Quarantravel…with Food Episode One: Porto

Like the rest of the world, I have found myself “sheltered-in-place” for about 3 1/2 weeks now.  And, like the rest of the world, I’ve been trying to think of ways to make quarantine life just a tad more exciting.  Obviously, I love to travel.  And I’ve missed it.  I wouldn’t necessarily be traveling right now if we weren’t in quarantine due to my job, but it’s more being faced with the “can’t” factor mixed with the uncertainty of not knowing when for sure anyone will be able to travel for pleasure again that has me down.  And it was while thinking about traveling and how much I missed it that the idea struck me… Just because I can’t travel anywhere, why should that mean I can’t bring “anywhere” right to my very own home?

And it was there the idea was born:  Quarantravel…with Food.  My boyfriend and I love food.  One of our favorite parts of traveling is getting to try different cuisines.  So since we love cooking, food, and travel so much, I told him my plan:  once a week, or maybe every few days (because what is time in quarantine?) we’d prepare a dish from a place we’d been to together or a place we wanted to go in the future.  We’d make a whole night of it, immerse ourselves as much as we could into what we were preparing, and then I’d document it later on my blog.  It was a done deal – this would be a fun experiment to maybe bring a sense of “adventure” to our currently slightly mundane quarantine life, and maybe to any readers out there too.

For our first meal, we chose a place that captured both our hearts in the summer of 2019:  Porto, Portugal.  Porto was the second city on a four-city tour we’d planned through the Iberian Peninsula last June.  We only stayed two nights, but we fell in love with this quaint European city the moment we stepped off the train, and we immediately wished we could stay for longer.  Portugal is one of the most beautiful countries I’ve been to.  I find it to be vastly underrated and highly overlooked when people are choosing their next vacation destination.  I admit, I didn’t know much about Portugal before we decided to visit.  Our trip idea started out because neither of us had been to Spain but both wanted to go, and we thought well, if we’re going to Spain, might as well hop over to Portugal too!  I didn’t realize then that I wasn’t giving Portugal enough credit.

We visited Lisbon first, then took the train to Porto (that turned out to be a fun delay adventure in itself!).  The moment we stepped off the train, we were greeted with beautiful azulejo, or Portuguese tiles.  You know the kind I’m talking about – that beautiful blue tile that adorns most buildings in Portugal.  The city was alive that day – alive with British soccer fans.  We just so happened to be arriving at the same time as what appeared to be every soccer fan from England.  There was a match taking place that night.  Ah.  The soccer fans had overrun the city, but it seemed to just add a dash of excitement to the experience (though Griffin warned me to steer clear of the drunk ones.  Noted).  We walked the few blocks from our station to the most adorable AirBnB I’ve ever stayed in.  It was on a pedestrian only street, on the top floor of a building with no elevator, and it had views for days through its tiny windows.  I could have stayed in that apartment for weeks, maybe even forever! …

Our time in Porto was short, filled with a lot of rain, a lot of food, my first breakdown of the trip (there were tears..in public…it’s fine), and countless memories.  We saw as much of the city as we could, mostly on foot.  Pack good shoes if you ever visit Porto.  The pictures don’t do it justice, but Porto is essentially one giant hill.  When you’re walking up…you’re walking up.  Think San Francisco except steeper…with narrower streets…that never seem to go back down…that’s Porto.  It makes for tired calves but stunning views.

We left Porto by air (another fun delay story) for Barcelona, but we vowed to come back someday.  When we talk about that trip now, our conversation always veers back to Porto.  To its steep, winding streets.  To Graham’s port wine.  To the stunning views.  The the incredibly nice people.  And to the food…which is why, when choosing our first Quarantine…with Food dish, we had to pay homage to the lovely city of Porto.

 

One dish Porto is particularly famous for is the Francesinha, a decadent sandwich layered with multiple meats and cheeses, topped with a tomato Port wine sauce, and served on a large plate with fries for dipping into the delicious goodness.  Paired with a Portuguese beer, or my personal favorite, a vinho verde, this dish is heavenly.  If not a recipe for a short life of obesity and diabetes should you consume too many of them.  We only had one of these babies while in Porto, and it was Griffin who took the plunge and ordered it, while I sat across from him wishing I’d had the courage to order the same.  Thankfully he was kind enough to share a few bites with me.

Francesinha means “Little Frenchie” in Portuguese.  The idea came from Daniel da Silva, an emigrant who wanted to re-create France’s famous croque madame, but with a Portuguese twist.  After he created his first version in 1953, the dish became widely popular throughout Porto, with every chef in every restaurant creating their own version of the decadent dish.  The key ingredients to the Francesinha are thick bread, layers of ham, linguiça (Portuguese sausage), steak or roast meet, cheese (lots of cheese), and a special “secret” sauce.  The sauce varies from restaurant to restaurant, and chef to chef, but typically includes tomato, beer, and Port wine (and sometimes even whiskey).

After researching many different recipes, Griffin and I realized quite quickly that this wasn’t necessarily going to be a “follow the recipe” type dish. Since everyone in Porto has their own version of it, and they all claim their’s to be the best, we knew we’d have to improvise.  So, knowing the basic list of ingredients, we ventured to the grocery store to see what we could find.  Obviously, not all of our ingredients were Portuguese.  Being that we are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, I am not going to go out of my way to hunt down authentic Portuguese sausage, Portuguese cheese, or the piripiri (a Portuguese chili that adds quite a kick to the Francesinha sauce).  We settled on what the store had at the time – andouille sausage, Kraft cheddar cheese, and we relied on our own stash at home of various hot sauces and powders to cover the “kick” part.

As mentioned earlier, we looked up many different recipes, and, in our (well Griffin’s) usual fashion, decided we’d simply follow our own intuitions and “wing it” based on what we’d read.  We knew what the staple ingredients were, we are generally pretty decent at making a homemade sauce, and the assemblage seemed like a no-brainer.  So with vinho verde in hand (me), we fired up the stove, preheated the oven, and began cooking (well, Griffin began cooking.  I was busy with my vinho verde…)

Yes

The process proved to be pretty simple.  The “hardest” part was making the sauce, and Griffin had it whipped up in no time.  While the sauce simmered, we sat back and enjoyed watching Anthony Bourdain’s episode of Parts Unknown about Porto (RIP Tony). When that ended, we found random YouTube videos about Porto and Francesinha to watch, and remarked on how much better we’d be at making these videos (ha!).  And that’s really what made this night so special for us.  Yes, the cooking is fun for us.  But more than that, we were not only reminiscing about our trip, we found ourselves dreaming about the future.  We talked about how fun it would be to go back, about how we could document it better.  We dreamed of other places we could go, dishes we could try.  It turns out that Qaurantravel can do more than just keep you occupied for a night.  It gives you hope as well.  Hope that someday, hopefully in the near future, life will go back to some sort of “normal,” and we’ll be traveling again.  Making plans again.  Those dreams can become a reality, if we just hold on to hope.

Once the sauce seemed ready, the steak pieces had been seared, and the other meats heated up, it was assembly time.  We layered our sandwiches similar to how the Portuguese layer – bread, cheese, ham, sausage, steak, bread, cheese.  I think we may have added another layer of cheese somewhere in there…?  It’s hard to remember.  We definitely didn’t have as many layers as some Portuguese do it, but it was more than plenty.  After baking for a few minutes – enough to let the cheeses on top melt – we heated up some fries (bought from a local restaurant here in Oklahoma City…beer-battered fries just seemed like a lot of work for us on top of these sandwiches), poured the sauce on top of our sandwiches, and dug in.  It was delicious.  Way to go us.  Considering we were using American ingredients, and kind of making it up as we went along, I’d say we did a very good job (okay, Griffin did a very good job…I did stir the sauce and assemble my own sandwich…).  Being loaded with meats and cheese, I couldn’t quite finish mine.  Griffin managed to finish his, but be warned – if you do manage to finish an entire Francesinha, prepare for a tummy ache after.

We finished off our evening with a glass each of Tawny Port Wine, because no Portuguese meal is complete without a little Port wine at the end, especially if that dish comes from the city of Porto, toasting to our successful first Quarantravel…with Food adventure.

If you’ve made it this far, you may now be wondering if you could have your own Quarantravel experience at home.  You absolutely could!  And here’s some tips to get you started:

• Pick the place first.  Maybe you have been a lot of places, and want to start out with some dishes from places you’ve been.  Or maybe you have a bucket list of places you’ve always wanted to go?  Pick a place from that list!  It doesn’t really matter how you choose, but I definitely recommend choosing a place that holds value to you.  And definitely pick the place before trying to decide on the dish.  We chose Porto first because it’s a place we’ve been to together that we absolutely loved.  In choosing a place we both hold so dear, it made the experience that much more fun for us, because we could reminisce about it together.
• Once you’ve chosen the place, pick the dish!  I suggest finding something that is unique to that particular place.  We chose Francesinha out of all the Portuguese dishes because it is a dish that is so unique to Porto.  You won’t find it anywhere else in the world (at least not an authentic version).
• Look up recipes for the dish, but don’t tie yourself to one specific recipe.  Turns out I had found a particular recipe that didn’t include tomato paste, while Griffin found multiple that did.  Some recipes called for Port wine, while others called for whiskey.  When attempting to make an authentic dish, you’re going to get so many different versions of it.  As long as you have a general idea of the process and the ingredients, you’ll be fine.
• Don’t stress if you can’t find all the ingredients!  First of all, we’re in a worldwide pandemic.  Our local grocery store is hit or miss on what they have depending on the day.  The day before Griffin and I got our ingredients, I’d gone to pick up some staples and the shelves were virtually empty.  By the time Griffin and I returned the next day they were back to being fully stocked.  Also remember, even if we weren’t in this crazy quarantine, sometimes recipes call for ingredients that are very specific to the area they come from, making it virtually impossible to find that particular ingredient.  Look up and research substitutes online.  You aren’t the first person who’s tried to recreate an authentic dish at home, there’s bound to be ideas out there for how you can substitute certain ingredients.
• Just have fun with it!  This isn’t something to become perfect at.  It’s just something to do to pass the time and make fun memories.  The hardest part for some people with cooking is trusting their instincts.  Cooking is so much about feeling and instinct.  Don’t worry if you don’t follow a recipe exactly (where are my bakers at?)! Don’t worry if you forget an ingredient!  Don’t worry if something burns or tastes terrible!  That’s all part of the experience.  We had to do a lot of tweaking to get Griffin’s sauce to a point where we enjoyed it, and even then we joked about how it became more of a tomato soup than a sauce.  It still tasted great in the end!  Remember you’re not trying to become a world-renowned chef here (or maybe you are…cool), you’re just trying to have some fun while being stuck at home.

So get out there, pick a dish, and start cooking!  Comment below and tell me – are you going to try your own version of Quarantravel with food?  What will you cook first?

And stay tuned for our next episode of Quarantravel…with Food.  What will we be cooking?  We haven’t decided yet…though I really want to try my hand at New York style pizza… Stay tuned…