As promised in my last post about San Sebastian, I’m back with more food adventures to tell! This time, we’re diving into my time in Portugal. After we wined and dined ourselves in Spain, we decided to meet our good friends in Portugal, another country we hadn’t yet experienced. Last year it was Croatia and Vienna, which we absolutely loved.
My favorite thing about Portugal, besides how lovely the people were, was definitely the seafood. We ate it for lunch and dinner every day! We were overwhelmed with the freshest fish and crustaceans at every meal.
You really don’t see this variety of seafood at home!
This crab was like a pet!!! They don’t eat him but just keep him around for entertainment! He was alive!!!
Everything was so sweet and fresh, it barely needed anything besides a squeeze of lemon!
I could eat these langoustine everyday!!!
Portugal is known for its sardines. This was my favorite way of eating them … simply grilled!!
I kid you not, I must have eaten steamed clams for pretty much every meal. The clams are just so different there. They’re much juicier and have two heads!! Here’s a couple of photos and an easy recipe that was inspired by the amazing clams we had while we were over there.
Ingredients
- 2 pounds small clams
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, diced
- 1 pinch red pepper flakes (optional)
- 1/4 cup dry white wine
- 1/2 lemon, juiced
- 1/2 cup parsley, chopped
Instructions
- Place the clams in a large basin of salty water. Leave them out for around 2 hours so they expel their sand.
- Drain the salty water and rinse them well in running cold tap water.
- In a sauté pan, warm the olive oil and add the garlic. Sauté on low heat, so as not to brown the garlic, for about 5 minutes.
- Add pepper flakes. Stir and cook for around 1 minute.
- Add the cleaned clams and white wine and squeeze of half a lemon.
- Cover and cook until the clams are all open, around 8 minutes.
- Transfer to a bowl and sprinkle with chopped parsley.
- Serve with bread to soak up all the delicious juices. Enjoy!
