the goat and the pudding

Nestled in the terraced valley of the Serra do Açor, lies a storybook village of schist and lines of blue. Piódão is a stark contrast to the other Portuguese villages I came across, which were generally a collection of white-walled boxy houses trimmed in yellow or cobalt.

The quiet had a thickness to it, occasionally broken by a voice— human, bird or goat. I was taken by the careful layers schist and slate, the reverence of cobalt, the little hand-made crosses of twigs nailed above doorways. Climbing the narrow passageways between the ancient houses, I felt that familiar longing in my stomach.

We were beckoned to a little restaurant by an emphatic and convincing man, where we became the sole diners. It was decided that I must try the chanfana, a hearty and hygge (I must use the Danish here, as there really isn't an English word to describe the feeling of this dish) clay-pot stew of goat meat and potatoes, a hint of mint, generous in olive oil. This stew was made for bread-dipping, and my goodness, the goat... It just melted.



And the best way to end such perfection? A coffee, some rice pudding, and a few good laughs.

the art of hygge

Hygge is one of those wonderfully untranslatable words to be found in every language. Roughly pronounced "hoo-guh," hygge is Danish for something closest to "cosy"— but it's beyond cosy. From what I've come to understand, it's both a state of mind and being. Soft sweaters, candles, hearty food, the warmth of friendship and those long, meaningful conversations held over fragrant cups of tea— anything that makes your soul hum. My friend Sue, in a generous and thoughtful effort to introduce me to hygge, and the experience of something my grandad would have loved, cooked us a delicious meal of something I cannot pronounce for the life of me. Rounds of ground beef wrapped in bacon and pan-fried with caramelised onions, a massive tart pickle and buttery baby potatoes lavished with the oh so traditional Danish brown gravy. Sue explained how gravy must absolutely be a dark brown; apparently this matters so much to the Danes that there is an actual food dye to make your gravy the perfect shade of brown. All this home-cooked hygge deliciousness was washed down with a velvety walnut beer.

For some reason, I felt I wanted to cry—everything was so much my grandad. With the exception of a few random plates of spaghetti, dinners with my grandad consisted of a meat, buttery potatoes, a brown sauce or gravy and some kind of vegetable. Sue's meal took me back to my grandparent's kitchen, which always smelled of bread and butter and sweet pipe smoke. I was a little girl at the table, my feet unable to touch the floor, I was a teenager, I was an adult— my grandad grinning at me after some joke, my grandad swearing in Danish at the news on the TV.



Morning brought mist, deer, and the smell of bacon and toast. Before my train to Esbjerg, Sue wanted to show me the Middelfart Sindssygehospital, a unique museum that had once been a psychiatric institution. As the mist fell back to the earth, the sky was a rare blue. We wrapped ourselves up in our wooly scarves and set out on our way.