What to Eat Around the World | Page 64 of 70
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?
Vallmo Restaurant, Prague: Six Courses from the Crystal Pin Winner
Six courses from chef Martin Makovička - from carp tartare in cucumber soup to poppy seed pudding served at the table out of a big pot. Vallmo, a short walk from Prague's Náplavka riverbank, won Google's first Crystal Pin as the best-rated place in the city, so I went to count those stars for myself.
Dejvická 34 Restaurant, Prague: Lunch at the Chef's Table in 2022
The Italian restaurant Dejvická 34 by Tomáš Černý is named simply after its address - and it has held a Michelin Bib Gourmand since November 2021. Lunch in June 2022 brought fried Ascolana olives, spaghetti with octopus, a white chocolate dessert and a rosé Franciacorta. The chef carried the starter to the table himself.
Asian Groceries in Prague: Sapa and Zlatnická
The Sapa market on the southern edge of Prague is a Vietnamese city within a city - with a preschool, a Buddhist shrine and the Tamda Foods wholesale superstore, where Czechs shop too. For smaller runs there's an unassuming corner shop on Zlatnická Street by the Palladium, with a chiller cabinet of cilantro and fresh perilla tucked away in the back. A guide to two Prague addresses for Asian ingredients.
Cornetto: The Italian Answer to the Croissant
The cornetto is the Italian counterpart of the croissant: layered leavened dough shaped into a crescent, with eggs and sugar worked in, softer and sweeter than the French original and almost always filled with custard cream, chocolate, marmalade or pistachio cream. In northern Italy it's a brioche, on a shop shelf a croissant, at the counter a cornetto. You eat it in the morning with a cappuccino, and its family tree goes back to medieval Vienna, not to Paris.