But anyways - let's talk about food. Thursday's dinner was one of my favorites so far for so many reasons. For starters, I'd known for a while I was going to do Portugal regardless how the games went so I was able to plan ahead and make sure I had everything I needed. My Portuguese friend, Joey, sent me this site with tons of Portuguese recipes that helped me brainstorm as well. It also was just a really straight forward dinner in terms of cooking. While I got ideas from recipe sites, I didn't need to look up or follow any recipes to make these dishes. After the Honduras disaster, it was nice to have something straightforward. Lastly - it all tasted really, really good. Some of these dishes have not been good, and others I've liked but have been out of Dan's comfort zone, but we both loved all of this meal. So let's tell you how it all came together...
I knew I was going to cook some linguica I found at the supermarket so all I had to think of were side dishes.
Getting pre-made sausage is a nice easy way to get a meal together. The hard part has been done, you don't have to worry about getting under cooked meat, and hopefully whoever made it seasoned it well. All you have to do is throw it into a pan until they get hot and crispy.
The potatoes and bacon was instantly a no brainer. I'm definitely a bacon fanatic. I freak out if there are less than two packages in the house. I use it for everything and if I'm just eating it by itself, I save the grease for cooking later. It's so full of flavor that it imparts on whatever you cook in it. Obviously not all bacon is created equal though. The bacon in the picture above is my favorite. I get it from Costco in a two pack. For Costco, a two pack is tiny. They sell a 4 pack of mediocre bacon for the same price so a 2 pack seems like a rip off... until you notice that they are the same weight but one is juicy amazing awesome bacon and the other is thin limp meh bacon. I mean any bacon is better than no bacon, but trust me - we were buying both for a while and there was a noticeable difference. Bacon is good. Great bacon will change your life. I promise.
Now that you have your awesome life changing bacon, the rest of the steps for this dish are super easy. I cut up the bacon into little bacony pieces and get them into a hot pan. It takes a little while but I try to put them in the pan so they aren't overlapping at first. This helps the fat melt down better and they'll be crispier.
While the bacon is starting to cook, you can get to your potatoes. Sweet potatoes are paleo but white potatoes aren't really. They're not particularly un-paleo but there's kind of a paleo grey area that the paleo community doesn't agree on and it's full of white potatoes. My personal rule on them is about quality. For example, the big cheap russet potatoes that are about $1.50 for a ten pound bag - those are really starchy and lack a lot of nutrients. I try to go for other potato options like red skin potatoes, blue potatoes, or the yukon gold potatoes that I used for this dish. These came from Front Door Farms but Trader Joes has a ton of potato options that will be more nutrient filled.
I cut up my potatoes into little approx. one inch squares. My potatoes were all sorts of shapes and sizes but I used about a whole two pound bag of them. Once the bacon was close to crispy (you don't want it all the way there because it will keep cooking with the potatoes, just not as fast) throw the potatoes in. They'll need a while to cook - about 20 minutes so you don't have to be too vigilant but definitely mix them up every few minutes. This should get them pretty even but allow them to brown a bit.
For seasoning - the bacon does a pretty good job but I also added some garlic powder and pepper. You can also salt it to taste. I love salt and probably have horrible blood pressure so I did a sprinkle of garlic salt as well.
One recipe saw a lot was kale soup (actually just about everything had potatoes, kale, and/or linguica in it). While I wanted to be traditional, I didn't want an overly heavy meal so I decided to swap soup for salad and use the kale that way.
Since the potatoes and linguica had to cook a bit, it was the perfect change for me to prep my kale salad. I had tried looking for some Portuguese salad recipes but wasn't too successful so this one is probably not super authentic.
This salad is super easy and simple. I just cut up a few kale leaves. I removed the stems since those can be kind of chewy. I cut up my last kumato and threw in some Parmesan cheese and almonds. I probably would have preferred goat cheese but I was out. I think sprinkled it with balsamic and olive oil and then mixed it all up. I went really light on dressing so the little bit leftover stayed really crisp the next day too.
Next I had to pair wines. Ok, I'm lying, this was actually the first thing I did and put off starting to cook for as long as possible... Portugal has some AMAZING wines. Last year I went to an awesome Wines of Portugal tasting and I got to learn a lot about different Portuguese varieties. Most people are familiar with Vinho Verde and Port but there are so many more great grapes that just haven't taken off (yet) in the US. So we're going to have a little Portuguese wine lesson!
Loureiro - Loureiro is a type of Vinho Verde. Vinho Verde is actually the region in Portugal. Some of my favorite whites from the tasting were Loureiro but it's not really being exported now. Most whites are lumped together and just called "Vinho Verde" so my guess is that they're probably blends of several grapes in the region. The wine is crisp and almost spritzy with a hint of effervescence. It's the perfect hot weather wine and is just super refreshing.
Alvarinho - Alvarinho is more commonly known by its Spanish counterpart - Albarino. It's a light white wine with high acidity and fruity aromas. It's becoming more popular among wine makers in California so maybe you'll bump into it more.
Touriga Nacional - This is another wine that's slowly becoming more popular in California. It's a pretty intense wine with a lot of berry flavor. It's probably comparable to Tempranillo.
Touriga Franca - This is Touriga Nacional's milder counterpart (think Cabernet and Cab Franc) and is the type of Touriga I had above. It's still a pretty meaty wine but not quite as overwhelming.
Alvarelhao - A little milder still than the Touriga Franc, it's more of a medium bodied wine that can stand up better on it's own. It's really uncommon and the wine above is the only time I've ever seen it, and not recently.
Port - Probably the most well known Portuguese wine. It's known as a dessert wine and it's very rich and flavorful. Most Ports are aged as well which adds to their complexity. They are fortified with grape spirits causing them to be higher alcohol than traditional wine.
So there's a little run down on a few Portuguese wines. There are obviously a ton more and if you're interested in Portuguese wine, Wines of Portugal is a great place to start. Fenestra is also a winery in Livermore with lots of Portuguese varieties so that's also a great spot to go taste some of them.
Anyways, I wanted to figure out what wine to have with dinner and I got really upset because I thought I didn't have any Portuguese wine. I was thinking only about Alvarinhos and was almost debating checking Trader Joes for some wine when I remembered that I had a couple of awesome Portuguese wines from Fenestra that I was saving for something special. Well, how much more special could Portuguese wine for Portuguese dinner be? I just couldn't decide which one to pair...
I decided to go with the Touriga. It's a meatier and fuller bodied wine and I knew with a dinner focused on sausage and bacon, I needed a wine that could stand up to it. A key in pairing food and wine is to keep in mind that the wine is more likely to lose a battle with food flavors. There are a lot of amazing light, beautiful wines that taste great on their own. Buy them and love them but don't eat them with an intense meal. There are wines that do great with food and it's a good thing to keep in mind while tasting.
So finally it was food time. I really loved how this plate came together. It even ended up being Portuguese colors! Everything about the dish was amazing.
Dan and I both went back for seconds. I seriously could have eaten all of those bacon potatoes. There was so little for me to take for lunch the next day and I was so sad that I didn't make more. I could eat this for dinner once a week. I could probably eat it more often but I love it so much I wouldn't want to get sick of it. Just everything about this meal was great - it was easy to make, the flavors were good, it had bacon, there was a fresh salad, and of course - I got to open one of my treasured bottles of Portuguese wines.
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| Rocco knows all about getting seconds |
After we each had our two plates, we had to keep ourselves from getting thirds and instead cuddled up on the couch like fat Roccos and watched Lost. Yes, Lost. I don't like watching good shows until long after they are cancelled so we're on Season 5 of Lost right now...
And now I get a day off and I can go eat all of the cheeseburgers in San Francisco. Yes - unpaleo greasy awesome cheeseburgers because "everything in moderation" is the best.
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