Recipes and techniques from a lifelong passion for cooking.
Master the building blocks behind great dishes.
The brothy, almost soupy style of the Portuguese coast โ ratio, starch and timing, not luck
Malandro ('naughty/loose') rice is the brothy style eaten with a spoon โ the opposite of a dry paella. The broth is the dish: high-starch short grain, never rinsed, suspended in plenty of flavoured liquid and served immediately, because it keeps drinking the broth as it sits.
Rehydrate and desalt the salt cod by taste, then confit the loin in oil at 65โ70 ยฐC instead of boiling it
Salt cod is cured rock-hard and intensely saline; it must be rehydrated and desalted before cooking. The optional second move โ confiting the desalted loin in olive oil at low temperature instead of boiling โ is the single biggest upgrade to texture, taking it from flaky-but-dry to silky.
Holding tough, collagen-rich cuts wet and low long enough to convert collagen to gelatine โ past apparent doneness
Tough, hard-working cuts โ pork cheeks above all โ are dense with collagen. Held wet at a low temperature for long enough, that collagen hydrolyses into gelatine, which is what makes the meat melt and lends the sauce its glossy body. A braise must continue past apparent doneness.