At the market today, I stumbled across a display of Vinho Verde. In case you aren’t familiar with it. Vinho Verde is a Portuguese green wine that tastes like a late night in Serpa when you’ve stayed up all night dancing with the boys who are just of age enough to not be scandalous company. The boys come by your place every evening around 10pm after the heat has broken and take you out to the plazas of town where they drink beer and practice their English and impress upon you the need to try some local spirits. Before they return you to the place you’re staying purely on the hospitality of some total strangers, you all stop by the bakery because it is 3am and they are pulling fresh loaves of bread right out of the oven. And because you hadn’t been drinking all that much, you stay up a little longer in the kitchen eating the fresh bread with butter and honey and talking some more about you can’t remember what, you only remember that they were very charming, with impeccable manners and there was nothing Y Tu Mama Tabien about the whole thing even though you were 29 and they were 19 and could easily have been played by that dishy Gael Garcia Bernal and oh, let’s say, Jude Law because one of them was dark and the other fair.
I was already mentally in Portugal because when I cracked the cook books I found that I was quite interested in the salt cod recipes. Decent salt cod isn’t easy to find, though I will ask at the fish market when I am there next. Instead of salt cod, I opted for a beautiful rainbow trout from Idaho because next to the salt cod recipes was a Tuscan recipe for something called “Drunken Trout” and that seemed fitting with the combination of a little Vinho Verde, an American with a nostalgic memory, and Fish Wednesday. I do wish I could invite those boys for dinner, they were really delightful and kind. The way they stopped in to look after me every single day is one of my favorite memories about traveling solo. One time they made crepes with lemon and sugar in the little detached kitchen and another, we feasted on BBQed sardines when the Soares family (it was their house, the dark haired boy was a cousin) came down from Lisbon for a long weekend. Vinho Verde may not be all that for you, but I still recommend you give it a try, very cold, and see if you can resist feeling a little bit like the end of a very hot day in the shadow of a lime tree filled with singing birds.
I was saying. Trout. Yes. Fish Wednesday. Yes. Where was I? Okay.
First, I scrubbed some fingerling potatoes, tossed them in a generous coating of olive oil, and roasted them in a hot oven. While that was happening, I talked on the phone with my Mom, my friend K, and chatted on IM with N, who wanted a little culinary advice on spicing towards the Moroccan side of the spectrum. Then, I diced the ends of a seeded baguette and a tomato and mixed them in a bowl with olive oil and the leaves from two sprigs of rosemary. I stuffed that inside the trout, wrapped it in foil, and lay it on top of the potatoes. After putting the trout in the oven – it doesn’t take long to cook, ten to 15 minutes, tops – I popped the cork on the Vinho Verde. Yum.
The roasted potatoes were as expected, crispy outside, soft and a tiny bit sweet inside. The trout was moist and and the stuffing turned out sort of like a roasted Tuscan bread salad. The tomatoes and the rosemary were both from my garden, so they could not have been any fresher. The cookbook calls for you to reduce some wine in butter and pour that over the fish, but I opted for leaving out the butter and pouring the wine directly in to my belly. Do I have to tell you that it was delicious? Well, it was.
Today’s Fish Wednesday shout out goes to Bronwen who had the good sense to assign Jessmonster the project of making, I kid you not, a fried fish sandwich with bacon and mayo. These gals might be schoolin’ Fish Wednesday in decadence, even if my Fish Wednesday comes with memories of late night disco and hot buttered bread with Portuguese boys. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must cue up some fado music and polish off another glass of wine.
[tags]Fish Wednesday, Portugal, trout, Vinho Verde[/tags]
Those are truly the type of traveling memories to cherish. It’s odd that those young men are to be found in so many countries, and they inspire such waves of fond memories many years later. I found them in Ulm, Germany, probably a decade before you found them in Portugal. How do they manage to stay eternally young?
It was the manners, really, they never said anything or did anything inappropriate, not even in the tiniest way. At the time, I thought nothing of it, it was as though I’d acquired brothers. But now, in retrospect, the rareness of it stuns me.
I might be willing to trade one fried fish sandwich for your trip to Portugal. Maybe even two.
Your meal sounds delicious! I particularly like your tip about saving steps on the wine.