A double-day update here. Largely because I'm lagging behind but also because Friday was, quite literally, nothing to write home about. Certainly not from a food perspective.
Ok, Thursday first. An absolute scorcher of a day. The wind that has been around for much of the week had all but disappeared, leaving a clear blue sky and soaring temperature. By the way, I don't really know the exact temperature as there's nothing along the promenade showing it, as there often is in this type of place. I do know that the temperature on our car dashboard was showing 22 degrees on Friday, a much cooler day than Thursday.
Anyway, as usual I've gone off on a tangent.
So, hot day meant a long stint on the beach where I bought a bag of doughnuts from a local lady who walks up and down the beach all day long with a little white cart, tooting her horn. She's very popular and seems to do a lot of business. I'll take a photo of her next time I have my phone at the beach.
The doughnuts tided us over until lunch when we went to the inevitable 'English' cafe, Martinho's. It had been recommended to us by Mary, the lady who showed us to our apartment and gave us the keys, although I suspect she might have an interest in the place.
The Missus had a rather good chicken caesar salad (without anchovies at her request), Pookster had cod goujons, which, she assured us, were very tasty and I had one of the finest burgers I've ever had the pleasure to eat; possibly second only to one I had from Five Guys Burger & Fries in Orlando, Florida, earlier in the year. The menu stated at all the burgers were hand-made from traceable ground Scottish beef and I chose the 'stacked chilli burger', topped with cheese, onion rings, lettuce, tomato and a cheeky chilli sauce on a lightly toasted sesame seed bun. Very good and one worthy of a second visit.
After lunch it was back to the beach to make the most of the fantastic weather.
Later, then, and to dinner. Having eaten out for lunch we decided to eat in so it was a trip to the supermarket for me, returning with a salami and tin of tomatoes. An old 'blokeinthekitchen' classic, this one but one we haven't had for some time.
So, a couple of crushed garlic cloves are sautéed with olive oil until sizzling, but not browned then the sliced salami is added to the oil along with a good dose of black pepper and dried chilli (I used the piri-piri seasoning I'd bought earlier in the week).
Once the salami starts to release it's colour into the oil, add a tin of tomatoes to the pan plus about a third of the can of water. Add a pinch of salt, give it a good stir and simmer for about half an hour, until the sauce is thickened. Serve over pasta (I used spaghetti because I had some) and scatter over some grated cheese (again, using up stuff I had in, I used a mature cheddar but I'd usually use Parmesan here) and roughly chopped parsley.
We enjoyed this outside on our terrace with some crusty bread drizzled with garlic-infused olive oil and a few glasses of a crispy local rosé wine.
And so to Friday. Another misty start so I decided to venture down to the local tourist information office to see what else the region had to offer. Unfortunately, most of the information was in Portuguese but there were a few PC's with free Internet access. I took the opportunity to look up the address of Mundus, the restaurant I mentioned we'd failed to find in an earlier post.
By the time I'd emerged from the office, now in possession of the restaurant's address, the sky had cleared so I headed back to the apartment to gather the troops and head to the beach.
Our time at the beach, however, lasted only a few hours as the sky clouded over so we decided to once again attempt to find the elusive Mundus for lunch.
Our TomTom found the address, no problem, so we set off in the direction of Nazaré. Problem is, there have been a lot of new roads built in the area and we spent a lot of time on roads that, according to the satnav, didn't exist. Still, we knew the way to Nazaré and got there ok, however it was the exact location of the restaurant that eluded us previous. But we had the address this time so we'd find it no problem, right? Wrong. No matter which way we tried to approach the area, we were always directed to the same place - a road that, due to the aforementioned roadworks, now ends rather abruptly half way down.
After another fruitless half hour driving in circles, I headed back to Sao Martinho.
We ended up in a beach-front cafe/bar called Fraxinus where, the day after having one of the best burgers I've had just one block away, I endured one of the worst. Least said about it the better. And the service was rubbish too. In fact the only memorable thing about Fraxinus was that I bought a pair of fake Armani sunglasses from a guy wandering round outside after the arms fell off the Duffer ones I'd brought to wear at the beach (to save my Ray-Bans from getting wrecked). This guy wanted €20 but after I'd walked away and he'd chased after me, he went down to €10. I ended up giving him €5 plus another €1 just to get rid of him after he followed me back to our table gesticulating and rabbiting on in Portuguese.
Later in the day, a rather more momentous occasion, I thought, when we watched Raiders of the Lost Ark with Pooky (aged 8) for the first time.
The day was finished off with a supper of pâté, olives, cheeses, meats and crackers which, in it's simplicity, was far more enjoyable than that awful burger from earlier in the day.
We've now given up on finding Mundus. We've promised Pooks that we'll go to Bem Brasil when we get home.
The Bloke.
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