Vegetarian recipes from Portugal

In Portugal bread is not only served beside the dish, it is an ingredient of it. Acorda alentejana shows this plainly: boiling water poured over stale bread, pounded garlic, a great deal of fresh coriander, olive oil and a poached egg, and nothing else. It is a cooking of scarcity, born in the Alentejo, where olive oil and garlic form the aromatic base and where coriander, uncommon elsewhere in southern Europe, almost by itself marks the taste of the southern dishes. The dense crumbed wheat loaf, baked large, is chosen precisely because it holds up in the broth instead of dissolving.

Further north the same economy gives caldo verde: potatoes crushed into their own broth, collard greens shredded very fine, olive oil poured in at the table; the version without cured sausage is the original farm form. Sweet cooking rests on another pair, milk and egg: arroz doce cooks rice in milk with lemon zest and is dusted with cinnamon in patterns, and pasteis de nata set an egg yolk custard in puff pastry baked at very high heat. In both, egg and milk stand in for animal cooking fat, and cinnamon or lemon carries the perfume.