If you have ever wandered through an Azorean-American community anywhere from Fall River to San Jose between May and September, you have probably seen the crowds gathered around an Imperio, one of those small...
The Algarve does not get nearly enough credit on this blog, mostly because my own family history runs through the north and the islands rather than the south coast. But I would be doing...
This blog leans heavily Portuguese, for obvious reasons, but I have always said Maria's Cookbook is a Mediterranean kitchen at heart, and no single dish makes that case better than shakshuka. It is not...
Zaalouk was not on my radar at all until a Moroccan neighbor brought a container of it to a block party a few summers ago, tucked in next to a tray of my own...
Filhós are the grand matriarchs of the Portuguese Christmas fry-up: pillowy rounds of orange-and-brandy scented dough, stretched thin by hand, fried in olive oil and showered with cinnamon sugar. In my grandmother’s village, the...
Arroz de feijão malandrinho — “naughty” bean rice — is the soupy, soulful rice that Portuguese home cooking cannot function without: red beans and rice simmered loose in a tomato refogado until every grain...
My husband ordered a poncha on our first night in Funchal thinking it would taste like sangria with a funny name, and about ten minutes later he was telling our waiter his entire life...
This is the soup with the story, and in this house the story is half the reason we make it. A hungry friar walks into a village in Almeirim with nothing but a stone...
I cannot believe it has taken me this many years on the blog to finally write down a proper pastéis de nata recipe. It feels almost backwards, like writing a novel and forgetting to...
Rabanadas are the smell of a Portuguese Christmas Eve: thick slices of day-old bread soaked in warm cinnamon-lemon milk, dipped in egg, fried golden and rolled in cinnamon sugar. French toast’s older, wiser Iberian...
