Fidalgo

The Plane

If the earth's depths provide heat and boiling water, why not use it to cook corn?

Fried chicharros with baked beans is a typical dish at the Mané Cigano tavern in Ponta Delgada. The dish is served with local pepper and pickled onions, a type of pickles flavored with Galician lemon.

Salt-cured local pepper and pickled onions, seasoned with Galician lemon, are a type of pickle that accompanies fried chicharros and baked beans. A unique delicacy at Mané Cigano.

The Galician lemon has the shape of a lemon but the color of a tangerine. Common in the Azores, it may have resulted from a graft between a lemon tree and a tangerine tree. It is widely used in cooking, especially in fish seasoning.

At the easternmost tip of the Serra do Caldeirão, in Alcoutim, brothers Manuel and Rui Jerónimo continue a family legacy with Feito no Zambujal. Here, the raising of Alentejo pigs follows a traditional process based on respect: the animals grow freely, fed with cereals, vegetables, and acorns, until they reach 18 months.

The butchering and production of cured meats take place in the factory built on the hill, where tradition sets the pace. Chorizos, cured meats, and hams are slowly cured with time and patience, using natural ingredients like Castro Marim salt, homemade pepper paste, and smoke from juniper and holm oak, which gives them a unique flavour.

Between the fields and the smokehouse, a few kilometres from Octant Praia Verde, Feito no Zambujal preserves ancient knowledge and carries with it the taste of doing things the old way.