The Portuguese Dinner...Again...much to my surprise...

On April 30, 2011 I wrote the following, with a few changes.

It was not until later that I realized we had almost done the same thing….five years before.

It was my daughters 17th (now 22^nd) birthday……….and then we would go out to dinner and she could choose where we would go ……..she chose the Wild Orchid, one of Hamilton’s favorite Portuguese restaurants.

We started with drinks…

(here is where the changes start. It turns out it could mostly be the same piece except its five years later and we added another daughter to the meal. Mateus Rose for us all this time..

We started the food portion of the evening with Pao De Aveiro, an appetizer which is an oven baked bread stuffed with Portuguese sausage and brushed with garlic. It is sort of half moon shaped bread.

We followed that with Calamari, breaded and deep fried and served with a tomato sauce.

My main dish was Arroz De Marisco This is Portuguese rice with Clams, Mussels, shrimp, Lobster, Crab, Calamari, Jumbo Tiger Shrimp and Scallops married together in a light pimento and tomato based sauce. Made in a Cataplana.

Cataplana is a Portuguese seafood dish, popular on the country's Algarve coast. It is also the name of the special cookware used to prepare the dish, which is traditionally made of copper and shaped like two clamshells hinged at one end and able to be sealed using a clamp on either side of the assembly.

Much like the word Tagine, Cataplana is the name for both the recipe and utensil in which you cook it. Cataplanas are a feature of many Algarve kitchen and are often used as a centrepiece dish at social gatherings.

It was so fantastic ……It’s pungent and mouth-watering and contains ….whole crab and lobster and massive amounts of all the other seafood. They had it for one or two on the menu… I had the one.

My highest recommendations go out for this dinner. My wife and daughters had  beautiful fish dishes served with rice and salad, two of which were sea bass, all coming in from Portugal.

If you’re in the Hamilton area, go to the Wild Orchid on James Street North, always a winner!