Lisbon: Recipes from the Heart of Portugal

The husband-and-wife team behind Istanbul and The Islands of Greece continue their culinary journey westward as they explore the cuisine of Lisbon and the influences that have shaped it. “You can eat specialties from every region here,” Seal writes, “which is how I justified—to myself—including things like a northern soup, caldo verde, or pork from Alentejo, in a book ostensibly about Lisbon.” Divided into eight chapters, the cookbook begins with petiscos, accessibly simple and meant-to-be-shared small plates (such as fresh sardines on toast or spicy onion bhajis that reflect Portugal’s colonization of Goa), before moving to soups, salads, seafood, meat, drinks, and sweets, including a recipe for the country’s famous custard tarts, pasteis de nata. Chorizo, cilantro, and smoked paprika feature heavily throughout—home cooks will want to stock up. Joyce’s vibrant photography focuses as much on the city and its people as on the finished dishes: a woman grilling rows of sardines in a bustling square, sun-soaked beaches, and the vividly tiled facades of the city’s buildings all appear in the book’s pages. These photos along with Seal’s enticing anecdotes about her introduction to these dishes make the final result part cookbook, part travelogue—a book as likely to result in vacation planning as meal planning. (June)