Lisbon Rick Stein's Long Weekends

A change is as good as a rest, so they say.

I think a long weekend is just the thing.

Not an obvious place like Paris or Rome,

but somewhere where I can take in some local history and a bit of culture.

But, of course, it's the food that will always be the key,

and if you like seriously fresh seafood and really busy bars serving

plates of clams and cold beers, along with a great sense of history,

then this could well be for you.

# Hey, Rick!

# Where we going this weekend... #

Lisbon.

# Are we flying a few hours away

# For some delicious food, they say?

# So, Rick, make the booking and let's get cooking.

# And get those taste buds going this weekend. #

Well, it's some time since I've been to Lisbon,

but what I remember most of all was the seafood.

But not just the wonderfully fresh seafood,

but the little restaurants that sold it,

with, all the time, a view over the water -

not the open sea but the River Tagus.

And the other thing was the tiles -

everywhere the buildings seemed to be clad in these beautifully faded blue

and green tiles.

I remember those particularly.

Just lovely. And the other thing were the narrow streets,

often going up and down some really, really steep hills.

ALL: Really?

Yes, really.

Not so good if you're carrying heavy filming equipment, but fine for me.

I don't have to.

Now, this is a nice, practical, ordinary sort of hotel.

It's not going to break the bank and it has all the accoutrements for my

long weekend, namely a bar.

How often does this happen to me?

Please work.

Don't make me have to go back downstairs.

Oh, brilliant.

This is nice and modern.

What's that? A Japanese bathroom with its little panes.

The bed looks nice. Nice double bed.

Sofa. That'll be good.

And the view.

A road and another hotel.

Well, you can't have everything.

No, you can't.

I'd much rather overlook this square

with a view of the River Tagus

or a view of the castle or this square, but if, like me,

you happen to plan your weekend around mid-June,

you may find that all the hotels are booked in the centre because of

this man - St Anthony.

Today is his day.

St Anthony's patronage is bountiful.

He is the patron saint of fishermen, the poor, amputees, travellers,

horses, pregnant women and swine herds, to name but a few.

BAND PLAYS

Summer here means warmer waters and the coming of the sardines.

They're at their very best, full of oil and extremely sweet and tasty.

Now when I have the luxury of eating a grilled sardine,

no matter where I am in the world, I think of Portugal.

They should be on the national flag.

SHE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE

I'm really looking forward to this.

I just asked them how to eat this on bread because, obviously,

there's loads of bones in a sardine.

I couldn't totally understand what she was saying

but I got the general gist of it. I think, basically,

you just take the skin off and then you pull it apart.

It's very hot, but very fresh...

and very tasty.

And I noticed that she said, now you pull out the backbone...

but you have to eat these bits here.

There is just something incredibly wonderful about getting messy eating

food like this, which is so good.

It is sort of part of the whole...

enjoyment of it.

You'd love this. I promise that.

UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS

I suppose you could call this a kind of thanksgiving to St Anthony,

the protector of the fishermen.

And it started because poor old Anthony couldn't really get the locals to

listen to his sermons, and so, according to legend,

he walked the seashore preaching to the fish,

who became incredibly attentive,

poking their little heads up out of the water.

BAND PLAYS, PEOPLE SING AND CLAP

This is lovely but I've just noticed the girls are much more enthusiastic

at singing and dancing than the boys.

Was it ever thus?

Anthony is also the patron saint of matchmakers,

and it's a very common sight to see men carrying a small pot of basil.

These are unmarried men looking for someone to share their life with,

and so they look avidly around,

hoping to find the woman of their dreams

so they can deliver their humble plant as a token of their love.

I couldn't help noticing

there's an awful lot of women holding pots of basil.

I do hope they know what they're letting themselves in for.

And this is really to celebrate the humble sardine.

I'm really enjoying these floats.

It's a little bit like St Merryn Carnival back in Cornwall -

maybe just a tad more professional.

There's so much thought that's gone into it.

I was rather hoping to see a float with a sardine theme,

but I guess that's been done many, many times before.

MUSIC CONTINUES

They tell me these celebrations go on for weeks.

Well, I've only been here five hours and it's time for bed.

'My very first breakfast here in Lisbon has to be this -

'the famous pasteis de Belem,

'the most brilliant custard tart you've ever tasted.'

I'd go further and say that these sweet, mellow, warm,

very gooey and exceedingly tasty little tarts

were a real eye-opener for me.

And this cafe-cum-bakery with its rabbit warren

of tile-encrusted rooms is a sheer delight.

Naturally, the recipe is a closely guarded secret,

and so from eight in the morning until 11 at night,

the queues are always there.

Well, I'm extremely partial to a custard tart,

but they don't get any better than these.

What makes them so special

is the extraordinary softness of the custard

and the crispness and the lightness of the pastry.

Seriously, when you bite into them, it's bliss.

But the other thing is when you just put a little bit of cinnamon -

not too much - and a little bit of icing sugar on the top,

it just completes it.

Interestingly, these tarts are a part of history,

because next door to here is a monastery,

and in the 15th and 16th century, monasteries were like hotels.

They were the only places

that you could actually get a bed for the night,

and these custard tarts came out of that

and became so popular that in about the 18th century, this shop opened,

and the rest, of course, is history.

But what is so good, I think, is food and history.

It's not just about the recipes but it's also about the ingredients

because, as you know, the Portuguese went everywhere in the world

and they brought sugar cane back from the Americas,

and they brought cinnamon back from the East Indies.

So there is a real food chain there,

and I think that's what makes them so special as well.

Like Rome, Lisbon was built on seven hills.

I'm thinking more San Francisco than Rome,

with these excellent little trams shuffling around all over the place.

TRAM BELL RINGS

Maybe I'm a bit of an old romantic, but if we'd kept them in our cities,

how much better and more beautiful

our lives and our cities would have been? And a lot cleaner, too.

A lot of people have written in asking,

what makes a Rick Stein weekend?

Well, I think what I would look for, first of all, is...

-Only about three.

-All right.

What I'd look for first of all is a good hotel.

I don't want one of those sort of really expensive ones with

sort of somebody playing the piano in the foyer when you arrive.

But I want one that's at a reasonable price,

good, comfortable bed,

decent breakfast and close to the action,

quite near the centre of the city.

Next, three, here's the next one - the food.

I'll never go anywhere unless I know the food's good.

I mean, coming to Lisbon,

that was the really exciting thing about Lisbon,

having all that seafood, but not only seafood.

I mean, they do really good pork in Portugal.

I wanted to try that.

And the third thing, really, is

what I would call mooching.

I don't really like going on tours on these sort of

touring buses and all that.

It just makes me really grumpy.

I start getting critical about the other people on the bus,

and claustrophobic.

I like just walking around on my own.

-OK?

-Yeah, I think that's...

quite good, really.

Um, dois, tres!

THEY SING

A great example of mooching is this.

I saw these girls carrying musical instruments and begged them to play

just one more for me.

They did and it made my morning.

Um, dois, tres!

Bravo!

'That was good mooching, that.

'And, interestingly, they're not musicians,

'they're engineering students.'

Well, I think just looking at Lisbon from this vantage point,

you can see how interesting it is, cos it's built on hills,

and also how different the architecture is.

It's one of the oldest cities in Europe and you can just see it -

a castle over there

and old buildings with lovely terracotta tiles down there.

And that bridge from the '60s over there,

which looks a bit like the Golden Gate Bridge.

One of the things that I really like about it

is it's not that prosperous.

If you take places like London and Paris these days,

all the shops are so deluxe,

but wandering around the little streets of Lisbon,

there's lovely little cafes, little bars,

little shops selling things like sort of

stuff for dressmakers or springs and bits of string.

It's just a delightful place just to wander around and always

you've got the thought of having some lovely seafood

for lunch or dinner.

It's one of those things - the informed might call it inevitable,

the uninformed might call it lucky -

but wherever I go,

I always seem to traipse in the footsteps of Lord Byron.

I've swum off the Lido in Venice and so has he.

I've been to remote monasteries in Greece and Albania and so has he.

And I've even contemplated swimming the Hellespont from Europe to Asia.

He did it. I contemplated it.

But I think he rather liked Lisbon,

not for the general cleanliness of the place, more for its glorious,

unrivalled location on the banks of the Tagus.

He wrote this in his most famous poem, Childe Harold -

What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold!

Her image floating on that noble tide.

SHIP HORN BLARES

But now for lunch and, as this is my long weekend, this is a must -

Ramiro, probably the busiest restaurant in town.

When I say restaurant, it started life as a cervejaria -

a place where they serve cold beers and bits of seafood,

the perfect combination.

And so, naturally, it grew, and now they are a huge success story.

Ramiro, who sadly isn't with us any more,

learned at the age of 12 how to cook fish and seafood from the fishwives

down the port, and it's still done in the kitchens here

in exactly the same way.

The place is packed but I'm with a famous Portuguese chef, Nuno Mendez,

who cooks in London of all places.

He tells me that everyone's heard of the Spanish food but Portuguese is

still a bit of a mystery.

The craftsmen that we have, the artisans that we have,

it's really brilliant and we are invisible.

I feel like Portugal is still very much invisible in the...

around the world or, like, outside of Portugal,

in terms of the product.

I mean, when you look at the quality of the ham, the seafood, I mean,

our wines, the...

Everything like... Our fish is really...

It's stunning. I mean, like... It's all about pure ingredients.

I mean, like, look at these. These are brilliant.

They are like... These are the soft shell clams and we just prepare...

-Can I have some?

-Yes, please.

-Oh, sorry.

A little bit of garlic.

-Yeah.

-A little bit of coriander.

What's amazing is that it's been very well recognised

but people can see the clear difference

between the Spanish and the Portuguese cuisine, so...

-Which is?

-Well, everything.

Everything is different. You know, the ingredients that we use,

the coriander, the chilli...

You don't get coriander in Spain, do you?

Definitely, yeah. I mean, you find it in southern Italy perhaps a little bit, but it's different.

The seafood is different, the way it's prepared is different.

Well, I suppose it's part of your sort of colonial past, isn't it?

Absolutely. And we use spices a lot.

You don't really see that that much in Spain.

I mean, the pork... We have the same pork that the Spanish have,

although most of the pork is actually fed and...

fed in Portugal and bred in Portugal,

because there's more acorns here

than on the other side of the border. Portuguese...

'I think Nuno has got a good point,

'and it's discovering Portuguese food

'that's given me so much pleasure.'

After all, Portugal separated from Spain as far back as 1640, and,

of course, in Spain they've got their tapas, paella, sangria,

tortillas, and their jamon writ large.

But when it comes to Portugal, well, what do we know?

Sardines, of course, but there's so many other brilliant seafood dishes.

Finally, the joke here is your desert.

This is your dessert, a steak sandwich.

I can't tell you...

I don't know why they call them nails - prego.

But after a plate of seafood,

for some reason which only maybe God can explain,

it is the perfect way to finish in this restaurant.

Pork and clams Alentejo, my favourite Portuguese dish,

and I love it because it's a marriage of seafood and meat.

Alentejo is the part of Portugal where the pork comes from,

and I'm cutting up some lovely pork loin here into small pieces,

and I'm going to marinate them.

Into this bowl goes my pork and then a couple of generous tablespoons of

this puree of red pepper.

Now, this is to make the essential flavour of this dish.

It's red peppers, which I've deseeded and salted for 12 hours,

then roasted, then pureed.

You can make a lot of this - I've made a jarful -

and keep it in the fridge, but that is the big flavour in this dish.

A couple of cloves of grated garlic and now some pimenton.

You think this is Spanish but it also Portuguese.

Hot smoked red chilli peppers.

In that goes,

and a generous slug of white wine.

Stir that all around,

and now I'm going to marinate that for about 12 hours in the fridge

with a bit of clingfilm on top.

So, that's been marinating for many an hour.

I'd just like to give it a good old sniff.

I love marinated meat.

And a lovely smell of pepper, of pimenton, that really smoky...

and also red peppers.

Just a little stir, then.

I'm just going to drain off the excess marinade.

So, just working that marinade through the colander,

just to keep the... make the pork as dry as possible.

Olive oil in the pan.

I've got my pan already heated here.

And now the pork.

PORK SIZZLES

Now we need to cook that till it's got a really nice colour on it.

I just can't tell you how much I love this dish.

I first had it, like, in the '60s when I first went to Portugal,

and I couldn't believe pork could taste so good.

And that combination of pork and seafood - pork and clams -

I think this really is the original surf and turf dish.

And now I'm just going to add some onions and cook them with the pork.

And then the excess marinade, in that goes.

Now, a little bit of tomato puree.

So, there go the clams.

I just need to probably put a lid on here now,

just to help them to open up.

That's smelling so good.

Put that on for a couple of minutes and just wait while they open up,

and it's looking a little bit dry, the sauce,

I might have to add just a tiny bit of water,

but let's have a look.

Oh, yeah. It's so quick.

Just a tiny bit of water just to get a bit more sauce.

That's looking great. And now I'm just going to finish off

with some chopped coriander.

That's one of my favourite seafood dishes ever.

It's the stuff of some very happy long lunches over the years.

All you need is a cold Portuguese rose to drink with it.

This is the Belem Tower.

I love it. It's right at the end of the Tagus River and it used to guard

the river from boats trying to get up here.

But I just like it because it's so ornate.

It's so sort of wonderfully over the top.

It sort of reminds me a bit of those Spanish galleons

in the time of the Armada.

They had all the same sort of detail,

whereas our British ships were much more prosaic.

And I imagine a tower like this in Britain built in the 16th century,

as this was, would similarly be very simple, but it says to me Portugal.

And also it's quite romantic, I think,

because this would be the last thing that Portuguese sailors heading out

to the New World - to Africa, to the Indies, to China - would have seen.

It would have been a great memory for them

as they left their beloved country.

And who'd have thought these intrepid, brilliant navigators,

through colonising Africa,

India and the Far East and bringing back cinnamon, nutmeg and coriander,

would not only forever influence the cuisine of their own homeland,

but also the way we all eat today?

And just think of India without chillies,

because they didn't have any

till the Portuguese came along and planted them

in the 16th century.

They also introduced tomatoes and potatoes, but just think of it,

a curry without chillies - it's like roast beef without horseradish.

This is the restaurant A Valenciana,

the number one place for Lisbon's favourite spicy dish.

Again, it came from those days of the navigators - chicken piri piri.

I love big barbecue cooking over proper charcoal.

Thanks, chef.

I mean, this is so hot, I can hardly stand it.

I don't know how they put up with it.

That one, there. The chickens are spatchcocked -

that means they're opened up and just marinated in lemon juice,

garlic and salt.

And then they are just going to brush them with piri piri sauce

just before they send them out.

But this is Lisbon's dish.

This is the most popular dish in the city,

and, in fact,

it's probably to Lisbon as fish and chips is to anywhere in the UK.

I just love simple food like this -

cooked over a charcoal with a bit of chilli sauce, some chips, a beer,

thank you very much.

Well, I actually love piri piri sauce, so, um...

..a little bit extra. I like that.

I like my chilli. Piri piri is actually Swahili for pepper pepper.

And I guess originally it came from...

from Mozambique, the Portuguese colony, of course.

So let us just try it.

Lemony, salty, garlicky, nice and hot.

Beautiful chicken.

Really, really lovely taste of charcoal.

What more could you want?

A bit of salad, a beer and look at that.

Isn't that just...? When I walked in here - well, I would say this -

it just looks so Portuguese.

So simple. Nice tiles, dark wood...

Perfect.

If you ever come to Lisbon and don't have the chicken piri piri, well,

big mistake.

I've got another lunch in an hour or so

with a couple of Portuguese food bloggers.

Well, my weekend centres around food

but the most important thing one can take to a restaurant is,

yes, an appetite.

And for this, I just need some time on my own

to reflect without any interruptions.

Such luxury.

Hello. Good morning.

Good morning.

Would you have a couple of tricks?

Oh, no, no, no. Seriously, I'm fine.

No? Just, like, a couple of tricks, yeah?

'I was quite determined not to have anything to do with this man,

'but I'm such a soft touch.'

-Take one card.

-OK.

-Don't show me.

-OK.

-And sign your name on the card.

-OK.

-You need to put it there.

-Only name.

-OK.

I want to shuffle like this.

I don't see any more.

Rick.

I have the magic pen. I put the pen in my nose like this.

Oh, my gosh! You would like the pen?

Yeah, it's free. OK, I'll put it here.

OK.

Like, can put the card here?

-Yeah.

-On the middle.

-Oh, right in the middle?

-In the middle, yeah.

-OK.

-And I put the cards in my mouth, OK?

All of the cards are in my mouth.

-OK.

-But it's not beautiful to see but...

-No, I understand.

OK, just go like this and then go to the top like this and...

And go like that.

-OK.

-Mm-hmm?

OK.

-No?

-No, no.

I don't believe it.

-Is that your name on the card?

-Oh, gosh.

RICK LAUGHS

-Like, erm...

-That was unbelievable.

-Like, erm...

-I just thought you'd got it wrong, there.

-Ha-ha!

Lunch part two, the freshest sardines -

with a dusting of sea salt over hot charcoal, the smell is pure Lisbon.

The oil drips and after a few minutes they're done.

I'm meeting up with Sergio and Maria Rebelo,

two articulate food bloggers who are so proud of their national cuisine.

So, Sergio, what do you think is so particularly good

about Portuguese cuisine?

I think it's a cuisine based on humility.

You know, you have great respect for the ingredients.

You are given these amazing ingredients and what you do is

not stand in their way.

And people still come from a rural tradition.

They know a lot about the ingredients.

They know a lot about what they are cooking so they know what fat content,

how much it should be cooked...

You know, we don't cook with... from a recipe.

We cook... You know, we look at the ingredients and we don't measure the amount of salt,

or the amount of olive oil.

We do it by passion, by, you know, the feeling.

So, you live in Chicago now?

Would you ever dream of getting sardines like that there?

Dream? Yes.

THEY ALL LAUGH

The reality is very different.

You know, the sardines don't have wings, so they don't really...

They are not meant to fly.

In Portugal, people are so crazy about the freshness of fish that people

actually don't like to eat fish in Lisbon,

because Lisbon is on the river, it's not on the oceans.

-So Lisbon....

-What?!

-..would not be a place to have fish.

This is a bad place for fish?

Not a good place because it's on the river.

It's on the Tagus River.

So when people really want fresh fish, they go to the beach.

Says, "Let's have a great fish meal."

That's how crazy people are about the freshness of the fish.

So there's only one thing for it,

and that's to take Sergio's advice and head to the coast

and find a fabulous seafood restaurant for supper.

But, first, I recommend having a look at this -

this impressive aqueduct.

It's quite modern as aqueducts go - 18th century.

I love functional architecture -

things like beam engine houses

from Cornish tin mines or Yorkshire cotton mills, or this -

a beautiful thing that brings fresh water from where it's plentiful

to those who need it.

The road west out of Lisbon takes you to the sea,

where the rollers come straight from America.

Now, this isn't what I was hoping for.

What I was hoping for were gooseneck barnacles.

They are a local delicacy

and we were hoping to come out here

and see some fishermen gathering them.

What happens is at low tide

they scramble down the rocks and they wait for a wave to break

and then go right down and pick these barnacles up,

which they call percebes.

They are fantastic eating, let me tell you.

But they are not here today.

Even the seagulls have come inland, it's so rough.

But what a lovely place to be.

It's warm. There is a lovely damp breeze.

There is a smell of ozone.

It feels like Cornwall but just a little bit warmer.

This is turning into quite a packed long weekend,

and I'm pleased to say I've found my seafood restaurant

on a beach on my way to Sintra.

It's only about half an hour or so from Lisbon.

This is a sheer delight, though, for a seafood cook.

It's the sort of place we love for a crew supper, or for a crew anything,

really. We have so much fun on these shoots.

One of the most popular dishes here is a lovely concoction of prawns

with clams, lots of olive oil, coriander and serious amounts of garlic.

I could smell this from the beach.

The thing about this place is it's not about the menu,

it's what's fresh that day.

You're crazy if you don't order the prawns.

And then in go the clams. This is a seafood classic.

I've made similar dishes using lots of freshly chopped parsley

and a splash of white wine, but now this is how the Portuguese love it,

and so do we.

I mean, this is such a nice restaurant, right on the beach,

and it sort of just feels unspoiled, but, in fact,

it goes back to the time when the Portuguese had a royal family -

not any more. And it was just a wooden shack then,

and the queen used to come here.

The king would come hunting locally and she'd just come down here and

order horse mackerel.

Horse mackerel are what now gets put into lobster pots for bait,

but she had a real thing about them.

And on the back of that, on the back of this, sort of almost like,

incidental royal patronage, the place grew and grew.

But it's still got the feel of almost a shack on the beach,

and I think that's really, really good in a restaurant, because, you know,

as you get busier and busier,

you tend to want to put more money into making places look deluxe,

but who wants anything more than this?

Well, these are the famous percebes.

I absolutely love them, and the way you open them...

And I can understand people not liking them,

but I say to all these sort of things, just try them once.

It's... You just twist the bottom of the barnacle and just pull away like

that, and that's the bit you eat.

To me, I always think they are like the claw of a lobster.

They are that order of perfection in seafood.

But, as I said, most people,

would you want to eat those?

Probably not,

but I love them.

This is Sintra, one of Lord Byron's favourite places.

He even wrote to his mum to say how beautiful it was.

Lo! Sintra's glorious Eden intervenes

In variegated maze of mount and glen.

Thus wrote Byron,

but I'm blowed if I can see what he was writing about.

And actually, it comes from Childe Harold...

And similarly Byron was writing about a place in Greece that I've been to

recently called Zitza, about how it was the best view in the world,

second only to Sintra.

But that wasn't very good either.

So I think that something's happened,

that maybe, looking around, it just looks so wonderfully neglected here.

There's all these buildings that are crumbling, but it's a sort of must.

You must come from Lisbon for a day trip to Sintra.

It... Actually,

you can feel how great it must have been for them to escape the heat of

the city in the summer, for all those kings and princes,

but it's a little, little bit sort of, erm, you know, a bit dilapidated.

It's good for mooching about, though.

Lovely little lanes.

I've often dreamt about a quirk in time travel -

Byron and my paths might cross over and we can meet up.

But I think he might say, "Come along, Shelley, quickly!

"Here comes that dreadful bore of a seafood cook who talks about sardines

"all the time! Let's get out of here, quick!"

I've just been looking at these tiles.

You can see how beautiful it would have been in Byron's time.

The variegated maze, the mount and glen.

Without the trees, you can see the Moorish castle, the mountains,

the glens... That's the palace where I was standing.

It's just much more obvious now.

The castle was built by the Moors,

who conquered most of Spain and Portugal in the eighth century.

They brought citrus fruits and almonds and ice cream to the country,

as well as their techniques for growing rice.

And without the invasion of the Arabs, there wouldn't be paella.

I know that's not Portuguese, but there wouldn't be paella!

I like this street artist depicting a Moorish soldier -

anger and savagery, he does extremely well.

I love his snarl.

NORTH AFRICAN MUSIC PLAYS

Ah!

Crikey! I really wasn't expecting that.

I was preoccupied because I thought five euros was far too much to put in his pot.

But what a performance.

Do you know? I thought mime artists didn't do very much except stand still

and be quiet, but this one was brilliant.

He reminded me of the old dad in Steptoe And Son.

So, what to cook?

Well, it has to be a legacy from the Moors,

something sweet and totally delicious.

Almond tart - crisp, toasted almonds, butterscotch, in a tart.

It's dead easy to make.

You see it everywhere. I love it.

I don't do complicated sweets.

It's not my forte.

But the point of actually sieving flour is not to get rid of the lumps -

it's just to add lots of air into your pastry.

I'm using about 150 grams of plain flour.

Now butter. Crumb it in so it becomes, well, a bit like sort of

Demerara sugar, and nice and moist.

Now caster sugar, about 60 grams, and give it a good stir.

It needs an egg yolk for that richness and to bind it.

And a bit of water to make it pliable for rolling.

A bit of flour...

..and roll it out.

Well, that's looking all right on the rolling pin.

Oh, it's starting to break up a bit as I...

As I roll it into the baking tin, but I expected that.

I mean, it's sort of no pain, no gain, really.

It's so short that it is inevitably going to break up a little bit,

so I'm just having to patch it.

But don't worry - when you bake it, you will not notice a thing.

OK, now, I just need to get some beans and some paper to put in there.

Well, this, as you probably all know, is called blind baking -

getting that pastry cooked just enough so that it makes a perfect vessel

for your filling.

Just add all of those flaked almonds.

They'll take a while because there is a lot of volume in there,

but once they start to toast, I've got to be quite careful,

cos they'll go quite quickly. Yeah, beginning to go now.

Just shake the pan a little bit like that,

just to get the ones from the bottom of the top.

Yeah, that's beginning to come up really nicely.

I think it's probably time to go.

All right, into the bowl.

Now for the butterscotch sauce.

The pan is still very hot, so first sugar, about 120 grams.

Then butter, a big chunk, 120 grams or so.

And now milk.

Now, this is producing lovely smells of distant times -

making toffee apples, I think.

You don't want to cook it too long, otherwise you get fudge.

Perfect, now, to tip over all those toasted almonds.

That's been in a moderate oven for ten minutes,

so the pastry has just begun to bake.

I just love almonds and I think it's very appropriate that...

Almond tarts, of course, you're going to see them all over Portugal

and all over Spain.

And, you know, almonds, garlic, olive oil, lemons,

tomatoes, all fit into that sort of idea of the Mediterranean diet.

I love them and I love this tart.

20 minutes later, bubbling perfection.

Wait another hour and voila, an almond tart with fresh raspberries,

with a dusting of icing sugar.

Now, how cool is that?

This is the House of Fado.

Fado is the music that comes from the soul here in Lisbon.

A bit like blues and flamenco -

music born of deep longing and serious grief.

And in Lisbon, long before the music has begun, they make a soup,

a famous soup. It's called caldo verde.

It's so simple and it's made with water, onions, potatoes, chourico,

and it's all blended before the star of the show, the shredded kale,

hence the name verde - green.

This was the food of the poor, but now everyone eats it.

And fado, fado was the music of the poor, the lament of the lonely heart,

and so the simple soup and the music

are bound together by tradition for eternity.

So, Andrea, caldo verde, I've never tasted it before.

How important is it to the Portuguese?

Caldo verde is the best soup in Portugal.

It's very typical in the House of Fado and it's very good.

-Very delicious.

-So, at what time of night would you serve the caldo?

-What time?

-Any time.

-Midnight, two o'clock, one o'clock, any time you can...

-Fab.

-..go here.

Yes. Cos I'm looking forward to it, to the fado.

-Yes.

-And maybe I'll be feeling a bit, "Oh, life is so sad,"

-but then I get a bowl of caldo verde.

-And it makes me happy!

Simplicity is a very overused word in cookery programmes,

but this soup was as simple as they come.

And, as so often happens in dishes with very few ingredients,

it was utterly delicious. It truly was.

SHE SINGS IN PORTUGUESE

There are those who know every word and sentiment of these sad songs.

I reckon they'll be of a similar people to those who laugh

jolly loudly to every Shakespearean joke in the theatre.

FADO MUSIC PLAYS

SHE SINGS IN PORTUGUESE

I haven't a clue what on earth this song's about, but does it matter?

The atmosphere is so special.

She is excellent, too.

And the soup and the wine, perfect!

They say fado gets much better and more intense the later the hour,

but not being a connoisseur, I thought, well, sensibly, "It's time for bed."

But the streets and the people are still partying.

I think I might just have another beer.

Be warned, it's just that sort of a place.

BAND PLAYS AN UPBEAT TUNE

It was a long night of fado, soup and a few beers,

and now the familiar challenge of the hotel breakfast buffet.

It's all part of the long weekend thing, you know -

nothing is standardised when it comes to the buffet breakfast.

It's a voyage of discovery.

It reminds bit of that song Round And Round The Mulberry Bush,

but having a pair of reading glasses comes in very handy,

because everything is in small print,

and so your much-loved apricot jam

turns out to be marmalade at the last minute.

Are you butter or a cheese spread?

You look the same. And what about the teaspoons?

Usually I give up on them and stir with a fork.

What's this? Sausages but not as we know them.

And beans. Dave, they've got beans!

And now you have to choose -

it's one more time around the mulberry bush

before you really decide to be a sensible healthy eater

or a lover of the all-day breakfast.

'Press the lever, Rick!'

One of the reasons I chose Lisbon for a long weekend was because of

the fish, but fish markets to me are like

Madame Tussauds or the Tower of London.

I have to go to a fish market.

As a seafood cook, it gives me such a buzz.

They may all look the same but there are always differences,

and here is no exception.

Well, another city, another fish market,

but there are some very interesting things to say about it.

There is a lot of very large fish here.

Like, this is the biggest John Dory I have ever seen.

They are normally just, like, this big.

Fantastically large sea bass.

I haven't seen sea bass as big as that since my childhood.

So, there's really plenty of fish around here,

and of course that is really good for the Portuguese,

because fish is the main part of their diet.

Now, this is the boss lady round here.

She is mission control for all the seafood cooks in Lisbon.

Her name is Azucena.

The skippers of the fishing boats ring her with what they've caught as

they steam back home.

Then the cooks phone her and she tells them what's good.

I chose a fish for lunch and couldn't resist it.

It's called a corvina.

I know it's big - really big - but it's for all of us.

Now, good news, there's a restaurant upstairs and they always say,

"Where there is a restaurant within the market,

"then look no further for a place to eat."

If you like white, steaky cutlets that taste of the sea, you'll love this.

Virtually every restaurant I've been to here cooks over charcoal.

Much as I love barbecue cooking, it's hard to get it right,

as you can see.

It's easier to cook fish steaks under the grill.

I've just realised that corvina, in fact, as described in Portugal,

is like a giant sea bass.

We had the same fish in Bordeaux a few months ago called maigre,

but it just tastes like bass to me, but big bass.

And cooked like this on the charcoal, with lovely salad, it's just...

I'm in heaven.

We do love our crew lunches.

They are most convivial but far too short.

I just love fish and salad.

If somebody said, "What was your favourite dish?"

I think that would be. Just noticing some people behind there are having

whole grouper heads with boiled eggs and potatoes,

and they're pretty well-to-do people.

That is indicative to me about how much the Portuguese love their fish.

Supermarkets have taken their toll here.

There's only the fish keeping the last market I went to alive,

and it wasn't very long ago before this place was dead on its feet.

But look at it now!

It's full of people cooking food and customers eager to eat it.

What's good about it is you can wander around, see the sights,

smell the smells and decide what you really want to eat.

I'm really liking this place.

It's part of half of a market here in Lisbon.

The markets are dying.

It's the same in a lot of cities.

People prefer going to supermarkets, I guess.

But here, this guy's got this idea.

He worked for a famous travel magazine.

He got this idea of getting really good chefs here into this market.

Over there you've got classic Portuguese dishes.

There's chefs down there.

You've got hamburgers, Asian food, sushi, ice creams over there.

You've got a magnificent wineshop up there.

And then just next to it, there's a fantastic demonstration area.

There's a cook shop and it's absolutely filled with all the right sort of people.

Apparently you can still get a meal here at two o'clock in the morning.

It's just a great idea

and I think it's possibly the future for central markets anywhere.

This is a famous and very simple dish of deep-fried beans.

They call it fish from a garden.

You don't have to be a professor of food history to know that this dish

was born out of poverty, like so many good things.

Probably fish for the masses was too expensive or there wasn't any fish.

Well, I'm looking forward to this.

I watched you cooking it

and I just thought you'd like to know that the Portuguese actually

introduced tempura to the Japanese.

And like Japanese tempura...

..it's deliciously light.

Only just a sort of suspicion of batter on it.

Beautifully cooked, just cooked.

And I really like this dip, too.

This is Joao Cepeda, a journalist.

It was his bright idea to rejuvenate this market.

The good thing about all the background of the people who have done this,

like myself, coming from journalism and from the printing side is that

we are very obsessive with the consumers.

So we see everything from their own eyes and not so much on the eyes of

the restauranteurs' side,

so we know that what people really like is the theatre.

To see these small kitchens really, actually working,

using the fire on the food.

But presumably for the chefs it's good because they can get some gauge

about what people think of their food.

Well, they can get money first, so they're happy because of that as well.

-Money first. Very important, that.

-So, they are selling a lot and that is important.

But also we have two or three Michelin-starred chefs here,

and these people have probably the first opportunity to actually speak

to people that would never have the chance to taste their food, and so they love to be here.

I can tell you that all of their names are here, all the chefs' names...

-Yeah.

-It's not a, you know, a normal spin-off.

It's the actual restaurant in a smaller version.

So, in essence,

it's a few prize recipes that you can see being made in front of you,

and then you taste. That's the secret here.

Like this - this is scrambled eggs with salt cod and tiny chips.

It's a traditional dish brought up to date by chef Miguel Castro e Silva.

Voila.

It's lovely.

I just love the matchstick potatoes, the fried potatoes.

It has got a bit of crispness.

-And juiciness.

-And juiciness,

and it's just a lovely combination with the salt cod, the bacalhau.

Fabulous. I just would never have thought of using little fried potatoes

in a mix like this, but the combination is irresistible.

Thank you.

It has to me the atmosphere of a food festival and it's great to see

chefs cooking their favourites. Look at this.

This is a fabulous dish.

It is the cheeks from the famous black pig braised and served on a bed of mashed, sweet potato.

This is, I think I am right in saying,

the favourite dish of Susana Felicidade.

I'm going to try this sweet potato first.

-OK.

-Oh!

-What do you think?

-Beautiful.

-The best, huh?

-The best.

-It is?

-A little bit of cinnamon in there, is it?

-No.

-Nutmeg!

-You're right.

-Now you know.

-It's beautiful.

And now for the pork, the cheek.

The cheek, the pork, what do you think?

Oh!

That pork is so dark.

-Yes.

-I'd have said almost... it's as full-flavoured as beef.

It's fantastic.

Iberian pork doesn't mean just Spanish pork, does it?

It means Portuguese as well.

-I hope so.

-It certainly does, it's absolutely beautiful.

Because the pork is Portuguese, the chef is Portuguese,

-everything in that plate is Portuguese.

-Fabulous.

-Salud. What do you say?

-Saude!

-Saude!

-Saude! Yeah.

'It's early days, and I hope this idea works.

'If it does, I hope it spreads because it's so good to see these

'old markets still centred around food and not on tatty suitcases and tattier trailers.'

Salt cod fritters, they are as common in Lisbon as custard tarts.

You find them everywhere and they are delicious.

Light brown and crusty and filled with salt cod and coriander.

This is bacalhau, dried, salted cod,

and this is a really good piece, actually because the sort of thicker and the moister-looking,

the better the quality.

And this is what the same piece of cod looks like after 48 hours' soaking.

Yes, it does need to be soaked for that long.

Quite a novel way of soaking salt cod is to put it in the cistern of your loo.

Because, actually you do need to keep changing the water and obviously as you pull the chain,

it does that. However, a friend of mine said,

"Make sure you take the blue tablet out."

So, what I'm going to do now is simply poach this cod in milk for about 15 minutes.

'Gently, gently,

'you want to soften the flesh so it comes easily away from the skin and

'bones and the milk, with that extra bit of fattiness, gives it succulence.'

So, that's been poaching for 15 minutes.

I'm just lifting it out

and letting it go a little bit cold otherwise I would burn my hands.

It's quite interesting,

I think people are much keener on salt cod and bacalhau than they used to be

and I suspect that is through holidays

in places like Spain and Portugal.

The flavour, I think, when you first come across it is quite difficult,

but it's one of those tastes that after you get used to it,

you can't have enough of it.

It's like a lot of things.

I remember as a child eating olives and thought, "Those are horrible,"

but after a while, those things that taste a bit off-putting first time

can often be the things you really, really like.

I suppose the Portuguese have probably got a salt cod recipe

for every day of the year but I love these fritters.

I had them at the airport

when I was leaving the last time I was in Lisbon.

I thought, "That is the best fishcake I've ever tasted."

I like to hand-chop my parsley and coriander.

I could put it in the mixer, but I like the smell as I'm chopping.

There we go, and now just to mash these potatoes.

Again, I could have put those potatoes into the food processor,

but I find when you try and mash potato in a processor it goes a bit sort of gluey.

And now just adding the parsley and coriander on top of that and then

tumbling out my cod, olive oil,

garlic and parsley and just mix that all together.

Now, just a little bit of egg to bind all that,

so I'm just whisking this egg. I may not need to add it all.

Just...I want to get the mixture exactly right, so about half in there.

And now some pepper.

Quite a lot of pepper. No salt because there is still plenty of salt left

in the soaked cod.

There we go, now that's ready to mould up and fry.

I'm enjoying this, making little moulds with two spoons.

They just look very nice when they come out of the fryer.

Incidentally, you don't want to put too many in the fryer,

because you drop the temperature of the oil and they will start falling

apart. They're looking really nice.

So, I thought long and hard about what dishes I should cook for

my long weekend and this, I think, is probably the most important.

I'd go as far as to say the most popular snack in Lisbon and it's pretty damn good.

JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS

So, thanks, Lisbon,

it's been a great weekend and it's nice to be reunited

with your lovely vinho verde.

Just found this place just across the bridge with Lisbon in the

background. Rather special, but it says something about Lisbon, really,

that most of it is rather special.

It's very hard to find bits of Lisbon that you don't think,

"I'd like to sit down and have a coffee here,"

or "I'd like to sit down and have some grilled fish."

It's all like that, but most of all what I miss, I suppose, obviously is the food,

but particularly the seafood.

I mean, I just didn't really understand what they mean about fresh,

the Portuguese. They mean literally straight out of the sea and on to your plate, it's that good.

Over the weekend, this guy was saying to me that he felt the Portuguese

didn't really shout loudly enough about their cuisine,

not like the Spanish with all their reds and golds and vibrancy.

But I think Portuguese food is equally as good, so,

a little cheers from me with a glass of vinho verde,

which I have been drinking ever since I was a teenager

and I had forgotten how brilliant it was. Chin chin to Portugal.

# Hey, Rick, where we going next weekend?

# Are we flying a few hours away?

# For some delicious food, they say

# We can try dishes in Roma or Barcelona

# For something more exotic the spices of Morocco

# Yes, you can take your pick

# And even break the ice in Reykjavik

# So, Rick, make the booking Let's get cooking

# And get those taste buds going next weekend. #