The food of Porto
Porto was built of granite, within sight, sound and scent of the wild and tidal Atlantic Ocean, at the mouth of the River Douro. Its streets and alleys are narrow, twisted and steep, the light crowded out by the tall, thin buildings crammed together on either side, with their red-slatted roofs. Everywhere, there is hustle, bustle and confusion – not the kind you would associate with most European cities, involving cars and hurried people in suits, but the bustle of people who live there as though it were a village, going about their daily lives. Looking down on the sea of tight, narrow buildings, many of them centuries old and in a perilous state, with their red clay-tiled roofs, I think that this is what ancient Rome must have looked like. Not the ancient Rome of monuments and triumphal arches, that is, but of houses and tenements. The tenements of Rome, though, were not tiled in the spectacular manner of these. Even the most ramshackle building, in an advanced state of decay beneath the spectacular bridge designed in the 19th century by Gustave Eiffel – he of the tower in Paris – is clad in beautiful glazed tiles in blue, white, green or yellow. The bridge itself replaced a crude construction of several barges tied together with ropes, which collapsed in 1809 under the weight of 5000 people fleeing from the invading French army. They all drowned.
In the shopping district, many of the art nouveau and art deco shop fronts have been preserved intact, not because of any cultural ministry directive or personal sense of heritage, but because the same family has continued to run the business and saw no reason to spend money changing the frontage. The result is astonishing: a parade of heritage shops that are really, to those who own them and those who buy from them, just shops. The economic hardship that led to the preservation of shops and buildings by default has also brought about the neglect and abandonment of many of them. Everywhere you look in Porto, there are abandoned buildings of the most extraordinary beauty, in locations that would make many of us weep with desire. It could be because of the mass emigration of people from Porto when times where very hard in Portugal, before it joined the European Union; it could be because of complicated inheritance laws. At any rate, there is a disproportionately large number of empty buildings, even in gorgeous riverside positions, and you wonder when the rest of Europe will discover this place in the same way that it is discovering eastern Europe.
Where other cities have pigeons, Porto has seagulls. There are thousands of them, circling and swooping just overhead, hopping about in the streets, perched on the roofs of cars, mewling and crying in the early morning air. Everywhere, there is laundry hanging out to dry from windows and balconies, and even in the street. There are no flat roofs here. Something that could have turned the place into a slum has been turned into a characteristic attraction: the ubiquitous daily wash features on postcards and in guide books, flapping against the richly-coloured walls and tiles.
Ten years ago, UNESCO classified Porto as a world heritage site, which it richly deserves, and in 2001, it was marked out as the European capital of culture. The ancient riverside district called Ribeira is particularly evocative, with its narrow winding streets and archways. It has been carefully restored and is now a lively area of (tasteful) bars and restaurants. They're very careful with signage: nothing that is bright or brash appears to be permitted. Even Pizza Hut, on the vast Atlantic beach, has virtually no sign at all.
The impact of Porto on one's senses is a curious one, even mildly disorienting. The emphasis on Roman Catholicism – the churches, the votive candles to St Anthony and St Rita, the obsession with the very two saints who preoccupy the Italians and the Maltese, the people, even the old hookers on their doorsteps with their chunky build, their short-shorn dyed blond hair and their gold bangles, are overwhelming familiar. You have to struggle to remember that this is an Atlantic city, very far removed from the Roman Catholic Mediterranean. The food is very different, too – but because it is based around natural ingredients and simple tastes, it is fresh and wonderful.
Except for its most typical dish, that is: tripe. Porto started out as a ship-building port, and the apocryphal story is that in 1415, when the Portuguese king was equipping his fleet for an invasion, he took all the available meat in Porto and left the people there with nothing but offal. They were forced to invent all sorts of ways of cooking it to make it palatable. The nickname of the citizens of Porto is tripeiros, or tripe-eaters. Tripas a modo do Porto is tripe, with butter beans from the American colonies and sausage, seasoned with cumin and black pepper. Although Europe knows many other traditional tripe recipes – from England, Lyons, Caen, and Madrid – none of them has legend to match. Reassuringly, there are other traditional dishes: caldo verde (potato and cabbage soup), bacalhau a Gomes de Sa (salt cod baked with potatoes), cabrito or cordeiro asado (roast kid or lamb, a feast dish in origin), and of course, the fabulous desserts for which Portugal is famous: pao de lo, biscoito da teixeira, papos de anjo (angels' tummies) – most of which are made from egg-yolks and owe their origins to convents and monasteries, which received multiple donations of yolks after the whites had been used to refine wines made in the area.
Cabrito assado is cooked to mark the feast of St John and Easter Sunday. It is lamb, baked with new potatoes, rice, sausages and offal. Then there is bacalhau, of course – salt cod, which in Maltese is known by the Portuguese name, giving us a fairly clear indication of where or who we first got it from. Grocers and supermarkets have stacks of salt cod piled up for sale. Shoppers buy it as routinely as we do chicken breasts. Bacalhau a Gomes de Sa is named after a 19th century Porto merchant who supposedly first made it. Then there is the francesinha, Porto's standard evening meal, late night supper or fast food choice. It's a fairly recent introduction to Porto: a Portuguese emigrant to France brought it back with him as an innovative way with the French croque monsieur. Thick pieces of protein – meat and eggs – are sandwiched between layers of bread and served in sauce. It sounds off-putting, but it's just what the doctor ordered on a freezing Atlantic night.
Papos de Anjo – the sweets called 'angel's tummies' – are indelibly associated with the convent at nearby Amarante, while the Ave Maria convent used to be known for its trouxas de ovos. Pao de lo is an exquisite soft, light cake, which is eaten throughout the year but used to be made in celebration of Easter. It is sold by almost all confectioneries. Biscoito da Teixeira is a dark, saffron-flavoured solid cake made to mark religious occasions, of which there are more than in Malta, but particularly those of Our Lady of Lapa, St Lazarus, and the Senhora da Saude. Pork stewed with clams and seasoned with paprika is an unexpected pleasure, and prawns cut in the butterfly style, grilled and seasoned with lemon are delightful.
There is a multitudinous variety of sausages and cured hams, developed in the past as a means of preserving the meat of pigs killed so that they would not have to be fed during the winter months. Rows of smoked hams and chouricos hang from the walls of restaurants and shops. Porto's heritage as a port from which explorers and traders set sail for the Americas in the 15th and 16th century is evident in the routine use today of turkey (called bife de Peru) and pumpkin. Desserts and sweets owe their rich and delicious origin to Porto's centuries of Arab dominion: every street appears to have a shop-window or three laden with tempting confections of pine nuts, almonds, raisins, oranges and honey. The main fish are cod, this being the Atlantic, and sardines. Catches of lamprey are frequent. Clams are abundant and used in many dishes. Cooked with beans in a revised version of a traditional dish, at a restaurant called Bull & Bear, they made one of the most sublime dishes I have ever eaten, followed by a truly divine plate of baby squid cooked with butter. Any meal in Porto is preceded by an array of appetizers with nothing humdrum about them – prawns, local cheeses, little pies, clams – which work their magic.
Porto's cooking is a distillation of medieval practices, Arabic ingredients and cooking styles, spices from the colonies, and Brazilian influence. Let's not forget that Brazil was colonized by the Portuguese, and was ruled by Portugal for centuries. The people of Porto took the best and ditched the rest. One example is broa, the northern European style bread that was made originally with rye. When the explorers and colonists brought corn over from the Americas, it rapidly replaced rye as the bread-making grain of choice. A little rye is still included from force of habit, but now broa is corn bread rather than rye bread. It's eaten with broiled sardines, cod dishes and caldo verde.