A very special Lady
When Luís Neves suggested staying with Mercês for our first residency, I thought Alentejo would be a great starting point for this adventure of writing about Portuguese Gastronomic Culture. But I wondered how would be our hostess, Mercês Sousa Ramos, the lady Luís met in the Campo Pequeno organic market here in Lisbon.
As we finally arrived in Sobral de Adiça on a hot August afternoon, Mercês wasn’t there. We stood outside the wooden gate trying to look inside and waited for a few minutes, the time our hostess takes from the “campo” or the fields she works a couple of kilometres away.
We certainly loved the house if we weren’t impressed by the village. Old, slightly unkept, rustic, and, above all, genuine. The yard had a myriad of fruit trees and other plants, sharing with us fantastic smells of the Portuguese Summer. In my mind stood out the scent of the fig tree.
Luís and I stay in a part of the house with a large kitchen home to a fantastic fireplace and wood-burning oven. The living room — where we would be working the next 3 days — was cool and comfortable with a large table for us to put books, laptops, and notebooks. Perfect.
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The idea was to try genuine food from the Alentejo, and so when we sat down for our first meal with Mercês she asked “would you like the lamb’s head whole?”. Luís and I looked at each other. “Can we have it so we don’t recognise the poor animal in such a brutal, yet honest fashion?”. Ok, she condescended.
From That moment on, we knew we were at the right place. Mercês studied Physics at Lisbon University and was a teacher for decades before deciding to come back to her home village. To make organic agriculture! How remarkable is this?
The next day we had a very early breakfast and off we went to the “campo”. In Alentejo you work in the fields very early in the morning otherwise you melt.
Mercês shared with us her difficulty in getting capable, especially reliable staff. A severe problem in agriculture. But we saw melons, chickens, aubergines, courgettes, olive trees, and lots of pumpkins. All organically grown.
For lunch we sat down for “Ovos Escalfados de Tomatada com Batatinhas Novas”. Poached eggs with tomato sauce on rye and wheat bread. Soon We’ll have a whole article dedicated to bread in Alentejo. It is beyond good. And because it is so robust, it holds anything on top without turning into mush.
On the afternoons we worked in our “office”. Cool and inspiring. Outside is very hot, anyway.
Early evenings we went for a stroll in the village to meet people, stretch our legs and build on an appetite for the meal Mercês would be preparing for us.
On our last morning, we went to the certified kitchen across the road where Mercês prepares most of the products she makes from her homegrown produce. We took Marmelada (Quince thick compote), Massa de Pimentão, Azeite, Pupias, Melon and Apple compote and dried Oregano.
Thank you very much for your hospitality, dear Mercês. Thank you for all the effort you put on to keep going. Thank you for all the knowledge you shared with us. Thank you for all the wonderful meals you shared with us in your home. Thank you for having plans to create tours with children and their parents. Thank you for the smell of that fig tree.
Thank you and see you soon. Maybe in the Winter by the fire.
