Center region products

Almonds

Its use in the kitchen is very varied: from sweet to savory, creativity has no limit!

Usually brushed in shades of green, gray, and brown, by this time of the year, the landscape of Vila Nova de Foz Côa gains new hints of color due to the almond blossom. The municipality is known as the capital of the almond tree (there are more than 38 thousand hectares of fruit trees), whose flowering attracts many visitors and is responsible for fairs all over the region. Almond is one of the most popular nuts and has a handful of benefits, including the fact that it is an essential source of fiber, iron, calcium, vitamin E, and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Its use in the kitchen is very varied: from sweet to savory, creativity has no limit!

Cod tongues

Highly appreciated for their taste and tenderness.

Cod tongues make up in flavor what they lack in beauty. Highly appreciated for their taste and tenderness and the ability to adapt to the creativity of chefs (and everyday cooks). And what can you do with them? Almost everything! The most common recipes are rice or risotto, bean stew, or boiled cod tongues with potatoes, chickpeas, eggs, and vegetables.

Courgette

It is highly moisturizing, rich in calcium, phosphorus, and iron and has a mild and neutral flavor.

Versatile and low-calorie make courgette a vegetable of choice in many homes and restaurant kitchens. It is highly moisturizing, rich in calcium, phosphorus, and iron and has a mild and neutral flavor. When it comes to cooking, imagination is the limit, as from salads, soups, main courses, and even desserts, it lends itself to everything! Two essential tips when choosing courgettes in the market: prefer medium-sized and heavier ones, which tend to be tastier, and avoid those with tough skin, which is a sign that they are very ripe and have harder seeds.

Cuttlefish

Its presence in Portuguese waters is abundant, and the species does not have, to date, any restriction for capture.

Grilled, fried, or as the protagonist of a “feijoada“ (bean stew); here are the three most common ways to eat cuttlefish in Portugal. An inhabitant of the seabed, the mollusk can measure up to 50 centimeters and live to a maximum depth of 200 meters. During the day, it remains buried in sandy bottoms and only becomes active at dusk. Despite its harmless appearance, it is a cunning and efficient predator. Its presence in Portuguese waters is abundant, and the species does not have, to date, any restriction for capture.

Eel (yellow)

Characterized by its serpentiform body, cylindrical in the front and long in the rear, and narrower in the tail area, eels have a wide head with tubed-shaped nasal orifices and small rounded eyes.

The Óbidos lagoon is the breeding ground for a series of fish such as sea bass or sole, hardshell mollusks, such as clams and cockles, and mollusks such as these magnificent eels, our featured product this week. Characterized by its serpentiform body, cylindrical in the front and long in the rear, and narrower in the tail area, eels have a wide head with tubed-shaped nasal orifices and small rounded eyes. The animal goes through different phases in its life – being the yellow phase, the one with most significant growth – and can be found all over the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea, and along the coast of Africa. Fried eels and eel stew are two of the very typical dishes made with eels.

Escolar

The species can be found all over the Portuguese coast and islands.

Escolar, white tuna, walu fish. A fish with many names! The species can be found all over the Portuguese coast and islands. It has dark violet color when just captured, which color turns reddish-brown over time. It can reach a total length of up to about 2 meters.

Fundão Cherries

The month of May is when we see many good things back on the market stalls: radishes, strawberries, … and if the first thing that came to your mind were the Fundão cherries, you’re one of us!

At The Art of Tasting Portugal, we know the best products by heart. They say that cherries are like conversations. As a rule, they come in pairs – which proves the veracity of this proverb. Red and fleshy, they are an explosion of flavour that we cannot dissociate from the arrival of warm weather or from the beautiful fields of blossoming cherry trees that motivate so many walks at this time of the year. Rich in anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory, they are excellent from the nutritional point of view, perfect for sweet and savoury flavours.

Mackerel

Its meat is succulent and lends itself to be cooked in a thousand and one ways and also used in preserves.

Mackerel is a versatile and affordable fish very abundant in Portuguese waters. With an elongated body and blue or greenish skin with zigzags that resemble a zebra, it feeds on small fish, crustaceans and plankton. Its meat is succulent and lends itself to be cooked in a thousand and one ways and also used in preserves.

Monkfish

It is twice as delicious as it is ugly: you can count on our gourmand word for that!

Monkfish is perhaps one of the ugliest fishes you can find at the market, but it is also one of the most nutritious, tasty and versatile. A bottom feeder fish, it is a cunning hunter that uses a kind of antenna, part of its skeleton, as bait to attract prey directly to its mouth. It is found all along the coast and is one of the most gastronomic fishes in the Portuguese sea. Two curiosities: for a long time, monkfish pancreas was one of the first sources of processed insulin, which was fundamental to treat type 2 diabetes; “sea demon” is one of its many nicknames, which is particularly interesting on Halloween week!

Pea

Peas have been grown for thousands of years.

At the market stalls they present themselves in beautiful pods loaded with peas ready to go to the pot. When choosing, prefer the pods that are not broken and the greener and lush ones without dark spots. Peas have been grown for thousands of years. Its plant, the pea plant, originates in Southern and Central Europe, and its nutritional benefits are significant. Its unique flavor and texture make it very versatile. Peas can be consumed in the pod or in grains and can be used both as a side dish or as the key ingredient in a recipe. And is the ritual of peeling peas part of your childhood memories? It sure is part of ours!

Pepper

Peppers originate from Central America, but their freshness, texture, and versatility have taken them worldwide.

Green, red, yellow, orange, it’s like a natural rainbow. Peppers originate from Central America, but their freshness, texture, and versatility have taken them worldwide. A source of antioxidants and vitamins, peppers have a low caloric index. Summer bloomers, they lend to a series of recipes: in addition to the usually roasted peppers – great companions of roasted sardines -, other suggestions include salads, pepper soup, stir-fry with other vegetables or for crunching raw. When choosing, take note of the following tips:
1 – Green peppers tend to be a bit more bitter. Red peppers are sweeter.
2 – Males (those with three sections) are bitterer and better for cooking, and females (four sections) are sweeter and better eaten raw.

Pêra Rocha

In cooking, it is especially appreciated for its sweetness, which is why it is usually featured in the dessert section of the menus.

Pêra rocha is one of the queens of the West Coast orchards. Here is “Pera Rocha do Oeste,“ a PDO product that distinguishes itself from other pear varieties due to its white, soft, grainy, sweet, aromatic, and juicy pulp. Onsight, its main distinguishing feature is the yellowish bark sprinkled with small brownish spots, the so-called “carepa.“ Pera Rocha is, according to figures from the National Association of Pera Rocha Producers, the fourth most consumed fruit in Portugal, and also one of our “ambassadors“ abroad, as 60% of production is exported. In cooking, it is especially appreciated for its sweetness, which is why it is usually featured in the dessert section of the menus.

Rice

In Portugal we like rice. We like it a lot! And we don’t cook it just plain and simple to be eaten as a side dish; we often have it as the main dish.

Seafood rice, duck rice, tomato rice, octopus rice, you name it; we cook it! And for these kinds of “rice”, that should always be what we call “malandrinho” (loose and creamy), the Lower Mondego “Carolino” rice is the best. It comes with a Protected Geographical Indication distinction and will be this week’s featured product. This variety, in particular, owes its special features “to the climatic characteristics of the Baixo Mondego responsible for a slower formation and maturation, which enhances the physiological mechanisms associated with quality, namely: a tendency towards higher levels of amylose, and a higher percentage of whole grains, due to the formation of fewer cracks during the end of the crop cycle, that is, in the grain maturation phase”, states the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development. The images show the rice from the Baixo Mondego, from the fields to the precise moment before it goes into the pot.

Sardines

Here they are, the delicious sardines!

June would not be a month without them. Saint Peter, Saint John, and Saint Anthony would not know what to do without the “beautiful sardine” on a slice of bread, full of Omega 3, served with roasted pepper salad and baked potatoes. On the grill, in a stew, fried with tomato rice or marinated, the sardine is one of the “girlfriends of Portugal”, as far as popularity is concerned. Originally from Sardinia, in the Mediterranean, these little fishes swam thousands of kilometres and spread worldwide. But no one takes the Portuguese’s title of Europe’s biggest sardine consumers. Watch the video and find out how to choose it.

Serra da Estrela cheese

If you ask any Portuguese person what their favourite cheese is, it is unlikely that Serra da Estrela cheese won’t be their answer.

The oldest Portuguese cheese is a DOP (Protected Designation of Origin) product made of only three ingredients: raw and whole sheep’s milk, thistle flower and sea salt. What makes it so special? Everything! It’s not just any sheep’s milk that is used to make Serra da Estrela cheese. It’s only that of the Bordaleira da Serra da Estrela or Churra Mondegueira breeds that graze freely. The manual milking process, the filtration of the milk in white muslin cloths, thistle flower ground with salt, and the whole filtration, moulding, salting, pressing, and maturation process done in several phases carefully respecting times and temperatures. The result? A cheese that presents itself with a semi-soft buttery and yellowish-white paste (Serra da Estrela cheese) or semi-hard to an extra-hard paste with a brownish-orange colour (Serra da Estrela Velho cheese) with “pleasant aroma and persistent flavour, clean, from strong to slightly strong and slightly spicy and salty.”

Suckling pig

The suckling pig is the unquestioned (but not the only) gastronomic treasure of Bairrada and, alongside the wine, its leading ambassador.

Whoever on the route between Lisbon and Porto (or vice versa) has never made a detour to eat the traditional Bairrada suckling pig from Bairrada cannot call himself a proper foodie. The suckling pig is the unquestioned (but not the only) gastronomic treasure of the region and, alongside the wine, its leading ambassador. The suckling pig (genetically based on the Bísara breed) must have a particular diet based on breast milk and food obtained from agricultural holdings and must not exceed eight to ten kilograms. In addition to the animal’s characteristics, the particular form of roasting weighs in on the quality of the final product, which, among other factors, is made in a wood oven heated with vine firewood. Leitão da Bairrada is in the process of IGP certification.

Tomato

It is tomato season, which populates market stands from June till October.

As our dear Maria de Lourdes Modesto says, “During tomato season, there are no bad cooks”, and she explains: “With its smooth, lively and shiny skin, and curves to die for, the tomato is the ultimate fruit, the most planted and consumed in the whole world in its multiple varieties. Its constant renovation is surprising. There’s always a never before seen variety, either red, green or yellow, loose or in a bunch, round, heart or bell-shaped; each year, this sun-loving fruit appears in a new disguise. No wonder it can be prepared in so many different ways. It’s good raw, in salads or hors d’oeuvres, cooked in soups, sauces or jams, and even as a condiment”. Aside from these attributes, it’s also a source of carotenes, mainly lycopene, an important antioxidant.

Velvet crab

This delicacy is found all over the Portuguese coast.

Adored for its intense sea flavor but not so much for the work it takes to eat it, velvet crab is a small crab with a dark brown flat shell covered in hair. This delicacy is found all over the Portuguese coast.