Cultural malapropagation

Waitrose saltou o tubarão português - Waitrose jumped the Portuguese shark

Last night, my dear friend Audrey (I call her my friend but she does send me these things, she’s a monster) sent me something from a magazine in the UK.

First, story time. Once upon a time, Portugal had many flourishing convents. In the convents lived either monks and friars or nuns.

The convents were very self sufficient and owned plenty of land and livestock, including bees and a bazillion chickens.

They needed the chickens to eat, of course, and for the eggs, since the egg is one of the principal elements of the Portuguese diet. The convents produced more eggs than they ate because they used and sold the egg whites for other uses. One use was in the filtration of wine¹ and another for starching their wimples and the ruffs and vestments of the well to do.

This meant they had a whole heap of egg yolks left over, like when you decide to make a mountain of meringues and you put the yolks in the fridge to definitely make mayonnaise with later, but you forget and a week later you have something egg yellow and crusty in your fridge.

The monks and nuns didn’t have fridges, of course, so instead of making hypothetical-future-mayonnaise, they invented a thing called “doçaria conventual” - which means “sweet stuff made in convents”.

The sweet things they invented depended on where in the country they lived, on the produce they had, and how much time they had on their hands (some of the convent sweets are very time consuming). They had eggs, honey, milk, nuts, dried or crystallised fruits, pine nuts, spices, flour from grains, and from the 15th century onwards, cane sugar and molasses. Looking at the array of what are called doces conventuais these days, though, you’d be forgiven for thinking that all they could get their hands on was egg yolks, sugar and cinnamon.

One of the doces conventuais was the Pastel de Belém. It was a custard tart made by the monks and/or friars at the Mosteiro de Jerónimos, in Belém, six kilometres from Lisboa.

Between 1828 and 1834, the Portuguese were at war with each other —a civil war known as The Liberal wars, between two brothers, liberal Dom Pedro (king of Brazil) and conservative Dom Miguel (king of Portugal), the Liberals won, and Miguel was exiled. Obviously, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but at the end of it came the dissolution of the monasteries, the nation reappropriating the monks’ property, and this was when the Pastel de Belém became a way of the monks and their staff to make a living: selling pastéis de nata to Lisboetas who got the boat down the river to Belém on a day out.

For about 160 years, this was the deal. People, from Lisbon and abroad would make an occasional visit to Belém to eat a pastel, or buy some to take home. Meanwhile, in other parts of the country, the same thing happened with different cakes and pastries. People might eat or buy some pastéis de Tentúgal, or barrigas de freira, papos do anjo, sericaia, ovos moles, encharcada, trouxas, pão de ló (the runny one) etc. etc. while passing through a certain town or region, and some of those things would appear on menus in some restaurants, anywhere in the country.

However, none of them were ubiquitous. Not one, not even the pastel de Belém. You would see them occasionally in some café or other, and often they were not great. They had to be called pastéis de nata, because pastéis de Belém was a trademark. By the way, there is no, nor has there ever been, nata (cream) in a pastel de nata, but hey, barrigas de freira aren’t actually the bellies of nuns, so who cares about accurate naming.

Meanwhile, in London in the 90s, there were some Portuguese cafés run by Portuguese families, and some of them had pastéis de nata, of the good kind. People liked them very much, and one day an entrepreneurial soul decided to make them more of a thing in London, called them “natas”, sold a lot of them, and Londoners liked them very much (which is unsurprising because, a. they’re very nice, and b. British custard tarts are the absolute worst).

Then in the late 2000s, the Guardian set its sights, focussed hard, on Lisboa, and all the people ever started visiting. Among them were the Londoners who had eaten a nice Portuguese custard tart in London and looked for them here. The trek down to Belém was a bit of a slog, and the queues terrible, and this was noticed by some more entrepreneurial types here who said “holy shit, it’s NATA TIME!” and thus the ubiquitous pastel de nata was born. You can’t avoid them if you try. They are mentioned on every list of what to eat in Portugal, it’s on the cover of two of my books, at the behest of publishers, and visitors think that the pastel de nata is the national dish of Portugal, making sure it’s the first thing they eat once off the aeroplane.

And so, back to what Audrey sent me last night, from Waitrose. It was this.

Cult product… A plain, light sponge characterises bolo de arroz - a traditional Portuguese cake that gets its tender texture from the addition of rice flour. It's also an unbeatable vehicle for bold flavours. These little treasures go for lemon, three ways: zest in the cake itself, a sticky core of lemon curd and a cap of thick, sugary citrus icing to top it off. And we all thought the pastel de nata was Portugal's best bake...Portuguese Lemon Cakes (£1.50 each).

Bolo de Arroz. with lemon icing and some lemon curd pumped into the middle.

Now, Portuguese “cakes n stuff” fall roughly into three camps. First, the aforementioned doçaria conventual, most of which is sweet enough to melt your tooth enamel, extraordinarily eggy and is kind of kept for special occasions. The third camp is really icky sweet stuff made with choux buns, plastic chantilly, industrial cake and fake chocolate, bastardised patisserie, the kind of stuff I eat once a year and then regret because I feel sick.

The second camp comes from the same traditions as the convent stuff, but the cakes are significantly less rich, less sweet, and often as dry as dust; things such as palmieres, queques and one of my favourites, the bolo de arroz, and they can be eaten on a daily basis.

The bolo de arroz is one of my favourites because it’s not very sweet and doesn’t have any bloody egg paste pumped into it. It has three distinct areas: the top, crunchy with some sugar, to break off and eat either first or last, the middle bit which, depending on the maker and the cake’s age, can be slightly moist or as dry as a bone, and the base, which is either dry and nice, or burnt and not. And that’s it. No cream, no paste, no icing, no GOO. Plain. Simple. CAKE.

A Waitrose food researcher or whatever seems to have come to Lisboa for a week and decided that the bolo de arroz is a CULT Portuguese cake (it is classic, whatever that cliché really even means these days, but it is not a CULT) that isn’t good enough for them and what it needs is jazzing up so that Waitrose can make some more money. “and we thought the pastel de nata was Portugal’s best bake…”. THE CREAMY LEMONY CURD BOLO DE ARROZ IS NOT A PORTUGUESE “BAKE”. It’s something you made up five minutes ago.

My first reaction when I see such things is “oh do fuck off”.

Then I remember what could happen if this cake takes off at Waitrose and then I get really annoyed.

When this cake’s fans come to Lisboa, they’ll go looking for that cake, thinking it’s a real Portuguese thin’g. When they don’t find one, they’ll ask for one. And then somebody, having been asked more than once, will make them, and bolos de arroz com creme de limão will mysteriously become yet another “traditional Portuguese” thing that the Portuguese have never heard of.

See also ginijinha served in a chocolate cup, a marketing gimmick from 20 years ago which took off, and which people now think is a thing the Portuguese do. This is Portugal and thin chocolate in your hand. Not a sensible mixture.

See also the bifana with CHEESE that is now a bestseller in the Baixa because someone asked for it one day, and didn’t get told to piss off. Now everybody thinks that a bifana has a slice of shitty flamengo cheese in it. (see also Gordon Ramsay’s hilariously mental “traditional bifana”, just google it).

See also the cod cake with cheese mystery. I’m not entirely sure how the monstrous “pastel de bacalhau com queijo da serra” was born, but it’s a sweaty chimera of two perfectly great things that somebody somewhere thought was a good idea to mix. It rapidly became a chain. In this climate, you don’t need repeat customers, you just need to make tourists believe that this is THE THING to do. It doesn’t matter if they like it or not. Maybe they do like it. Who care’s if it’s “authentic”, their customers think it is. Hell, maybe it is authentic now, because it’s been around for 10 years, and the ginjinha chocolate cup thing for even longer.

Cultural appropriation is not something I get offended by, but I do get irritated by it (I’m glad I’m not Italian or Mexican. I’d have lost my mind by now). I am more irritated by the people inventing these things in Portugal, só para turista comprar, thereby making up a new, imaginary culture that exists only in the minds of the tourists, just for the sake of a quick buck.

These cakes are, for now, just a Waitrose thing, but I swear, if they come to Lisbon as a THING…. I’ll… I dunno what.

1. This is why there is now vegan wine. Non-vegan wine is filtered using egg whites, fish bladders (yum yum) or milk protein.