When traveling, it is essential not only to keep your eyes open, but also your mouth. Of course not to stare dully at the area, and not to constantly comment on everything. But to taste the cuisine of the region you are visiting.
This is particularly useful in the Algarve – for two reasons. On the one hand, the culinary offer in the south of Portugal, at least if you avoid the chain hotels of the big tour operators, is still very regionally shaped and therefore unique, to which both the sea and the hinterland with the Serra de Monchique contribute. On the other hand, there has also been a remarkable leap in quality over the past two or three decades.
In 1989 a Michelin star was awarded for the first time in the Algarve, and others followed. Above all, the number of restaurants below the star category has risen sharply, in which the cuisine is ambitious. In addition, more and more characterful winegrowers are pressed in the region, such as well-developed red wines from the autochthonous Negra Mole grape. For a long time it was customary to deliver the harvest to cooperatives, which then often used it to produce wines that are not worth mentioning.
The kitchen lives from fresh products that you can only get in the Algarve itself.
The editor Marianne Salentin-Träger, the author Rita Henss and the two photographers Markus Bassler and Anja Jahn report with great enthusiasm in their opulent volume “Algarve”. The book also contains recipes, but only in the back part. They are little more than a small bonus. Because it actually makes little sense to cook them again in Germany, as some of the ingredients are difficult to get here in the necessary quality and freshness. The dishes of the Algarve cannot easily be exported.
Some fishermen in the Algarve are not only good at net fishing, but also at fishing for tuna with a rod.
(Photo: Anja Jahn, Markus Bassler / Knesebeck Verlag)
As the book’s subtitle suggests, the quartet of authors is going on a culinary journey. It is at the center of the visually generously designed volume and leads time and again to people who make a contribution to the cuisine of the Algarve. The first stations are mussel collectors, oyster farmers and fishermen, some of whom are professionally and some of whom only obtain seafood and fish from the ocean and the beaches for their own needs.
Fishermen used to have water dogs to help them with their work.
Before Erico Gomes Martins goes out to sea, he goes to an ATM in Cabanas near the town of Tavira. The machines there have a function for fishermen like him: They can have the fees for their fishing license debited. At sea, Gomes Martins demonstrates how he goes for tuna with a fishing route. This morning, however, only bites sarrajão on, an Atlantic bonito. This is followed by an excursus about water dogs, which – similar to hunting dogs – used to help fishermen catch. The industrialization of fishing means that their services are hardly needed any more. Some of them are now being trained to be rescue dogs.
Arroz de sardinha: Atlantic anchovies on seasoned vegetable rice: hinterland and ocean make for a tasty cuisine.
(Photo: Anja Jahn, Markus Bassler / Knesebeck Verlag)
But it’s not just the sea that shapes the cuisine, which is by no means Mediterranean, as the star chef Louis Anjos emphasizes: “We are an Atlantic country”. But also the hinterland with the Monchique Mountains that separate the Algarve from the Alentejo to the north. Goat’s cream cheese, ham and sausages, Medronho schnapps made from the fruits of the strawberry tree – all of this plays an important role, often in combination with the yields from the sea, which not least include algae. Anjos characterizes the cuisine of the Algarve as “fresh and somewhat sour”. Whereby the desserts are not neglected either. All the producers and chefs know how to win you over while reading for their products and creations. Also because it’s basically a very simple kitchen.
Marianne Salentin bearers, Rita Henss, Markus Bassler, Anja Jahn: Algarve. A culinary journey. Stories and recipes from Portugal’s wild south. Knesebeck Verlag, Munich 2021. 360 pages, 40 euros.