In Portuguese the word to eat is “comer”. Growing up my mother made a few Portuguese dishes but mostly they were desserts so the first thing we did when we arrived in Lisbon was to go to a bakery, and then another, and another… I do believe Portugal has more bakeries than France, and that is saying a mouthful.
Wonders never cease with what one can do with fresh egg yolks, flour, creamy butter, and sugar. In Portugal, one of the defining roots of their culture is the pastry shops where home made or “fabrica proprio” is a given. The pastry shops are never empty and coffee “cafe” is always served, as you might know, I do not tolerate caffeine, but the smell of coffee is and will be a very pleasant experience. My Grandmother Leonardo served “cafe” in thick ironstone mugs, the sound that the heavy cup made on her wooden table, her heavily accented voice asking if I wanted warm milk and sugar, my mother saying, “Not the children..” My Grandmother serving us anyway. The spoon going around and around the rim of the mug, while my mother’s sisters would speak English and Portuguese within the same sentence, fresh sweetbread being cut and buttered, children running around… a snippet of memory brought back when I walked into the first Lisbon pastry shop.
Pastry shops are the heartbeat filled with the young and old, from sun up and way pass sunset. Pastries with sweet sometimes holy names such as Jesuita (Jesuit), bispo (bishop), travesseiro de Sintra (Sintra’s pillow), brisa (breeze), borboleta (butterfly), imperio (empire), maravilha (marvel), Papos de Anjo (angel’s double chin), Pastel de Feijao (bean pastry I had the sweet potato verision), But our favorite, even more than my beloved childhood favorite “Filhos” was a bread dessert called “God’s bread” just writing it makes my mouth water. Portugal claims two hundred traditional pastries. I think I had one hundred and ninety-nine of them in my dreams.
Pastries and pink were my first two impressions. Do you know that the President’s palace is pink. How could a country be any better with pastries and pink to greet you?
(The photo is not the palace.)
King Crown’s Cake for the feast of Ephinany.
From the Confeitaria Nacional:
Sitting at a table, two elderly women dress for an occasion, nylons, heels, coats with fur collars, hair puffed, gloves on the table they looked like my Tias (Great Aunts) going to church, though it was six that Friday evening. They had a cafe and a plate with thick slices of something delicious. I asked the waitress if she could tell me what they were having? She looked over my shoulder, then looked back at me and said, “Toast” with a look that implied, “Honey you need to get out to the Portuguese pastry shops more often.”
My favorite pastry shops to visit in Lisbon, I won’t tell you what I had at each of them because everything, anything all of it was divine, here are a few examples, though I wish it were samples.
Bolo de Arroz.
Photo Via Confeitaria Site.
Pasteis de Nata, deliciously soft, sweet, custard tarts, are a cult in Lisbon.
Photo via their site.
(The best God’s bread or Pão de Deus, as it is called. I asked my mother if she knew it, and she didn’t. Darn I wish she did because she could make it for us when she comes for Chelsea and Martin’s wedding!))
This was my favorite bread dessert.
A charming bakery from the beginning of the century.
“An absolute gem of a café, Versailles dates from the early 1920s and stands replete with original marble-clad walls, decorative stained glass panels, and dripping chandeliers. The bygone ambiance is immediately disarming and customers can spend several minutes taking in the scene before remembering to order. The specialty here is hot chocolate, a rich dark concoction that can only be drunk slowly, especially if coifed with a dollop of whipped cream. Staffed by a small army of bow-tied waiters in smart tunics, Versailles is always busy, mostly with locals who still appreciate the yesteryear elegance of Lisbon’s most famous teahouse.” Via 10 best
Spoonful memories, transporting me back to the table of life and love, family and faith, comforting nourishment stirring me to this day;
The aroma of cinnamon sprinkled on my mother’s rice pudding, the remaining crumbs of the blackberry pie crust, the last bite of a Filhos, the smell of onions frying, butter dripping down my chin, finger licking from the cookie batter, stained fingers from eating a pomegranate in my mother’s garden, Uncle Jule’s roasted fava beans, Va Amaro’s oatmeal cookies, Aunt Louie’s and Aunt Evelyn’s sweet bread, Aunt Eva May’s Chocolate toffee, Uncle Jule BBQing, My mom dancing in the kitchen, Annie’s dolmas’s, Merisi baking apple strudel, Aunt Mary sitting at her dining room table with her six daughter’s, Ritz crackers with butter at Julie’s and Christine’s house, a glass of wine with Zincman, Communion after my father died, lunch on the fifty something floor in Shanghai…
Lisbon was a feast, a generous gulp of growing up Portuguese in California, I had no idea that it would take me to my childhood in such a way that it did, but flavors, scents, aroma, language, the faces reflecting my own… I am thankful.
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