I’m back from a great trip curated by Randy King and Seawind Tours. We started in London, had a great Indian meal and a dinner with modern takes using British ingredients. We made the trip to Omaha Beach in Normandy, went to Bilbao in Basque country and La Coruna in Spain, spent three days in Bordeaux in France, and ended with a stop in Porto, and then three days in Lisbon. We experienced a lot, but sad to say that there was no trace of Portuguese bean soup in Lisbon like we know it in Hawaii.
On most days on the trip there was a planned event or lunch; when we were free, if I had the time, I went to seek out the foods that are on my list to eat. If I was just roaming around, sometimes I ate something unexpected and wonderful.
It reminds me of Rome, when after lunch we had free time and walked into a hole-in-the-wall to eat the best mozzarella and linguine vongole I ever had. The Bistecca alla Fiorentina in Florence happened after the planned lunch at a Tuscan winery. There are many more food memories from all the places we visited, but the common theme is that we find the best moments when we create them ourselves just roaming around.
One of our great finds on this trip was after already having lunch at a port wine tasting in Porto. An octopus dish to remember, grilled sardines and my first arroz de mariscos (a wet seafood rice) with a bright crisp vinho verde was happily devoured all in a half hour.
Francisco was one of our guides in Lisbon and on the last day, he sat in the back of the bus with us. It gave me the opportunity to ask him about every dish that I had researched on Portuguese cuisine. He told us of a restaurant he liked to go to that served traditional Portuguese food and that we could eat some of the dishes I wanted to try. It was down the road, so Francisco led the four of us to the restaurant. It was here that I had sopa de feijao and caldo verde, two simple soups. So, I had a bean soup in Portugal and that would be the closest I would get.
I never had Portuguese feijoada in Lisbon, but the more we talked about the dish the more it seems like the Portuguese version of feijoada, a hearty dish brought from Brazil, made with chorizo sausage, pork, beef, beans and vegetables would be the most similar to what we know as Portuguese bean soup in Hawaii.
Most of the immigrants that came from Portugal were from the Azores, Madeira or other places than Lisbon so it makes a difference what place they came from within Portugal. I loved how simple the whole sardines were, served with lemon and the piece of garlic it cooked in. The piri piri hot chile sauce was a hit and we used it like we do our chile pepper water, which also was a gift from the Portuguese.
For me, the home run of the lunch was octopus rice. It was made in a similar style to the arroz de mariscos, tender chunks of octopus simmered in their own juices then combined with rice. Gambas a guilho (shrimps cooked in Portuguese olive oil, lemon, garlic) and steamed clams with garlic and lemon cilantro, all washed down with a Portuguese alvarinho wine, hit all the right notes. This meal was exactly what I was looking for.
Our waitress, a wonderful Portuguese girl named Bruna Oliveira, helped answer a lot of my questions; she was so engaging and informative. The first question I asked was if she knew where I could find sweetbread or pao doce? What about malasadas? In Lisbon, the malasadas are what they call German balls, “bola de berlim,” which is a fried doughnut with no holes covered in sugar but cut and filled with a jam or cream. It came to Portugal by way of the Germans. If you go to Germany you see the Berliner pastry, or krapfen, in the mornings all the time. In Lisbon, I ate a bread called pao de deus, which was as light as pao doce (sweet bread) and had a nice coconut topping. It seems that the Azoreans brought with them the Hawaii-style Portuguese sweet bread that we know.
I am 24/7 looking for things out of curiosity, as if I’m in search of seeing something new, gaining knowledge, getting inspired, or finding the answers to the questions I have. The journey is not over yet. The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.
Travel, explore, discover, learn and have fun. Thank you, Randy!
