Cooking Lessons from the Algarve

Every summer, the family would gather in the Algarve. And every summer, the kitchen would become the centre of everything — not the beach, not the pool, but that small tiled kitchen with the blue-and-white azulejos and a window overlooking the fig tree.

The cataplana lesson

The first time I watched my avó make a cataplana, I learned something that applies far beyond cooking: preparation is everything, execution is simple.

She'd spend 30 minutes prepping — dicing onions, peeling tomatoes, cleaning clams, deveining prawns. Every ingredient had its place on the counter before the cataplana even touched the stove. Then the actual cooking? Fifteen minutes, barely any intervention.

Layer, close, wait, serve.

Simplicity over complexity

Portuguese cooking, especially Algarvian cooking, is radically simple. A cataplana has maybe 10 ingredients. Grilled fish has three: fish, olive oil, salt. Pastéis de nata are eggs, sugar, cream, and pastry.

The magic isn't in complexity — it's in quality and timing:

• Fresh fish from the market that morning
• Olive oil from the estate down the road
• Tomatoes so ripe they split when you look at them
• Coriander picked five minutes before serving

There's a lesson here that applies to work, too. The best processes aren't the most complex ones. They're the ones with the fewest steps executed at the right time with the right inputs.

The rhythm of the kitchen

What I remember most isn't individual dishes. It's the rhythm. Morning coffee with pastéis de nata from the bakery. Mid-morning trip to the fish market. Long, slow lunch preparation. Afternoon rest. Evening grilling on the terrace.

The kitchen had a rhythm, and everyone knew their role without being told. My avó ran it like a conductor — no project plan, no Gantt chart, just decades of practice and a clear understanding of what needed to happen when.

Bringing it to Switzerland

Now I cook Portuguese food in a Swiss kitchen, and it's not quite the same — the tomatoes aren't as sweet, the fish isn't from this morning, and there's no fig tree outside the window. But the principles transfer perfectly:

1. Prep everything before you start — mise en place isn't optional
2. Use the best ingredients you can find — no technique compensates for bad inputs
3. Don't overcomplicate it — if a dish needs 10 ingredients, don't use 15
4. Respect the timing — some things can't be rushed

The recipes section of this site is my attempt to document the dishes I grew up with — not as casual food blogs, but as proper spec sheets you can actually follow. Because good recipes deserve precision.