“This book preserves and shares the everyday food of my heritage, introducing it to those who are interested in exploring this soul-comforting, understated peasant food of the Portuguese,” says Ana Patuleia Ortins in the preface to her cookbook Portuguese Home Cooking, written in 2001.

The origins of this cookbook are very personal for the author, who started out, as many cookbook authors do, wanting only to put her family recipes in written form so that her children and their children would have them.

But this mission soon took on new meaning for her when other Portuguese families added their recipes to the pile, wanting their own favorite recipes to be preserved as well.

The author notes that Portuguese food is still so little known in the rest of the world, and that many confuse the cuisine with Spanish food. The desire to right this situation, and really showcase how uniquely different Portuguese cooking is, evolved into a published book that explores the full range of Portuguese home cooking.

Ortins succeeds in her mission exceptionally well and has earned the respect of many Portuguese chefs for her attention to detail and her unflagging desire to keep her recipes as authentically Portuguese as possible.

Emphasis on Home Cooking

Ortins’ approach is clear—the recipes in her book are gathered from home cooks, not from professional chefs or restaurants. In her point of view, the hallmark of Portuguese cuisine is its accessibility for the home cook. The flavors of this cuisine are specific, but the food is not hard to learn to prepare.

The ingredients are usually easy to find in America, and the proportions of ingredients are fairly flexible or, as the author points out, com gusto (to your liking).

In her Introduction, Ortins discusses one aspect of the home cooking nature of Portuguese cuisine that I am very familiar with myself, that of hospitality. In Ortins family, as in mine, a visit from anyone always meant having food or something to drink. The guest is encouraged to eat and to have more and then more again! She notes that their guests never left empty-handed, whether they were given pears from the tree outside or something from the kitchen. The Portuguese host would not feel comfortable if he did not offer something, even if that was the very last something in the house!

Home Cooking from Region to Region

Ortins herself is a first-generation Portuguese and was born in this country. Her family came from the Alto Alentejo province of mainland Portugal, and this is the regional cuisine she knows best. However, she gives equal time in her book to other regions of the mainland and to the cooking of the Azores Islands. Those seeking information about Madeiran cooking won’t find many recipes in this particular cookbook.
One of the things that Ortins does best in this book is her detailed do-it-yourself sections. In addition to recipes, she teaches the reader how to make their own sausages, homemade cheese and even how homemade wine is created. I remember the homemade wines of my own relatives and love that she is preserving this practice in her book. Ortins notes in her Introduction that substituting certain ingredients really changes the authenticity of the results. Sausages are a good example of this. If you substitute the Portuguese linguiça with kielbasa, for example, you may end up with a good dish, but it won’t be Portuguese anymore. This makes her methods for making your own sausage (or cheese, etc.) doubly important.

The Recipes

The recipes that I have tried in Portuguese Homestyle Cooking have been easy to follow and my results have been very good. Some of them, such as the Coelho com Arroz de Cabidela (Braised Rabbit with Rice), are ambitious and require preparations the day ahead. Some everyday cooks aren't going to want to take these measures, it is true. But Ortins' dedication to authenticity requires, in some cases, a lot of work because simplifying the steps changes the results. There are plenty of easier dishes in the book, however and this balances out the ones that take longer to put together. Try the Galinha Assada com Alho (Roasted Chicken with Garlic) with the Salada de Pimenta Doce (Sweet Pepper Salad) for a simple and delicious Sunday dinner with your family!