portuguese food - Choice of Magic

Traditional Portuguese Pão com Chouriço

May 23, 2025

From the series of ” traditional dishes that have always intimidated me ” comes the Portuguese pão com chouriço, a national staple . Often portrayed together with the caldo verde, another iconic local dish (coming on the blog soon), you’ll find pão com chouriço in most pastries and supermarket pastry sections. But making them at home and bringing them to a party will convey you a whole different superhero status. So let´s make some dozen pães com chouriço after a traditional recipe (the original we inspired ourselves from, with halved quantities can be found here).

Portuguese Dessert Food

Portuguese Sponge Cake Made Easy – Pão de Ló

May 13, 2025

The Portuguese pão de ló can be found in different formats depending on how much up or down the coast you go. This recipe comes from Rio Maior, north of Lisbon, in what we call the Ribatejo area. To me it seems like the easiest sponge cake variation there exists in Portugal. So I thought of sharing it here, knowing that even a child could do it. I found it in Portugal The Cookbook by Leandro Carreira and I just diminished the initial whisking time a little as I feel it was slightly too long. Otherwise the proportions and instructions are true to the original recipe in the book. To make it, keep reading. And if you’re looking for another easy cake to make, check out this walnut cake whose recipe I got from Nonna´s niece, Esther.

Christmas Portuguese Dinner Food

Portuguese Duck Rice (Arroz de Pato)

December 20, 2021

This Christmas season I wanted to bring a different Christmas dinner recipe for this international community, so I went for the Portuguese duck rice – a yummy dish of crispy rice and tender duck. Hubby and I did it for the very first time, and although it took us hours, I am quite proud of the outcome. These proportions are for a big meal of ten, but worry not if you´re a smaller group, it freezes quite well, so you can do that and enjoy it for the next couple of months. And I personally recommend you do just that, rather than cutting the ingredients, as this recipe takes about three hours to cook and if you´re gonna spend that much time on it, you might as well have duck rice for the full next year to show for it. 🙂

Portuguese Breakfast Brunch Food

Peas and Eggs – Portuguese Style

November 15, 2021

The Portuguese have this dish called “ervilhas com ovo escalfado” ergo peas with poached egg. But as we´ve established several times in the past, I am useless at poaching eggs. I thought to myself however that just like a shakshuka works just fine without poached eggs, so will my Portuguese peas. So I simplified the Portuguese recipe, switched it up a bit, and came up with this really nice brunch recipe for you to try next time you´re throwing a brunch party.

Seafood Portuguese Dinner Food

Grandma´s Açorda de Camarão (Shrimp Açorda)

April 26, 2021

For the final #homemadeMonday of #seafoodApril – I present to you hubby´s grandma´s açorda de camarão – a typical Portuguese dish based on soaked bread with garlic, olive oil and much more. We reproduced André´s grandma´s way of making it and it did not only come out delicious, but also extremely pretty in aspect, as you can hopefully tell from the pictures. So without further ado, here´s a different type of #guestchefseries – one in which grandma, the guest chef, safely offered her guidance through the phone instead of in person. We´re eagerly waiting to eat grandma´s açorda with her, over a nice glass of wine and old family pics. But in the meantime, I´m sharing this with all of you.

Vegetarian Seafood Portuguese Dinner Food

Our Special Mussel Recipe

April 12, 2021

I´ve been thinking long and hard about what to call this recipe. You see, originally we started cooking mussels a la Vila Franca do Campo – aka the Açorean way. But as time went by, we kept tweaking the recipe and the current state of it is a bit far from its origins in method, albeit just as, or dare I say even more? – delicious. So I´m gonna call it “our special mussel recipe”, and proceed to sharing our secrets for this #homemadeMonday on what has become after your votes – #seafoodapril.

Portuguese Vegetarian Seafood Food Lunch

A Typical Portuguese Octopus Salad

April 5, 2021

Every time we buy an octopus to cook, it feels like we´re going to feast on it for a full week. And while I had no problem with eating french fries every day for a month when I was little, nowadays I get a bit bored of repeating a meal too many days in a row. So I kept some tentacles from last week´s octopus and instead of reheating them, I repurposed them for a typical Portuguese octopus salad. The octopus salad is possibly one of my favourite ways of eating octopus as it is fresh and a perfect blend of flavours drowned in olive oil. I used octopus that we had boiled and even cooked in the oven previously, so please keep that in mind if you trey to reproduce this week´s #homemadeMonday. Also, considering this is an appetiser, the picture here has about two portions of the salad in it so keep that in mind when planning.

Portuguese Christmas Dinner Food

Drunken Pear Risotto

December 21, 2020

Just in time for Christmas – this #homemadeMonday brings you the perfect Christmas dinner recipe, especially if you´re having just a small get-together, or even just having dinner alone or with a partner. This drunken pear risotto is a consequence of a dish I once ate at a restaurant but couldn´t find anywhere on the internet. Drunken pears (as the Portuguese call them) are pears poached in red wine and they make for a terrific dessert. But guess what – they make for an even more delicious risotto topping, and man, does it look fancy! The drunken pear recipe was taken from the Pingo Doce site and translated, while the risotto and the general combination is my invention. I labelled this dish as Portuguese simply because drunken pears are such a thing here, but keep in mind you will probably not find this in Portuguese restaurants – just at my house.

Portuguese Food Lunch

The Reinvented Gaspacho – Alentejano Style

August 10, 2020

I´d like to start off by apologising to any Spanish readers that might be seeing this and yelling “blasphemy!”. The Spanish gazpacho will forever remain my favourite, but after recently travelling to Alentejo and seeing the reinvented version of this cool summer soup, “gaspacho Alentejano” I really wanted to give it a try. I made a big enough portion to share with everyone reading this and will be eating this for the next week. And so, I´ve adjusted the measurements a bit and decided to make it this #homemadeMonday.

Portuguese Brunch Food

The Original Tempura

August 3, 2020

If you´re not Portuguese you might not know this, but tempura was actually born in Portugal. The Portuguese call it “peixinhos da horta” aka little fish from the garden/farm and brought it to Japan in the 16th century. There it evolved into what they today call tempura. At its origins, peixinhos da horta remains a beloved dish, usually made from deep fried green beans in a flour and egg batter. It´s one of my favourite finger foods to add to a brunch as it´s super easy to make and goes heavenly with any sauce you might have at hand. I felt it appropriate to post as this week´s #homemadeMonday as a selected dish for the #brunchseries. Here´s how I make it.

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