THE NEW PORTUGUESE TABLE
Exciting Flavors from Europe’s Western Coast
by David Leite
Clarkson Potter
256 pp. $32.50

It’s difficult to please everyone equally in a cookbook club with every cookbook we choose. Each of us has favorite ingredients and flavor combinations, and even cooking techniques that we’re drawn to. But The New Portuguese Table came pretty darn close.

Several members appreciated the fact that the ingredients weren’t too difficult to gather, which hasn’t been true of all of the books we’ve done, and almost everyone enjoyed the meals they made from the book. Several members, myself included, who wrote to the author on his site (Leite’s Culinaria) with questions about this or that appreciated the author’s accessibility and responsiveness.

For myself, I loved the (more…)

This posting includes clear instructions for roasting a fine turkey for your Thanksgiving table, courtesy of David Leite. What it’s really about, though, is the stuffing. Because that is what everyone really wants, isn’t it?

Now that I’ve lured you in with the word stuffing, a word that always elicits anticipation among my family members and is the side dish that, no matter how much extra is made, always, sadly, seems to be depleted first, I should say that, technically, what follows are recipes for dressings, in that the turkey isn’t stuffed with them.

From Leite’s cookbook The New Portuguese Table, I’ve learned that the only thing better than one dressing is (more…)

Without intending to write a follow-up to my last posting on heirloom seeds, I’ve done so with this story, which deals with the other h word—heritage breeds.

A couple of weeks ago, after having done the work of making a double batch of David Leite’s Amped-Up Red Pepper Paste as well as his Piri-Piri Sauce, both in his cookbook The New Portuguese Table, I decided to make two poultry recipes that would highlight their flavors.

I started with Leite’s Quick Weekday Roast Chicken with Potaotes. The chicken is (more…)

I used to think the difference between a tortilla and frittata is that the former is flipped and returned to the pan to brown and the latter is browned in the oven.

Why I ever wanted to categorize, classify, and clarify, in my own mind, the characteristics of the frittata versus tortilla, I don’t know. David Leite’s recipe for a sausage tortilla in his cookbook The New Portuguese Table freed me from that pointless exercise, which is not to the main point: enjoying a delicious egg dish, whatever its regional names or styles of making.

Leite’s tortilla, or tortilha in Portuguese, similar to (more…)

On the fourth glorious day of eating Green Olive Dip, while sitting on our front porch in our Victorian neighborhood, I realized what is so intriguing about this dip. And why I love David Leite’s cookbook The New Portuguese Table and the Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

To my non-Portuguese palate, evolved from a one part mid-Western, one part Southern, but entirely anchovy-free diet, there is something ever so slightly (more…)

This past weekend, while driving home from a late summer swim, I saw an unusual sign for free tomatoes by the side of a back road. Unusual because here in Vermont, during the last few years, tomatoes have either been (more…)