rojões and postas
A Little Geography
Although Portugal is no longer divided into provinces, you will still hear people referring to them frequently, especially when it comes to traditions such as food and folk dancing. In the former province of Minho, you’ll order Rojões à Moda do Minho from a Minhota. When you’re in the south, prepare to be confused as you order carne de porco à alentejana which is actually from the Algarve, not the Alentejo. But you get my drift: the provincial names are deeply ingrained in the local culture and politics be damned.
These were the provinces from 1936-1976 (autonomous regions like the Azores and Madeira were always separate): Alentejo (Alto and Baixo), Algarve, Beira (Litoral, Alta, Baixa), Douro Litoral, Estremadura, Minho, Ribatejo and Trás-os-Montes/Alto Douro. These names remain active in the vocabulary of younger people like my husband, born after the government dissolved the provinces and created districts. I imagine the provincial names will stay alive as long as their dishes keep being made and eaten.
The Food
The dishes you see here are typical of the former province of Minho. Actually, typical of all the north, while we’re at it: feeding everyone like we’re farmers and withering away. What was once true in past centuries seems to have stuck forevermore. Beware of ordering a dish for each person, because it’s usually meant for two people sharing. Minho is where the national soup, caldo verde, originated. Also, vinho verde (green/young wine), which we introduced to our couchsurfers with this meal.
Restaurante Muralha caught my eye (and nose) in Ponte de Lima while we were searching for a place to eat that was open on a Sunday night. I scanned the outside menu and convinced everyone that the search was over, based on the fact it had postas on the list. You see, northern-style postas have proven to be rather elusive for Casa Aguiar: several times we’ve stopped by restaurants that were famous for their postas, only to find they had sold out for the day.
After some research, I still don’t know what kind of cut constitutes a posta, but it’s like a thick steak. I’ve seen it translated to ‘chunks’ or ‘slices’. You can get a posta de bacalhau (chunk-? of codfish), Posta à Mirandesa which is a veal steak, et cetera. In Minho, the postas include beef and apparently the posta assada was one of this restaurant’s specialties.
While postas are an easy sell to foreigners, rojões are definitely not, but our visitors wanted to try it, anyway. You can probably guess from the photo, but the dish includes all manner of pork products: tripe, cooked blood, liver, loin, etc. We assured them that if they couldn’t get through it all that we would trade our postas. And since the restaurant had tables outside (one of the reasons why I wanted to eat there), Ice was fetched from the car and he would be MORE than happy to help out with the rojões, too.
In the end, we surprised ourselves at how much we could eat. We cleared all the plates!
January 31, 2016
Album: Peneda-Gerês National Park + Minho, Portugal
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