, hungry university student, someone published a recipe book aimed at poor, hungry university students. Its name was “The Potato-Shaped Space” and it worked on the premise that everyone, and especially poor, hungry university students, needs to fill up their stomach once a day with something nourishing. Potatoes are good, filling food items: hence the name. The writer gave lots of ideas for meals to make with potatoes, or with inexpensive alternatives to potatoes, and undoubtedly made quite a lot of money in the process.

I mention this because our search for culinary excellence here in Figueira da Foz took us yesterday to a restaurant called Forte Santa Catarina, where we ate something interesting which comes into the “potato-shaped space filling” category.

It quickly became clear that the speciality of this restaurant in the parrilhada, a wonderful platter of different kinds of shellfish that looks delightful but is so fiddly to eat that you end up feeling rather dissatisfied at having spent rather a lot of money to eat relatively little. (Proof of the inability of the parrilhada to fill you up is almost certainly the fact that the young couple at the table next to ours finished off one and immediately ordered another – we were stunned!)

Our waiter tried rather obviously to steer us in that direction by pointedly opening the menu at that page for us when he came to take our order. However we had tried parrillada (Spanish spelling this time) several years ago in La Coruña and thought it was quite nice but ultimately left us less that satisfied: hence the comments above. So we asked in rather hesitant Portuguese about the pescado do dia, the fish of the day, as it was unspecified and unpriced on the menu. So he brought us several fish to look at, very nice and fresh, and told us that the price was €49 per kilo.

Well, that was useful so we ventured some more hesitant Portuguese to try to ascertain what it would cost for the two of us. It all got so complicated with the need to weigh the fish beforehand and so on that we decided to opt for something else.

On the menu was something called açorda com peixinhos fritos. It was at this point that my Portuguese very nearly curled up and died, so I continued in Spanish and asked what it was. Our waiter was obviously perturbed. He really didn’t want to sell us this dish. His concern was that, as we had never had it before, we might not like it. It was, he informed us, a speciality of Southern Portugal and when you called it a speciality it really did mean special. But we are game to try almost anything and as it was accompanied by little fried fishes, we knew there would be some part of the meal we would really enjoy. Our waiter was still fussing and now was worrying about whether we still wanted the sopa do día which we had first ordered as a starter. I managed to ask him (back into Portuguese) if the açorda was very big and he did something midway between a shrug and a harrumph and disappeared.

In the meantime we had carefully eaten only olives from the rage of false freebies on the table. We are fast learners! And we managed to order our wine and water without difficulty. And eventually the açorda arrived in a closed earthenware pot, quite a large one. The decision about sopa do día had been made for us then! The waiter sort of sneered at the pot and left it to a colleague to talk us through it.

Yes, this was a speciality of the south of Portugal, made with bread, olive oil and herbs, he told us, and that was about it. He gave the pot a stir and looked at us questioningly as if to ascertain whether we wanted to continue. I began to feel like a participant in a reality TV show as I let him serve a dollop onto my plate, tried a forkful and said that, yes, it seemed fine to me, bring on the little fried fishes please. And so we tucked in.

Açorda seems to be another of those peasant dishes which has been turned into a regional speciality to be served in restaurants. It’s not the most sophisticated of food but tasty enough in its way. I would not go out of my way to eat it every day but neither would I turn my nose up if it was offered to me again. I did find myself thinking of the old stories of children being told to eat up their Yorkshire pudding first if they wanted some meat, a way of getting them to fill up with the basic staple food and possibly save the best of the meat for the man of the family. Well, I could imagine the same happening with açorda. If there were not many little fishes to go round, everyone could fill up on açorda.

Which brings me back to the recipe book: whether it’s mashed potato, pasta, rice, couscous or, in this case, a dish made with bread, every country's cuisine has something to fill up the potato-shaped space.

Post script: This is what Wikipedia had to say: Açorda is a typical Portuguese dish composed of mashed bread with garlic, coriander, olive oil, water, salt and eggs. It is mostly known in the Alentejo region and nationwide too. There are many types of açorda, like those made with shrimp (Açorda de Marisco or ...de camarão) or codfish (Açorda de Bacalhau).

And here are a couple of recipes culled from the internet:

INGREDIENTS

2 lbs shrimps
2 lbs mussels
2 lbs seafood mix
1 onion
6 cloves of garlic
1 bunch of coriander
1.5 loafs of stale bread
6 eggs
2 diced Roma tomatoes
water
3 cups of white wine
Olive oil salt & pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS
1. In a skillet bring white wine with a little salt to boil
2. Add the mussels
3. Cover the skillet and lower to medium heat
4. Once mussel shells are opened remove them from heat, put the shells in a big pot and the meat in a bowl and set it aside
5. Add the juices from the skillet into the big pot
6. Add water and salt to the big pot and bring it to heat
7. Once boiling add the shrimps and the seafood mix
8. When shrimps turn pink (about 7 minutes), remove all seafood from stock and unshell everything apart from about 10 shrimps
9. Add the shells back again into the pot and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Adjust salt and pepper as needed
10. In a different pot add a little olive oil, the chopped onions and garlic and half of the coriander leaves 11. Let it simmer until the onions are slightly golden

INGREDIENTS
600g stale bread
6 egg yolks, whisked
600g cooked seafood: shrimps, clams or lobster (shelled)
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
Piri-piri sauce (hot chilli pepper sauce), to taste
A handful of parsley or coriander, chopped
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

How to cook this dish:
1. Break the stale bread into bits and cover with water; just enough to turn the bread into a sponge. If you have cooked the seafood yourself, use the same water.
2. Do not overdo it. The consistency should not be too liquid, more like porridge.
3. Add the olive oil and cook, mixing slowly, until the bread has become a paste.
4. Stir in the garlic and piri-piri sauce, and season with salt and pepper.
5. Quickly add the egg yolks and half the seafood, mixing well, away from the heat.
6. Cover with the rest of the seafood, sprinkle with the herbs and serve.

In Portugal – 1

So here we are in Figueira da Foz on the coast of Portugal about half way between Lisbon and Oporto. According to Wikipedia it has 46,600 inhabitants, making it the biggest city in the Coimbra district. The name means Fig Tree at the Mouth of the River, a very Red Indian sounding name in my opinion. No-one seems to know how it got the name but there are various legends about a fig tree that fishermen used to tie their boats to, an idea that seems plausible enough. It has been very popular with surfers and presumably still is, judging by the surf rolling in. In 1996 the World Surfing Championships took place here. This is the stuff that makes places famous!

Figueira da Foz also has a HUGE sandy beach, with long, long, long boardwalks taking you out to the sea, about a five-minute walk by all accounts. The beach is said to be about three kilometres long. I can believe that.

Now, I grew up in Southport on the west coast of England and have long suffered people making jokes about how you can’t find the sea there. Well, this beach makes Southport beach look rather small. Mind you, on a day like today with a strong wind blowing you could never comment that you can’t see the sea. You can hear it before you see it and then there are huge breakers rolling in; the Atlantic is just a bit different from the Irish Sea.

Well, we went restaurant hunting yesterday, one of our favourite occupations, and ended up at Caçarola II, just across the way from the casino where my Phil is playing chess this week. We had been misled in our research because the internet had thrown up Caracola, which I assumed meant The Snail. Instead we found ourselves at The Saucepan and very nice its contents were too, not the most spectacular we have ever eaten but good wholesome stuff.

Now, we have been told many times that in Portugal they put nibbly stuff on the table while you order and then while you wait for your actual meal to turn up. Naïve customers are lulled into thinking this is rather like the free tapas you get in some parts of Spain. Then the bill arrives and there are the “free tapas” itemised and charged to you. (They talk about Spanish practices; Portuguese practices need some comment as well!) Anyway, we knew this but we decided to go ahead and eat the stuff anyway.

The bill, when it came, was like this:-

2 paté atun 2.40
1 mexilhão vinagrete 5.50
1 azeitonas 0,80
1 cesto pão 1.50
2 caldeiradas 14.00
1 agua ½ litro 1.25
1 ½ vinho branco casa 2.90
2 café 1.80
Total – 30,15.

The first three items were the false freebies, leading us the conclude that if you stick to the simple things like olives you’ll not pay too much but you should avoid anything fancy like mussels. But the mussels were VERY nice! Then they charge for bread which I think is a bit poor, but it’s standard practice here (and in some places I’ve been in Spain, mostly would-be up-market places) and for the mineral water. €1,25 for a bottle that costs about €0,22 in the supermarket is a bit much and I know loads of places in Vigo that just give it you free because they can’t be bothered to fill a jug from the tap. But the main course, caldeirada de peixe, a kind of fish stew only cost €7 per serving and was very good.

I’m not really such a stingy, tight-fisted Northwest of Englander that I want to complain about the price. €30,15 for lunch for two people is very good value. It’s just that I know of so many places in Galicia that do a menu del día with three courses AND wine AND coffee for under €10 per person AND throw in a bottle of water or even in one place we know a free chupito as well. And, yes, we will be eating in Caçarola II again, probably trying out Caçarola I just around the corner as well.

So that’s it for the start of my stay at Figueira da Foz. Oh, and the chessplayer won his round 1 game! Watch this space for more fact-filled Figueira fancies!

Into Portugal.

Yesterday we woke to a familiar sound: Galician rain beating against the window. However, despite the forecast that it would continue all day, by the time we set off for the bus station to begin our journey to Portugal the rain had stopped and the sky had started to clear. And there we were, off on our travels again.

We discovered a good thing about the Alsa bus service to Portugal: if you are over 60 you get a discount on your ticket to Oporto. So we paid 9 Euros instead of 12. That’s practically 2 cups of coffee! They won’t make up the cost of motorway tolls that way. Otherwise the Alsa service was much the same as ever. A bus arrived in the designated bus bay at the designated time with a label that said “Coruña – Portugal”. People put luggage in the hold and showed their tickets to the driver who growled, “Só Fátima e Lisboa”. Not going to Oporto at all then. That’s fine but there’s no need to be grumpy about it and maybe the sign needs to be more specific. He did calm down and reassured us that the bus to Oporto would be along shortly. Some 15 minutes later, in other words fifteen minutes behind schedule, it arrived with an equally grumpy driver and we were on our way.

We had originally thought we might catch a train at 1.45 from Oporto to Figueira da Foz but it quickly became clear that we were not going to make it, despite the driver catching up on some of his lost time en route. So we wandered into the city centre – trying out my Portuguese to ask directions, only to be answered in American English - and had a fairly rapid but very good value lunch at a place called Restaurante Marinheiro, not far from Avenida dos Aliados: €13.20 for olives, fanecas fritas (some kind of fish) served with huge quantities of rice, wine, water and coffee, ordered mostly in Portuguese with a bit of Spanish thrown in. Not bad at all!

Then we negotiated the Oporto metro system – probably very simple if you use it every day – to get to the Campanhá railway station where my Portuguese was marginally more successful for buying tickets to Figueira. The helpful lady in the ticket office did have very good English, however, which was useful when I completely forgot the meaning of “trocar” as she explained that we needed to change trains at Coimbra.

We then experienced two extremes of train travel. From Oporto to Coimbra we travelled in a modern, high speed train. I wanted to take photos of storks’ nests on top of electricity pylons but by the time I had got my camera out we were way past the objective of my picture. At one point we clocked up 220 kilometres an hour. Clean, comfortable and fast: most impressive! And then we switched to a “comboio urbano”, the local train service from Coimbra to Figueira da Foz, stopping at every possible place along the way and probably not getting above 25 kilometres an hour. Still, we got lots of Portuguese pronunciation examples as the public address system announced the “proxima estação” just before each new stopping place.

And finally we were there and it was a fine but windy early evening. So we walked – rather further than we expected – to our hotel, asking a policeman for directions along the way. He was a little surprise that we were on foot but was very helpful and then, just after we had checked in, turned up at the hotel to make sure we had arrived safely. Now, that is what I call community policing!!

Some time later, showered, smartened up and generally rested, we emerged to go to the opening ceremony of the chess congress which is the main reason for our being here. This involved a glass of port for everyone and an address by the organiser, thanking the local council and various sponsors for their support and naming almost everyone who represented a country other than Portugal. Then followed a concert of fado music and singing by a group of gentlemen from Coimbra. From what I was able to make out they are very proud of THEIR music, far superior, it would seem, to the kind of fado they do in Lisbon!! Don’t you just love these folksie rivalries??

It’s good to be back, even if it is raining nicely this morning.

Yesterday we got up at the crack of dawn. OK, about six o’ clock, which IS the crack of dawn for us. By not long after seven we were on the road to Liverpool’s John Lennon airport, stressing a little about the heavy traffic already at that time of day. I was reminded of how grateful I am not to be doing a motorway run every morning at about that time as I used to.

Still, it was a nice morning, planes were making noughts and crosses grids in the sky and we watched the sun start to come up. Because we had had a slower journey to the airport than planned we had less time to wait in the airport itself and, despite a slight delay in departing – sitting on a lane for twenty minutes while they wait for permission to take off is NOT fun – by midday we were in Porto where the sun was shining and we hopped on a bus to Vigo.

I handed the driver a 20 euro note for our fare to Vigo only to discover that the fare has gone up from 10 Euros to 12 Euros. When did this happen? The last time we did that run in mid August it still cost 10 Euros. In the summer was the answer provided. Hmm, I wonder if the bus companies are recouping motorway charges from their passengers!!

And so we walked up from Vigo bus station in the sunshine, pulling our wheelie suit cases along the annoyingly noisy pavement. The place appears mostly unchanged, as you might expect since we’ve only been away for a couple of months or so. Up at the top of Travesía de Vigo they have finished some of the repaving and along Travesía itself the urban renewal is clearly in the process of setting up smart new benches. (There still is money available for some things then! Crisis? What crisis?) Some of them still had the cardboard wrapping on, others had been unwrapped but still had traces of wrapping at the base of the legs (maybe the residents had got fed up of waiting and had unwrapped them themselves) and one had already been tagged. Those graffiti artists work fast, you know.

We are staying with a friend in the block where we used to rent a flat. Here the obras continue slowly. Our friend has a report from the last meeting of the comunidad which reports that “las obras van con retraso”. Well, that much is obvious. I’m glad I’m not a flat owner trying to rent out my flat. The place really is a mess with scaffolding and builders’ rubble all over the place. The meeting also reported on the state of the heating pipes which apparently are “todo podrido”. How does a building only about 5 to 10 years old have such a bad state of repair? Poor work by the people who installed the system it would seem. I imagine the presidente de la comunidad getting estimates for the work and having a series of workmen shake their heads and say what bad work had been done by the previous lot. Plumbers and builders seem to be the same the world over.

In the short time we are here we are trying to see as many people and places as possible. Last night we popped down to La Porchaba for a glass or two of wine and some tapas. This excellent bar is as busy as ever, so much so that they managed to mix our bill up and try to charge us for chipirones we thought about having but never actually ordered. I look forward to visiting it some time in the New Year when the new no-smoking regulations come into force. That will be a pleasant new experience.

This morning I woke up to the familiar sound of Galician rain beating down but still donned my raincoat and went down the hill to say hello to my regular panadera. It was like meeting an old friend. She is still as talkative as ever and got very excited to see me and pressed a bag full of fresh magdalenas – no charge! She went on to tell me about a “Belgian” lady who had recently, sadly left Vigo, mostly because she wasn’t happy with her children’s schooling here. Hmm, that sounds like a familiar story, I thought. The panadera then showed me some picture drawn for her by the “Belgian” children – she has a collection of pictures children give her stuck on the wall of the shop. Yes, just as I thought, the children were Ione and Scott, not Belgian at all but Irish-Scottish, the children of the friend we are staying with. Small world!

And now, we are off to meet some old friends at another favourite haunt of ours, El Puerto restaurant. Nice fishes for lunch I think!

Sunshine here and there.

We had a week of sunshine at Colonia de Sant Pere and considered ourselves very fortunate, finishing off the week with a stomp up a mountain to see a hermitage and some rather fine views over the bay of Alcudia into the bargain.

The path took us up and up by twists and turns, scrambling over rocky places that would probably have required a handrail and a warning notice in the UK. Consequently we were not a little surprised to meet some (fool)hardy folk attempting the descent by bicycle. Now I know they call them mountain bikes or in Spanish todo terreno but, homestly, there is a limit!

Still, who am I to tell others what to do? I suspect that they had ridden up the mountain from Arta on a good, properly surfaced road and decided to explore the other side. They really should have taken a look at a map to get an idea of the terrain they were covering.

And so Saturday came along and we said goodbye to Colonia Sant Pere, until the next time, whenever that turns out to be. The dial-a-bus system worked perfectly once again. I really am most impressed with this service.

The taxi driver was commenting on the weather and how fortunate they are in the island of Mallorca and particularly in their little corner which will be very quiet from now until next spring. She felt that children growing up in a place like Colonia de Sant Pare had a real advantage over city children, having the freedom to wander, to get close to nature and to be independent.

Telling us about the winter they lived through this year though, with snow on Mallorca for the first time in about 50 years, she did, however, express a certain regret, a sort of nostalgia for what she never or rarely has, weather cold enough to merit muffling yourself up in scarves and woolly hats and gloves!

Because of the timing of our various buses and our flight from Palma to Manchester, we didn’t really have time for a proper sit-down lunch and so we bought take away sandwiches and a drink from the bus/train/metro station café in Palma. I would highly recommend this to buying food and drink at the airport, We paid 5.80€ for two sandwiches and a soft drink, compared with 6.70€ for 2 soft drinks in the airport and then 1.60€ for a small bottle of water to take on the plane with us. Another example of the daylight robbery that goes on in airports with their captive clientele!

And finally we zoomed down into Manchester where the evening temperature was 7°. Just a little shock to the system. It was even worse this morning, though, waking up to frost on the shed roof! Still, the sun has shone nicely, one of those excellent autumn days, crisp and bright. Mustn’t grumble!!

Back where the IDEA began.

Having spent few days now reacquainting ourselves with Colonia de Sant Pere, we have not yet been able to work out how the place remains so relatively unchanged. We’ve walked along the coastal path in both directions, discovering that in the even smaller settlement of Betlem there is nowhere to get any kind of refreshment at lunchtime (probably quite appropriately so since in the original Bethlehem there was notoriously no room at the inn) and in the other direction that quite a number of people still enjoy nudist bathing even in October and that you can eat well if not extremely cheaply in a small place called Son Serra.

Having said that, looking at the bill from the Restaurante Lago, our lunch would have been considerably cheaper had Phil not opted for chipirones and then dorada, two fairly expensive items. The food was very good, however, and the portions quite huge. We could probably have managed with just one ensalada especial between the two of us for a starter and skipped the chipirones. They did cheat a little though, putting bread and olives on the table before the food arrived and then charging for them. That sounds rather like Portuguese practices to me.

Still, it’s all part of the adventure and, as I said, it’s rather nice to see that the whole of this little coastal strip is largely unchanged. Not a building above three stories and not a tattoo parlour or a karaoke bar in sight. I wonder how they have managed to preserve it so unspoilt.

La Colonia de Sant Pere has been in existence since 1880, founded by the Homar brothers from a place a little inland by the name of La Devesa. They were taking advantage of the Ley de colonias agrícolas y poblaciones rurales which gave financial incentives to people prepared to go and cultivate new bits of the island. Others followed suit and came to join them so that by the end of the 19th century it had 53 houses and 66 officially registered families, of whom 41 lived here permanently.

The population went up and down for the next 60 years or so until the tourist boom started and wealthy folk began park their boats in the marina. La Colonia still remained small but by the year 2000 it had around 500 houses (including bars, shops, etc) and a fixed population of 250, increasing considerably at weekends and in the summertime.

So, it’s still not what you would call huge. The streets are set out in a nicely geometrical grid. There’s a largish square in front of the picturesque church and you can take a walk along a paseo marítimo (passeig maritim) lined with tamarind trees. It’s a very peaceful place, ideal for relaxing and “chilling” but not a place to come to if you seek a lively nightlife.

In fact, today we had some difficulty finding ourselves somewhere to have a late lunch. We had walked up to a local point of interest, an old hermitage halfway up the mountain, and had got back later than planned. Just about everywhere had stopped serving lunch and we ended up at a café on the seafront with baguettes de jamón de york y queso and a plate of chips washed down with a couple of cañas. But we are not complaining. No indeed. We are enjoying the peace and quiet.

We’ve also been looking in the estate agents’ windows. Kühn and Partner (the very name reflects the fairly large German presence here) advertise wonderful houses and villas with beautiful swimming pools at exciting prices like 1 780 000 euros, 2 350 000 euros, a snip at 850 000 euros or, if you feel adventurous, a plot of land with planning permission for a mere 89 000 euros.

Doing this and laughing at the outrageous sums of money being asked for dwellings here, I remembered that we did the same the last time we were here, around eight years ago. It was after that visit that we took ourselves off to language schools in Italy with the idea of maybe going to live there for a while. And then we had a series of holidays in Galicia and eventually THE IDEA came into being. And so finally we went to spend a year, which became two, in Vigo, an idea that may very well be repeated.

But, in actual fact, the germ of THE IDEA was started here in Colonia de Sant Pere.

Bright and breezy, with Orange

Here we are on a sunny Wednesday morning. Cold and snow are forecast for parts of the UK, I understand, so we are very glad to be getting some October sunshine in Mallorca. Yesterday was also bright and sunny so after we had had our boiled eggs for breakfast (this is a German run hotel, after all) in the small and airy dining room here, looking out on prickly pears and the local church we set off exploring.

We went for a jog that turned into a stroll along the coast, admiring the scenery and watching the waves rushing in.

We were disappointed in our quest to find a café open for refreshments along the way. I am sure hat when we were here a few years ago there was one open but maybe they have decided it’s not worth the effort at this time of year.. We did persuade one place where a girl was cleaning and polishing to sell us a bottle of water and then we went on our way.

It’s mostly wild and unspoilt around here with occasional very sumptuous villas and fincas and then the odd surprise when you come across an urbanización which is closed closed off from public eye as if they expect an attack from marauding hoards.

Lunch was a rather pedestrian potato salad followed by hake with yet more potatoes and some green salad. If this is cuina mallorquina it has little to recommend it so far: well presented but rather bland and nothing special. Mind you we only paid 7€ each so we can’t really complain. We will try somewhere else today.

I did try out the swimming pool (I do have a reputation for liking swimming pools) but the water was rather cold and the pool not big enough to give you a good long swim to make up for it. Neither was it really hot enough out of the water to warm you up again. Still, I did try it.

Into the evening I was just getting into composing a nice little blog post when my Spanish phone rang. An officious lady asked to speak to my husband. When I asked who was calling all she would tell me was that she was from an asesoria in Madrid and repeated that she wanted to speak to Philip Adams. Oops, I thought, has the taxman caught up with him? How do they have my phone number?

But no, it was Orange, claiming that we needed to pay them for August and September for the mobile internet connection we had in Vigo and which we cancelled when we set off back for the UK. When I reported on my last phone argument with them on the day we left Vigo, my friend Colin said we had probably not heard the last of them. He was right. Anyway after they had spoken to my husband and he had handed them to me because my Spanish is better, I had another phone argument with them, explained the situation and appeared to be getting nowhere. In the middle of her insistence that we needed to pay 31.65€, an amount completely different from the standing order we used to pay, the line went dead and that was the end of it. Maybe her working hours had finished and she gave up. Maybe her phone stopped working. I checked my bank online and now have chapter and verse of all the payments we made to them just in case she calls again though.

I have been in touch with friends who have been pursued by Orange for sums of money, usually much greater than 31.65€, so I wait to see whether the officious lady contacts me again. In the meantime, I can always turn off my Spanish phone and ignore her and get on with enjoying the beautiful day.