Food in Trás-os-Montes

Bragança is a small town in the north of Portugal.We don´t have the sea near us, so our main food source is the animals we raise.

Like this “Posta à mirandesa” appeared.

Posta à Mirandesa

Alheira

Alheira appeared when the Jews were being harassed by The Inquisition. As they didn’t eat pork, they would be easily

identified by their pursuers by not eating the smoked pork sausage. So, they replaced the pork by a huge variety of other

meats, such as veal, rabbit, turkey, duck and chicken, sometimes partridge, tucked into richly seasoned dough of wheat bread.

Garlic played an important part as it cleverly disguised the lack of pork if any investigation would be carried out.

Alheira” nowadays appears like a reutilization of the porc meat that can not be used to make steaks. To make “alheiras” was and still is a way of being with friends and family, because when in the village someone makes them all the other people come to help and meahwhile they catch up with each other.

Sweet Rice

• Trás os Montes was a poor region, and our main activity was agriculture, so we had to live from what the earth gave us: meat, vegetables and cereals like wheat, rye and rice. Like that Sweet Rice is one of the desserts typical from this region. The decoration is made with cinnamon and, due to the poverty of ingredients the dessert was valued by his drawings, which were many times a masterpiece.

The end…