Food on the Move Tips | Page 59 of 66

Beraria Veche Restaurant, Iași

Colivă: The Funeral Wheat Romanians Hand Out for the Soul of the Dead

Colivă is sweet boiled wheat with walnuts, sugar and cinnamon, shaped into a mound and decorated with a cross of cocoa. In Romania it isn't cooked for lunch but for funerals and memorial services, after which it is handed out outside the church as alms for the soul of the dead. The custom is shared by the whole Orthodox world from Greece to Serbia, and the name comes from a small Greek coin.

Blueberry dumplings from Kohútka

Cachorrinho: The Portuguese Hot Dog

They call it the Portuguese hot dog, yet it has almost nothing in common with the classic hot dog. Cachorrinho is Porto's beer snack - a sandwich with two sausages and melted cheese, chopped into small bites. The best-known address is the Gazela beer bar, which Anthony Bourdain put on the map in Parts Unknown.

Francesinha: Porto's Most Famous Sandwich

A baked sandwich stacked with ham, sausage and steak, drowned in a spicy sauce of beer and tomatoes: that's francesinha, the pride of Porto. It came about in the 1950s as Porto's answer to the French croque-monsieur, and it's said to be named after Frenchwomen - the spiciest ones its inventor knew. The best ones in town come with a line, Café Santiago's included.

Tigelada: A Portuguese Dessert from the Oven

In the 16th century a Portuguese infanta carried the recipe for tigelada to Italy as part of her dowry; today this baked dessert of eggs, milk and sugar also sits in the chillers of Portuguese supermarkets. Its home is central Portugal, where two official recipes live side by side - one with sugar, the other with honey and goat's milk - and every August it gets a festival of its own.

Bifana: The Portuguese Pork Sandwich

A bifana looks modest: a few thin slices of pork in a papo-seco roll. Even so it ranks among Portugal's signature dishes - it spread from the Alentejo countryside to every counter between Lisbon and Porto, and every place keeps its sauce recipe to itself. What the beefy name means, where the sandwich came from and why you shouldn't bite into one straight away at Conga in Porto.

Portuguese Sardines: A Delicacy in a Tin

In Portugal, tinned sardines are sold in shops that look like a perfumery, and people take them home instead of jewelry. Why does the national fish bear the name of a foreign island, why did the Portuguese spend so long denying themselves the credit for canning first, and how do you spot a good tin? And a word of warning when you shop: not every Portuguese sardine has ever swum.

Papas de Sarrabulho: Portuguese Blood Porridge

The Portuguese word sarrabulho means a mess, and it also means a thick pig-slaughter porridge of pork blood, meat and cumin. It's cooked in the north of the country, from Braga to Porto; the south never took to it, and the European certificate went only to its rice sibling from Ponte de Lima. For a traveler from eastern Moravia it brings back prdelačka, the pig-slaughter blood soup they cook back home - only here it smells of cumin instead of marjoram.

Beijinhos de Amor: Sweet Kisses from Lousada

Three whole eggs and fifteen yolks for barely six hundred grams of dough - the recipe alone gives away the convent pedigree of beijinhos de amor. Kisses of love, little egg-yolk cakes in a sugar shell from Lousada in Portugal, keep for months and survive the trip home in a suitcase. Where does the name come from, and why does the best-known maker sit outside the town's own boundary?