The European cookbook for American homes (from Italy, Spain, Portugal and France)

Lunch along this craggy seacoast begins more often than not with delectable raw oysters, fresh from the clear waters of the sea, served in their shells with lemon and pepper freshground from the wooden mill on the table. But inland, especially in towns, the standard appetite opener is fiambres, frios, or cold cuts, taking the place of the more elaborate Spanish entremesas; sliced native salamis always, radishes, olives, fresh butter on a lettuce leaf, sardines and shrimp, with plenty of pepper sauce, mustard and peppy condiments. And by the way, the pepper sauce of Portugal is not to be sneezed at. It comes via Brazil, and is quickly prepared at the table, for it is simply red and green chilis mashed into fresh juice of limes preferably, or lemons, with a wooden spoon. A trickle of this stimulating sauce goes into everything. The name of the midday meal is almoco, which proves its twinship with the Hispanic almuerzo, but fish here often takes precedence over the Spanish egg dishes, and both are combined in shrimp or oyster omelets. Fish in all fashions, from broiled bacalhao (codfish) through peixe escabeche (pickled fish), to linguado (sole) with shrimp sauce. Then eggs or not. Bifes follow, of course, mostly cooked with onion, and varied by pork, veal and mutton on occasion. Chicken in aspic, young turkey stuffed with chestnut dressing, or preferably a game-bird pie, pastelao de cacabrava. Wines white and red, drunk in as great quantity as in Spain, though the ordinary ones are inferior in quality and variety. Dry Bucellas (similar to Rhine wine), or Collares are the favorite whites, with rivals in Arinto, Termo, Carcavellos. Both sweet and dry wines are produced in the vicinity of Lisbon and exported in the name of this capital city, though locally they are known as Palmella and Inglezhinos (little English ones). Bucellas closely resembles Rhine wine because it is grown on vines originally transplanted from the Rhineland. The vin ordinaire, or vinho do pais, is labeled Consumo. It grows in the Douro valley near the Alto Douro, where the celebrated port wines are produced. It is a natural dry red of low price that stands shipment well, has a flavor all its own, similar to Montpellier from which eau-de-vie is made in France. Among the best known table reds are Collares, Lavradio, Lamego, Torres Vedras and Moncaon; but the Portuguese themselves have a palate for young wines, called vinho verde, green wine, or for vinho virgem, virgin wine, that comes in large clay bottles and is seldom shipped abroad. The taste for them must be acquired, the same as a taste for Spanish manzanilla, young white sherry, though as a matter of fact it is almost necessary to put in a full day at hard manual labor in order to develop a thirst for such strong, crude potations. Late in the afternoon these astringent wines of peculiar flavor, fixed up with herbs and spirits, are sometimes drunk as aperitifs, but more often local brandy or Brazilian rum is gulped down in the bars with sapid empadinhas all in one bite. These empadinhas are succulent pasties filled with olives, bits of fish, game, mushrooms, any luscious tidbit surrounded by juicy gravy and enclosed in pie crust. They are a considerable refinement