A gastronomic guide to Alentejo

Bread, olive oil and the montado — a season-by-season guide to eating in southern Portugal. Twelve chapters, in the order we would travel them:

• 1. Beyond the Tejo — Why a region named after a river it does not sit on ended up with a pantry of its own: heat, distance and a farmed landscape called the montado.
• 2. Bread first — Açorda, migas and gaspacho: three dishes built to use up yesterday's loaf, and how to tell in one spoonful which kitchen does them properly.
• 3. Portuguese olive oil, variety by variety — Galega, cordovil and verdeal: how each one tastes, why early-harvest oil burns the back of your throat, and how to read a label without help.
• 4. The olive harvest — What happens in the grove and in the mill between November and January, and how to spend a day of it with your sleeves rolled up.
• 5. Azeitona britada — The cracked green olives every Alentejo house cures in brine: the method, the herbs that go in the jar, and why the split in the skin is the whole point.
• 6. The montado — Cork oaks, holm oaks, acorns and pigs: how a landscape that looks like nothing is happening produces the region's most talked-about pork.
• 7. Cheese made with a flower — Serpa, Nisa and Évora: sheep's milk curdled with cardoon thistle instead of animal rennet, which is why you cut a lid and eat them with a spoon.
• 8. Vinho de talha — Wine still fermented in clay pots, and the November day the cellars open and the first glass is drawn straight from the pot.
• 9. The long lunch — Ensopado de borrego, sopa de cação, carne de porco à alentejana: the dishes that need a table, a jug and an afternoon with nothing after it.
• 10. Convent sweets — Sericaia, encharcada and the Elvas plum: what happens when a kitchen has egg yolks to spare, a copper pot and several centuries of practice.
• 11. The Alentejo year — A month-by-month calendar of what is ripe, what is being made and what is being celebrated, so you can choose your week before you choose your hotel.
• 12. Five days you can actually drive — A market, a mill, a cellar and two long lunches, with distances, opening days and where to stop for bread on the way.

Two files, one purchase. The PDF is laid out for a laptop, a tablet or paper: it keeps the maps, the calendars and the photographs exactly where we put them. The EPUB reflows, so it behaves on a phone or an e-reader and lets you change the type size. Kindle readers can send the EPUB across with Amazon's Send to Kindle. There is no app to install, no account to create and no connection needed once the files are on your device. Together they weigh PDF 24 MB and EPUB 6 MB.

Note: print from the PDF. The seasonal calendar is designed to work on a kitchen wall.

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Oh! My Cod has been running food and culture tours in Portugal since 2016, which is another way of saying we have been taking notes for a decade. This guide was written by the Oh! My Cod guides team and edited by Oh! My Cod, Lda., from fieldwork in the Alentejo — including the grove we work ourselves, where we pick olives with guests and press oil in the same week. The project's work was recognised at the Prémio Nacional de Turismo 2024 (Best Gastronomic Project). Photography by Photography by Oh! My Cod.

Note: prices change, mills close, families retire. If you find something out of date in here, tell us — we would rather correct the file than defend it.