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The world famous port wines are coming from the Douro Valley. The astonishing cultural landscape amazes the traveller with its immense terrace farming scenes frequently reaching even the mountain tops. The influence of the ocean is reduced here and the vineyards requiring immense work and hot summers established their own gastronomy.
As a Hungarian farmer does not settle for a slice of bread with jam, neither is a Portuguese farmer happy with some roasted fish. Surprising as it may sound, this is the land of fried pork blood, hams, sausages and tripe. The whole of the country calls the residents of Porto “tripe eaters” what they are proud of and do not hide but in turn they call the residents of the capital city simply “salad eaters”. It is an ancient rivalry and although we are not members of the world fan group of tripe, the local Tripas á moda do Porto has satisfied us too.
Here is the story: one day when we got hungry at one of the small bends of Douro, we strayed in the only restaurant of the area where at the end of the one-man show (cooking, serving, dishwashing) of the old lady not speaking any intelligible languages (our lack of education, oh dear reader, is thus revealed since we cannot communicate in Portuguese) but capable of smiling nicely in any languages, we pointed to tripas, so far unknown to us, on the menu while the lady and a frequenter were briskly nodding in approval. Soon a huge bowl was brought to us full of white foam cooked with smoked sausage, diced ham, carrots, onions and tripe and served with rice and some green salad with balsamic vinegar and some tomatoes. Beggars can’t be choosers. Though we were suspicious we fell to eating and, lo and behold dear readers, in this dish we have found the best gastronomic treat of our journey to Portugal.It is typical of the locals’ love for tripe that one of their most famous poets, Fernando Pessoa devoted a whole poem to the Porto style tripe. The poem goes: “One day, in a restaurant, outside of space and time, I was served up love like a dish of cold tripe. I politely told the missionary of the kitchen That I preferred it hot, Because tripe (and it was Oporto-style) is never eaten cold.” (translated by Richard Zenith).
Anatomy of wanderlust
While the Portuguese were the most successful in popularizing Cristiano Ronaldo, saudade is just as well known, though maybe not among sports fans. This most Portuguese notion is so much local that it does not even have a proper English translation. It means a deep emotional state of melancholy, a feeling of longing or yearning for something or someone but it has no immediate English translation. If we approach the term from the direction of checked tablecloths and greasy counters we may find and interesting explanation. The Portuguese cuisine brings together the entire assortment of saudade for those receptive to it just like the famous fado, the music of wanderlust. Call of the unknown is inherent in fishes and other sea delicacies and the fact that bacalhau, that has earned national character over the past centuries, is in fact Norwegian holds the promise of cold winds and rains. Hogs grunting yet carefree in the pigsties of stone villages hiding among bare granite rocks bear the potential of the still existing gastronomical culture of a people existing now only in history books, namely the residents of the past Kingdom of Visigoths, while the shaky stomach of mountain cows, the divinely tripe keeps the sibling communities together quietly drawing the border of the former Roman Empire. One may learn the most from the mentality of the English if, on a quiet winter night, he pops the cork of a Port wine…
After all, the fortified Port wines owe their existence to the merchants of the misty Albion. And if one makes it through to the dessert, it will remind him to some bazaar of the remote Damascus where underneath the stone arcades, a devoted Muslim sells semolina pastry made of dates and honey as did his ancestors 1200 years ago in this corner of the world too. Although the Portuguese cuisine does not even use the tenth of the spices and raw materials of the colonies as I had had expected, yet it connects people though not in space but in time and this what makes it really lasting.
