A Year in the World (14 page)

What the fresco is to Italy, the tile panels are to Portugal—elaborate scenes record events and tell stories. Most precious at the museum is the scene of Lisbon created about twenty years before the earthquake ravaged the city. The convent chapel’s lower walls depict scenes from the life of Saint Anthony, the shine of the glaze cooling down the heat of the baroque and rococo decorations that cover every square inch of the rest of the chapel. I like all the Moorish geometric and floral designs, so like Persian rugs, which in turn look like gardens. But there’s something eternally fresh about the blue and white. We take dozens of pictures, almost all of which turn out to have the glare of flash in the center.

We're
living in a quiet part of Lisbon. At the dining-room table we spread all our books, notebooks, and maps. We play CDs of
fado
while I attempt to read José Saramago’s turgid
Journey to Portugal
. Throughout he refers to himself as “the traveller,” a stylistic choice I find arch: “Now the traveller is ready to move on from works of art.” Delete “the traveller” and “he” and just be straightforward! The writing is studded, however, with bright perceptions and jewel-cut paragraphs that keep me reading. Ed watches an Italian movie with Spanish subtitles, rather an odd activity in Portugal. We have cooked and served our dinner on the coffee table covered by a yellow cloth and set with a glass of freesias to ward off lingering odors of paraffin. Cooking a pan of mixed local sausages and roasted potatoes contributed a few aromas, too. We brought home a box of tarts from the Pasteleria Suica on the plaza. This night offers the pleasure of renting a house—not going out, making a simple meal, and having a few hours with each other and books.

We’re getting to know our Calcada de Sant’Ana neighborhood. The crammed corner grocery, open till midnight, has most everything we need. A sweet park at the top of the hill offers green respite and the sound of a fountain. Nearby the Campo dos Mártires da Pátria, the Field of Martyrs, draws me on my walks because of the clutch of people around the statue of José Thomaz Sousa Martins, a nineteenth-century physician and pharmacist who still wields the hope of cure. Propped around the monument are stacks of marble plaques engraved with thanks, letters of supplication, and wax ex-votos. Notes describe illnesses and ask him for favors. A woman sells bracelets and necklaces with the blue stone for protection against the evil eye. She sells the wax arms, hands, feet, legs, and even eyes that you can buy and then offer at the base of the monument. I buy a few of the ex-votos to take home for my collection and also several of her candles that exorcise bad spirits from the house or promote health. They’re primitive, rolled in seeds and grains and herbs. Because of the wind, candles will not stay lighted. People hold them down in a metal drum with fire in the bottom, praying with them for a while, then dropping them into the drum. Sacks of old wax are piled on the side. Sousa Martins’s monument is an active spiritual spot. He has been dead 107 years, and how brightly his memory burns. I light a candle in the drum and think hard about the health of those I love. For good measure, I buy two of the evil eye bracelets and slip them on my wrist.

Then
we meet Carlos Lopes. That’s Carloosh Lope-shs in Portuguese. This language uses many sounds that previously I have heard only from the washing machine. Italian and a smattering of Spanish help—thousands of words are similar—but mostly we are lost.

We drop into the tourist information office in our Rossio neighborhood and ask about cooking schools in town. We’re told that none exist, but then the two young women confer and finally come up with an address of a cookware shop in a residential neighborhood where some classes are taught. Also, they tell us, we have to try the owner’s chocolate cake, his secret recipe, baked in his nearby shop every day. All the best restaurants serve it. We jump in a taxi immediately and go. At the cookware shop the clerk, a friend of the women at the tourist office, tells us that Carlos is out. We leave our number and ask for directions to the cake shop.

The taxi driver waits while we run in. We buy the last pieces in the shop, one for each of us and, to his astonishment, one for the taxi driver. The three of us eat in the car. The only sound is slight moans. The light cake is rich, and the quality of the chocolate speaks of tropical earth and rainforests. This is a taste of the heaven that is someday to come to all of us.

When Carlos rings us the next day, we again make our way out to his shop. Even if nothing comes of this, we can eat another piece of his cake. Maybe a whole cake.

Confident, catching us eye to eye with a sherry-brown gaze, Carlos looks as though he could have been one of the navigators. He’s a sturdy man, not young, not old. The Portuguese generally look affable, unlike the more chiseled Spanish. He’s in a loose cardigan he’s had for a long time. I immediately see a person comfortable with himself. Fortunately for us, his English is excellent. After five minutes his wit and irony already shine. We tell him we’d like inside information about the national cuisine, that we’re getting whiffs of the real thing but would like to know more. After the first
tasca
lunch, we began to discover the cuisine. Our tome of a cookbook reinforces our instinct that levels and levels of taste exist, beyond the good grilled fish, fried calamari, and crab salads we’re ordering each night. He explains that in his classes he teaches local people about sushi, Thai food, Polynesian dishes. “No Portuguese cooking—we all know how to cook that.”

“Any chance of a private lesson or two?”

“You come tomorrow to my restaurant in the market building in the Alfama. We will cook a lunch together.”

Mercado
de Santa Clara, Carlos’s restaurant, is on the second floor of the market building, which could be a nineteenth-century train station. It overlooks the Thief’s Fair. Lined with windows, the decor is simplicity itself—white tablecloths, little bowls of flowers, and on a serving table one of the chocolate cakes. We meet in the galley kitchen, and Carlos starts to cook. And talk. “The main herbs are coriander, parsley, and oregano. But above all coriander.” He chops a large bunch and places it in a bowl beside the stove, at the ready. First he splits each side of a sea bass, filling the cut with the excellent local sea salt, then dips the whole fish in olive oil. He picked up the fish at the market this morning, he tells us as he grills it over a hot, hot flame for five minutes on each side. Done. Then he cooks pork ribs he’s marinated since last night in lemon, salt, and the local ready-made pimiento sauce that is essential in every kitchen. I’ve never seen ribs cooked this way. He melts a dollop of lard in a frying pan, and when it is very hot, he tosses in the ribs. In another pan, he cooks some steamed and chopped rape in a little of the fat from the ribs. He stirs in a couple of handfuls of breadcrumbs.

He’s fast. He washes a bowl of clams and adds them to another pan with garlic and olive oil. He squeezes lemon juice over them, then adds a
lot
of coriander and some white wine. Then he puts it all in a copper
cataplana
and cooks it briefly, shaking it as though it were popcorn. What a lunch we are going to have. “This is very simple,” he says, breaking eggs into a bowl. “What you have alone at home on Sunday night. It’s all in the eggs.” And plain to see, the yolks are the wobbly gold of a setting sun. To the eggs he adds diced tomatoes and onion. He scrambles them in a moment. All the while he talks about ingredients, praising the Portuguese mustard, Savora;
piri-piri
, a white-heat sauce made from Angolan peppers; and cumin, which always seasons pork and beef meatballs. When Ed asks if port is used in the kitchen, Carlos laughs. “The Portuguese don’t drink port,” he claims. He’s frying some tiny sole filets, which he first dipped in lemon juice and olive oil, then floured. We ask about restaurants, and he praises the cooking in
tascas
, along with a few other restaurants. He drains the sole on empty egg cartons. “The Portuguese have more restaurants per capita than any other European country,” he tells us. I’m sure that’s accurate. Every neighborhood is full of
tascas
, and all of them are jammed. “Don’t expect salads here. I don’t know why, but we never have taken the salad to heart.” He sprinkles the sole with parsley and unties his apron.

We eat. Portuguese food is for those who are really hungry. Carlos pours a simple “green wine,” Vinho Verde Muralhas de Monção, and then a red Azeitao Periquita Fonseca. The moment for dessert arrives. He has the waiter bring a puff pastry filled with something he describes as a cross between crème brûlée and egg custard, the now-familiar
pastéis de nata
. Which brings me to the famous chocolate cake. When I mention the recipe, he gets a little Mona Lisa smile and asks the waiter to bring over two slices, but he will divulge nothing. I tell him about an almost flourless chocolate cake with ground almonds, a recipe I learned years ago at Simone Beck’s cooking school in the South of France, which I have baked at least a hundred times. He brings over tiny glasses of Amarguinha, a dessert
digestivo
made of almonds. As we leave, he will not allow us to pay. I am stunned at this generous man, stunned that he has given his morning to strangers and shared his knowledge and traded life stories over a long, long lunch.

The next morning Carlos calls early. We will meet for dinner, he announces, then go out to hear
fado
in the Alfama.
Fah-do
, he says, like hairdo, not
fah-dough
. We fill the time until then visiting the Ribiera market. Used to Tuscan prices, we’re surprised to see good-looking olive oils for four to seven euros a liter. We find goat cheeses wrapped in gauze, and almonds suspended in honey. We take home
massa de pimiento
, the canned spread of puréed pimientos and salt. Since my home state of Georgia is a major producer of the pimiento, I grew up on toasted pimiento-cheese sandwiches, one of the world’s great treats. It will be even better with a smear of Portuguese mustard. The stalls, arranged under a vaulted ceiling, display all the vegetables we do not see in restaurants, and sacks of tiny snails and mussels. At the horse butcher’s, the meat is oh, so dark—the color of port. In other stands hang sausages in every shade of blood. Most startling are the flowers. Several vendors feature funeral sprays, elaborate horseshoes and fans of chrysanthemums and gladiolus with pastel ribbons and condolences in sequins. En route to mourning, you can pick up an impressive wreath and your carrots at the same time. As Carlos told us, few lettuces but mounds of cabbages. Ed points out the many kinds of oranges. When we have as much as we can carry, we go home.

We meet Carlos at his restaurant in the Alfama and start walking through the maze. After six or so turns, I don’t know which direction we face. “Don’t walk here alone at night,” he tells us.

“Is it dangerous?”

“Well, you would be lost, and sometimes boys snatch bags.”

“That’s true anywhere on the globe.”

“Yes, but you would also be lost.”

“That makes sense.”

He stops at a closed door with no sign and knocks. We are admitted into a small room with five tables. We are the only guests at this hidden restaurant, which, yes, does have a name: Os Corvos. We’re seated at a table next to a wall of wine racks. Without a word, the waiter brings us a Lavradores de Feitoria, from north in the Duoro region, a nice big wine with a plummy almond perfume. Carlos confers, and soon we are eating coriander soup, a variety of pork sausages from the north, some with rice inside, some made from black pig’s blood, and some with piquant garlic—true Portuguese tastes, indigenous to this place. Who could expect how the copious use of coriander could add such a fresh dimension? The waiter then brings a salad of dried fava beans, plumped again with oil, garlic, and coriander, then strips of savory roast pork, a mound of ricotta seasoned with oregano, and a bowl of tempura-style green beans. Even though we have feasted long and well, I’m moved to try a butterscotch flan, one of my favorite flavors, and a bite of Ed’s frothy soufflé of ground almonds and eggwhites, and just a taste of Carlos’s gelato with confit of lemon rind. I’m in love.

After midnight we weave through the Alfama streets again and duck into a low door just as
fado
is about to begin. We have luck: one table is free in the small room, which feels charged with anticipation. Two guitarists step into a clearing, then the
fadista
, who looks as if she knows something about fate herself. She wears the requisite black shawl, and though she is only middle-aged, she looks like an old soul, black eyes reflecting the
saudade
of the world. She does not begin, she erupts. Her voice turns my spine into a live electric wire. I have no idea what the words mean, but her music is preverbal anyway, a direct communication among all of the nerve endings. During intermission Carlos orders Bagaço, much like grappa.

The next singer knocks us off our chairs. He looks so unlikely. The
fadista
fit the role, but Luis Tomar, rigid in his suit, could be selling insurance. Just to prove you can never judge anyone by appearance, his voice, so rife with restrained emotion, sunders the room’s atoms. Passion threatens to overwhelm the song at any minute but remains contained, remains pitched to a timbre that corresponds exactly with the synapses of your own private longings and dreams. I wish he would sing forever.

Now
we know how to eat. On our long walks to look at the rhythmic patterned sidewalks and tile-faced buildings—we love coming upon the occasional 1950s tile facade—we stop for lunch at an appealing
tasca
. At night we ignore all the rated restaurants in our guidebooks and follow our noses toward home cooking in our neighborhood.
Tascas
are lively and fun. You are not isolated from others but are in such proximity that an exchange of bites seems normal. Not many tourists, we notice, are among our fellow diners. The plainness of the decor probably puts off the foreign traveller. We go back several times to the Floresta and to the blue-and-white-tiled Minho Verde on our nearby Sant’Ana street for the loud atmosphere, the grilled hunks of pork and big shrimp, duck with rice, green bean soup, and plates of sliced, peeled oranges that are plonked onto the table. Locals are ordering the grilled pork liver and slabs of grilled fish with lemons. The Portuguese breads are simply the best. I could live on bread alone—and the bowls of olives that always appear on the table. At others we try the famous
cataplana
dishes, the lusty stews of pork and clams or of onions, peppers, octopus, and clams. The son shouts orders to Mama in the kitchen. A taffy and white cat slinks around my legs. Ed loves those twelve-euro bills.