The last time I was in Portugal was on an ill-tempered teenage vacation with my Norwegian cousins on the Algarve coast. Everyone got ferociously sunburned except my father, who spent most of his time happily avoiding us, safely ensconced in an outbuilding with the villa’s temperamental generator and his toolkit for company.
Many years later we are enjoying a family holiday just outside the sleepy seaside town of Cascais. Our daughter is now six years old and learning to swim, so we’ve spent a good deal of time poolside, but already she seems to have absorbed our interest in the historic and picturesque so we’ve explored nearby Sintra, where a clifftop monastery was transformed in the mid 1800s by King Ferdinand II into a Portuguese pastiche of mad Prince Ludwig of Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein, itself the latter day inspiration for Disneyland’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Castle. The Portuguese aristocracy obediently flocked to the area to construct their own palaces, many of which today are in various states of decay and dilapidation (ripe for yet another of our short-lived fantasy restoration projects).
Even Cascais had its brief moment in the sun when Ferdinand’s son Luis II, took a fancy to the citadel there and decided to transform it into his seaside summer residence. Then a world war and the lure of the French Riviera put the town back to sleep again, and it’s all the better for that.
From our very first evening here we have eaten extraordinarily well, but best of all there is neither ceremony nor pretension and small children are always made welcome, even in a fine dining restaurant like Furnas de Guincho, which looks out imposingly from the clifftop at Cascais. Here our daughter and a newly made friend were each given a huge live lobster and then a live crab by our waitress to carry to the kitchen. While they squealed with laughter, we relaxed into our second glass of port at our table.
We’ve devoured huge plates of Shellfish Noodles in a little restaurant in Sintra’s medieval centre, barbecued Red Mullet in Ericeira, a tiny whitewashed fishing village as the sun set on dramatic Atlantic surf and Arroz de Marisco at Cabo de Roca, the most westerly point in mainland Europe. Then there are the myriad versions of Belém’s classic ‘Pasteis’, as every café and bakery seems to have their take on these delightful custard tarts. Never to be forgotten though is the dessert we tried after watching a bullfight in Cascais’s small arena.
Sometimes our combined curiosity to try new things backfires spectacularly, as if going to our first and (definitely) only bullfight, wasn’t enough for one evening. We’d been reassured by the hotel concierge that in humane Portugal the bull was not killed by the toreador, only to find out from the locals we sat next to that it was slaughtered outside the ring when the fight was over instead! We were consoling ourselves afterwards with some spicy Piri Piri Chicken wings and a large jug of Sangria when we spotted ‘Baba de Camelo’- literally ‘Camel’s Slobber’, on the dessert menu. Apparently the locals affectionately call it ‘Baby Jesus Poo’ too, but we found that out later. Imagine the sweetness and texture of Dulce de Leche magnified to unprecedentedly cloying levels and you’ll have some idea of how horribly sweet and sickly this dish is!
We’ll spare you the recipe for Baba de Camelo but the Piri Piri Chicken wings were a marvel.
Barbecued Piri Piri Chicken Wings: Serves 3 or 4
3lbs Chicken Wings
4 Garlic Cloves, minced
Salt and Pepper to taste
Marinate the wings with the garlic, salt and pepper overnight.
Piri Piri Sauce:
1 Red Bell Pepper, seeded and sliced
4 Red Thai Birds eye Chillies, finely chopped
1 and a half Lemons, juice only
Quarter cup Olive Oil
Salt
2 Garlic Cloves
Heat 2 teaspoons of the oil in a saucepan; add the garlic, bell pepper and chillies. Cook gently and add the lemon juice. Turn the heat down until the peppers are soft. Remove from the heat and blend in a blender. While the blender is still running add the rest of the oil and salt. Blend to a smooth consistency.
Remove the chicken wings from the fridge a half hour before grilling; add two or three table spoons of the sauce to the wings and mix thoroughly. Let rest for a half hour.
Grill chicken wings and serve with the Piri Piri Sauce on the side.
Of course not everything with a six year old on holiday is squeals and giggles and Sabrina and I rank yesterday’s visit to Expo ‘98 in 35 degree temperatures even lower than our excursion last year to Disneyland Paris, where a long queue to hug Mickey and Minnie Mouse resulted in our daughter being completely repulsed by ‘them’ and floods of tears. Here at the Lisbon Expo, the line for the ‘Virtual Reality Pavilion’ had two hours plus written all over it and the one we joined instead for ‘The Pavilion of the Oceans’ took over an hour for the viewing of a few large fishtanks. Bless her though, over breakfast this morning she piped up, can we go to another palace, dad? It’s our last day, so rather than mooning around the pool and the packing we’ve done just that, and what a feast of Rococo extravagance Palácio de Queluz is!
Another beautifully written and subtly humorous piece. Marco has an uncanny knack of making the reader feel as if we are part of his and Sabrina's whole holiday experience. And the recipes are great.
Your little girl has taste. No Mickey and Minnie, palaces only! 🤩😂