These are Days (we remember)

recipes: the Shakshuka that started it all

I’m in the car driving back from Serra d’el Rei, where I’ve gone to visit my two favorite quirky home goods stores to cheer myself up. A few days earlier, my shower door shattered, just as I was completing a very satisfying rinse after a very satisfying afternoon of pickleball. J and I were planning to make margaritas and guacamole and I was going to make my first attempt at air fryer tortilla chips. “Let me just jump in the shower first,” I said.

When I called out to him, my body covered in broken glass and blood, he called back “Hold on, I’m looking for limes.”

I changed the intensity of my call.

Real life still life

J says we were short on limes and the avocado was overripe, so our planned aperitivo wouldn’t have been so great anyway.

Though my wounds only required some glue to fuse the broken skin in place, I was grumpy that my activities were curtailed. In Serra d’el Rei, I found a rustic wooden mirror, which felt like the beginning of a fresh start.

On the way home, I listed to KEXP, my favorite Seattle radio station, which streams worldwide.

Though it was late afternoon in Portugal, it was the first hour of the Morning Show, the iconic program hosted by John Richards, who has a cult-like following. The first hour is always mellow and I enjoyed listening to some old favorites. He played These are Days, by 10,000 Maniacs. When it was over, he gushed to his producer, Owen, "Wasn’t that just perfect?” Owen agreed,

John emoted some more, and then he played the song for a second time.

My Irish friend E has a close friend in London who zips down to Portugal for a visit a few times a year. These are casual, hanging-out-with-old-friends visits, and they are nourishing. How nice to be able to regularly see friends you have history with. To be able to chat while walking the dogs, instead of over Zoom. To not feel the pressure to go anywhere or do anything. Moving to Portugal from so far away, I envy this proximity.

Recently, we hosted two sets of houseguests — beloved friends with whom we have shared important periods of our lives.

Because our friends can’t just zip over regularly, I created ambitious itineraries for both visits. Though each time we accomplished about half the things I proposed, it was the card games, port sipping, home cooking, and general hanging out that stood out.

In January, Heather Afar posted this manifesto about the unspoken rules for visiting friends who live abroad. Since moving to Portugal 15 months ago, we’ve hosted four sets of visitors — one in our rental apartment and three in the Blue House. I’m sure none of them read Heather’s post. They just instinctively were the best guests and the best company they could possibly be.

When K and C, our first visitors were coming to Portugal, a few months after we arrived, I asked whether they needed anything special to make their stay more comfortable. K is an inveterate Diet Coke drinker. “He drinks it all day long,” C told us. That’s when I learned how local regulations and local tastes can impact seemingly familiar products. There is no Diet Coke in Europe. Instead, there is Coke Zero, which has a slightly different flavor palette.

We had a tiny European refrigerator and I wasn’t sure how many cans of Coke would meet the “all day long” standard, so I tried to calculate and came surprisingly close. I know we took K and C around to see the sights, but what sticks out in my mind from their visit is our evening scopa games, fortified by Coke Zero and Porto Tonicos. I tried to introduce canned sardines into the mix, but had no takers.

Playing scopa with our next visitors, J and C, on the deck of our accommodations in the schist village of Talasnal. They hung out with us, while my J was recovering from surgery.

Visit me and I’ll pretend I’m on a cooking reality TV show — find these ingredients and/or with these constraints, come up with some menus.

We had British guests arriving from Brighton and I knew they would need tea. Turns out, not just any tea — English Breakfast, which you can find here, but not everywhere.

Scenes from out visit with the Brighton crew

One of our guests was a pure vegetarian and another doesn’t eat seafood. I spent the days before their arrival planning and cooking from Sami Tamimi’s wonderful vegetarian book, Boustany.

I prep-cooked Roasted Vegetables with Lemon and Za’atar, Sweet Potato Kubbeh with Chili Salsa and we finished them together, while listening to playlists curated by one of the 19-year olds in the group and snacking on Muhamarra and charcuterie for the meat and cheese eaters. That night, the two 19-year olds taught us some new card games and we introduced them to port, paired with Easter chocolates.

When we were making plans for the next day, 19-year old C said, “That was perfect. Can we do the same thing again tomorrow?”

We closed out their visit with a home-cooked brunch, featuring Shakshuka, in my opinion one of the best foods to share with friends.

A few days after the Brighton crew left, MB and J arrived from Seattle. “I don’t care what we do,” MB had told me. “I just want to experience your new life.” (Lol. She should have stuck around for the shower explosion).

Sure, we took them to Batalha and Nazare and Lisbon, but it was morning coffee outside and a beach walk, culminating in a stop at our favorite local cafe, that stood out. As we ambitiously traipsed around Alfama, trying to figure out where to go next, Seattle J said, “I’d just like to have a drink and play cards.” And so, we taught them the card game we had just learned from the Brits, at a bar with a spectacular view of Lisbon, and talked about kids and aging parents and retirement. It was all very soothing.

Back home at the Blue House, after a long day of sightseeing, I sent MB and J off with my J to watch the sunset, while I prepared Shakshuka. I know it sounds cheesy, but they returned to the smell of that amalgam of exotic flavors and the mournful sounds of fado, from a Spotify playlist on my iPhone and the evening felt just right.

I won’t forget those communal meals, card games, playlists, and port tastings, and especially the deep conversations we had over morning coffee, in the car, on walks, and by the pellet stove.

These days with old friends were nourishing. It made me wish we could do them all over again.

The Best Thing I Cooked for Friends

Shakshuka from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty

There are so many version of Shakshuka and I have cooked and loved many of them. But the one that started it all for me, is the recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi’s seminal book, Plenty. J can’t believe that I remember the first time I cooked it. But that should come as no surprise. We were hosting an old friend from J’s Nepal trekking days, and his wife, who quickly also became a friend.

Gooey eggs, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and deep conversations with friends? It doesn’t get much better than that.