Taking a cooking class is always on my list of must-dos when traveling. During our food tour in Lisbon, another traveler recommended a cooking class in Porto through AirBnB Experiences. Airbnb Experiences have become our go-to source for tours and activities. We love the unique offerings in small groups.
Learning How to Make Pastel de Nata! took place at the host’s, Joana’s, apartment just outside the city. This means I got to learn how to use the Porto Metro and have a short walk in the suburbs. It was a gorgeous afternoon and, on my way back, I got to catch the full moon in all her glory.
The experience included getting to know seven other travelers and working together to create our pastries. The group included people from the UK, France, Norway, and San Francisco. Covid Note: To enter Portugal, you must present a negative covid test taken within 72 hours of departure. Several in the group had just arrived from the UK and had negative results but our group remained masked the entire time unless we were eating or drinking. Masks are not a big deal here and are easily worn by all, inside and outside.
Pastel de Nata is the most well-known Portuguese pastry and is available in every corner coffee shop. It’s a puff pastry cup with an egg crème filling and a dash of cinnamon on top. Making puff pastry from scratch is not easy to do or to teach but Joana was able to make it simple and all our pastry puffed! She’d learned the technique from her grandmother. It does include a rolling pin but does not mean you roll it! For the recipe and technique, you will have to take the class. Add it to your list!
Kenn and I went back out to Joana’s on Monday to learn how to prepare two cod dishes and an octopus dish. Cod is a staple in the Portuguese diet and the traditional recipes use salt cod just as they did before refrigeration was widely available. Dried salt cod is available in all grocery stores and takes some preparation before you can cook with it.
Joana had already soaked the cod for about 48 hours, changing the water every 12. In the class, we broke the cod apart from the skin and picked out the bones. The next step was to wring the extra moisture out of the cod using the special “cod towel.” Joana says it is important to keep a towel dedicated for this step and only use it for this and nothing else. It is also important to make sure it goes right into the wash after this step. I cannot imagine the smell of this towel a couple of days afterwards without a good washing. Once the cod was soaked, deskinned, deboned, and wrung out it’s a beautiful shredded flaked fish that is ready to be added into recipes.
We made pasteis de bacalhau and bacalhau à Brás with the cod. Pasteis de bacalhau are traditional “salgadas,” or salty snacks. Most cafés serve them along with other croquette-type snacks and they run from €1-2. You can also buy them frozen at the grocery store, but the ones we made at Joana’s were the best we have tasted. Onion, potato, salt, egg, parsley, and cod are the only ingredients. Mix it together and fry in oil. Yum! We gobbled all those up before clicking a pic. We did capture a gorgeous picture of the bacalhau à Brás.
We also learned to make octopus rice. Octopus is one of Kenn’s favorite foods. And, although he feels a bit guilty eating it after seeing the movie My Octopus Teacher, it is still delicious and the guilt does not stop him. For octopus rice, a slow, low, long cook is necessary to give the octopus a soft, buttery texture. We cooked the rice in the juices from the octopus and the entire dish was like a salted seafood explosion of flavor in our mouths. We hope to try cooking octopus rice for our Christmas dinner this year.