Had a day "up country" last Tuesday in Portugal, our host was a contractor who wanted to show us a bit of his country north of the Algarve and we spent most of the morning admiring their water conservation works up in the hills, fairly mundane stuff to us but of vital importance to them as most of the surface water courses will be dry in a few weeks time.
Anyway, food - he spent some time driving down narrow lanes looking for a particular roadside bar/cafe and eventually, after driving past it and not believing it could be the place we found "Casa dos Presuntos" in a village called Cortelha, what looked like a roadside cafe where you'd get a coffee and a dried up sandwich turned out to be one of the best restaurants in the area, Tuesday lunchtime had about twenty punters in there but it fills most nights and every weekend with customer who drive the 30km inland from The Algarve to eat there.
Our host ordered a platter of pork for the three of us to share as a main course, fairly straightforward stuff but with a taste that I have never found in pork before, the loin was marinated and the chops that were served as a side dish were so tender that they just melted off the bone, served with a huge salad (from a neighbours garden) and potato slices sauted in a garlic sauce - amazing flavours off the meat which I suspect was simply and locally raised, plain country food that was ten times better than anything I've eaten in the restaurants that cater for the wealthy down on the Vale do Lobo.
We couldn't decide on a specific sweet so the owner brought out another platter and not wanting to be rude I ate all four variations including the thinly sliced chocolate bean plant - all of this washed down with a bottle of red wine, haven't a clue which one as our host chose it from the range of 300 different bottles, he chose it because the producer was a friend of his - three different pork dishes, four different deserts and half a bottle of red wine for lunch, I could get used to that.
Later that day and nearer the coast we stopped in another village for a coffee, unfortunately we picked at random a small cafe where the owner was crazy about sweets and puddings and I'm sorry to say that I could not resist and had a huge slice of fresh raspberry merangue and then three samples of very sweet almond deserts and biscuits - eight puddings in one afternoon is a world record for me.
We didn't bother with our tea that evening.
