Last weekend, 29, 30 and 31 March, Alcoutim (Portugal) and Sanlucar de Guadiana (Spain), hosted an amazing festival which I am delighted to say we were able to enjoy to the fullest! Ourselves and, at a rough guesstimate, 10 000 other people too. Well done to both villages!

I love trying out new dishes and cooking with foods I’ve never even heard of never mind cooked. I went to the local fish counter and had the pleasure of being dealt with by Daniel, a kind, helpful and delightful man who gave me cooking tips for Safio – conger eel. I didn’t even know what it was so I was very happy for his input. And for google telling me what it was!

We met the delightful Uschi at a market in Barao de Sao Joao in February and had the pleasure of not only spending some time with her, but also getting to eat a superb Savoy cabbage and orange dish she made. I love trying different dishes and this one certainly took the cake for me. Or the cabbage in this instance…

We had a delicious Feijoada lingueirao at the Bombeiros restaurant in Vila Real de Santo Antonio. Translated into English, this is a Bean and Razor clam dish, like a stew, served with rice. It was lovely and I was delighted to get to try razor clams. They are for sale here in bundles the size of a big fist, but I hadn’t cooked them myself until recently.

My mate Annie told me about a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe for a Cauliflower broccoli blue cheese pie that she and Andy love, so I decided to look it up and give it a try. But as I only had half the ingredients, wanted to make something with chicken and had a guest who doesn’t like blue cheese, a whole nother pie was born!

Let me start off by saying that this is no dessert for the faint hearted. This is a dessert for toughies, not sissies. Well, if you can even call it a dessert… But let me first start by introducing you to our awesome mates, Andy and Annie.

We stopped in this tiny village as I’d heard that there was a Dolmen church here…no, me either, so I googled it to save you having too. A Dolmen is also known as a cromlech (like that’s a help!) is a single-chamber tomb, mostly dating from 4000-3000BC. So like 7000 years old!

Uta and Markus are more deevine family members on my husband’s side and we just love them. Markus is Joerg’s cousin and Uta is his wife. We were lucky enough to be able to spend a little time with them this summer and Uta made these deeelicious patties for us.

As is the case with so many great meals that we’ve had in Portugal, a restaurant will often be called a snack bar and you wouldn’t even think to go and eat there. Our good friend, Moni, recommended this eatery to us and we were delighted with the great food we had there.

Coruche is situated about 48km inland from Lisbon and we discovered it and its Balloon Festival quite by chance. I tend to look for rivers, lakes or dams for overnight stops and this is how we discovered Coruche. And they threw in a balloon festival to impress us too!