I may not have met any yet, but they do exist. A friend of mine is cooking for a bunch of people at a festival she helps organize every year, and around ten of them are vegetarians. She gets stressed out enough as it is trying to cook for a bunch of people, but the whole vegetarian thing has her ready to pull her hair out.
You see, the Portuguese, or at least most of them, really like their meat. Pork, beef, mutton, goat, rabbit — it’s all good eats to them. No animal is deemed too fuzzy or too cute for slaughter. OK, cats and dogs are not on the menu, but you get what I mean. It’s a very different culture over here, one you can still find many people living off their own land and raising their own livestock for food. If you come at the right time of year, you’ll probably be invited to the annual pig slaughter and resulting feast.
So this friend of mine has been having a hard time trying to figure out what exactly she is going to feed these vegetarians. “If only they would eat some fish, it would be easy, but they don’t even eat fish!” I tried to explain to her some simple ideas for vegetarian meals, but we didn’t get very far into it because we kept veering off topic. Still, she ended up with a few good ideas that are easy to make both with meat and meat-free.
One thing she already knew how to make was a soy bolognese sauce, which seems to be a popular go-to meal among the handful of vegetarians in the area. I’ve never heard of granulated soy, nor do I think I ever want to try it, but if they like it then cool beans. Another dish she’ll be making is Russian Salad, which I have to admit, is super easy and awesome.
The thing is, a lot of traditional Portuguese dishes are inherently meatless or contain so little that to leave it out would hardly change the dish at all. Almost all Portuguese soups are vegetarian. In fact, I can only think of two where meat is an important ingredient: Sopa de Pedra (that’s Stone Soup, just like the children’s story) and homemade chicken soup. Because many still take great pride in being self sufficient and thrifty, and legumes are cheap and very easy to grow, stewed chickpeas, favas, or black eyed peas can be found on many a dinner table as a main course.
In fact, traditional Portuguese cuisine has come to my rescue many times over the last year when I had no idea what the frick I was going to eat for dinner. So, even though I don’t understand my friend’s stress over feeding vegetarians, I do hope that for next year’s festival she’ll let me help her out. Who knows, maybe she’ll even add a vegetarian meal or two to her own menu.
Clacked by Cate Cropp
on Jul 24, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
