Family

Portugal, like the rest of the Mediterranean, is very family oriented and family includes your extended family. You could apply the scenes from ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ to any family in Portugal. Any father there will clasp his hands together, look up to Heaven and say, ”Why? Why Me? What have I done to deserve this?”  You’ve never seen my English Bikerboy laugh so much when watching that scene.

All the women in my family can cook (and so can the men) but I mean really they can cook. All my aunts are fabulous cooks, very different styles but all understand flavour. There must be a Portuguese proverb somewhere about wanting to keep your husband you have to produce food with flavour . My Mother can make a meal out of thin air. She can have family or friends stop unannounced and before they can take their coats off there’ll be food on the table. I don’t know how she does it.

My Gran….

Almost every photograph of my Gran will have her wearing this blue and white check overall it’s like an apron but only covers all your clothes.  I have to mention this because looking through photos of her I realised she is wearing these all the time and the reason she wears these aprons is because she is always checking the food.  Throughout any family gathering she is never far away from the stove checking not only what she’s cooking but what my Mum is cooking not to so much to tell how to do it just to keep an eye on it.

My Gran is a remarkable woman. I know everyone’s Gran is something special but this woman deserves recognition. How many women do you know that were hired to slaughter pigs? I was named after her. I only wish I could be as brave as her. She is loved by everyone. All her sons-in-law treat her like their own Mother. All her grandchildren adore her. She is the sort of person that will cook 3 or 4 different dishes because she’ll be doing everyone’s favourite food. You cannot hide from her at the table, you think there’s a lot of noise with everyone having two, three different conversations that you can escape her notice but you would be mistaken. At the end she’ll ask you, ” why did you only eat the chicken? What was wrong with the pork? Was it overcooked? Not enough salt? Too much salt? Too dry? Too tough?…”  And you get the picture.

I admire her a great deal, never taught how to read or write, her mother was too poor to send her to school and then being the oldest girl she was too valuable to be away from home and helping with her siblings and housework. I remember being about 8 years old and accompanying my Gran to the local Friday market where she would sell her homegrown vegetables, eggs and sometimes rabbits. She would hustle her way into the right spot alongside more established old ladies all dressed in their mandatory windowed black and start bellowing her market calls trying to bring attention to her wares. She would turn around to me and say, “Come Azelia, shout out with me, say what lovely fresh eggs we’ve got here!”  You’d never seen me recoil so fast and hide behind her solid frame.

After selling her produce she would count the money and go about the market buying her weekly shopping. The last stop would be the bread & cake stalls where I would pick my ‘moninha’ a soft sweet bun sprinkled with sugar which I would eat with one hand whilst with the other I would be helping Gran carry the shopping to the bus stop. I always admire the fact that even without being able to recognise numbers she could count money, or weigh goods. She can’t even sign her name but it never stopped her from doing her business.

Asking Gran for one of her recipes…

Trying to extract a recipe out of my Gran is like solving an encrypted puzzle, she’s only too willing to pass on her knowledge but because she can’t write or make recipes by taking notice of time everything she makes is thereabouts or when it looks like it’s done.  This autumn asking her over the phone about her quince jam, known in Portugal as ‘marmelada’ was fun.  I kept asking how long to boil the fruit for and she kept saying a long time but she could mean half an hour or an hour or longer and then I realised that I’ve become too ‘cookery book’ in my approach to cooking from where I started.  When my Gran taught me how to cook when I was 9 years old and showed me how to make Portuguese rice and I burnt the onions I realised during this conversation what made me a good cook, and what makes her and others in the family good cooks is their ability to cook by feel.  Cooking by feel is what you’ll find in every culture, in the homes of cooks passing on their recipes to their offsprings and I’ve become so use to times and preciseness from books that I’ve forgotten how to follow verbal instructions and trust my eyes.  Writing this blog doesn’t help as I’m so conscious of all the variables of how a recipe can go wrong that I’ll try and explain in as much detail as I can  so anyone with the minimal amount of cooking knowledge can follow and succeed.  However much detail and photos you take nothing can replace your Gran or parent standing over the pan with you giving you guidance.

My Parents Garden taken during a family gathering summer 2008

My Dad

My parents retired back home to Northern Portugal 6 years ago.  My dad has a new found career of ‘labradore’ what we call a farmer, a few notches different from being a motor mechanic all of his life.  He has an acre of land and half of it they dedicate it to growing vegetables and fruit and other half as a garden. This very time consuming hobby is carried out by my father and Gran with the occasional hired help.  They grow potatoes, corn, tomatoes, courgettes, aubergines, beans, cabbages, lettuces, melons, squash, pears, apples, oranges, tangerines, plums, peaches, necterines, raspberries, kiwi, passion fruit, lemons, limas (still not figured out what they are over here) and a small amount of white grapes enough to make a few bottles of wine.  My dad also rears ducks and my Gran rears chickens and the turkey for Christmas.

My dad works far too hard in his plot of land and all of us at some point have had a stern word with him about it but he’s the sort of man that will do what he sees fit and there’s no convincing him otherwise and I think this is the very stubbornness and determination that has enable him to deal with his Multiple Sclerosis as well as he does.  If you met him you would never know he’s ill or even have the slightest incline he’s in pain everyday and his way of coping with it is pre-occupying himself with anything else.  My dad and I are from the same pod and therefore clash at times but I admire him a great deal.  The strength he has to cope with the cards he’s been dealt and he’s the sort of person who will help anyone who asks.  He had an awful childhood and has been independent from the age of 14 and everything he’s accomplished has been through sheer hard work.  You can’t help but admire him.

This taken from near the woods looking at the out buildings on the left and you can just about make out the house through the trees with its chimney.