Tonight in Porto I participated in a sort of culinary mysticism. Something that rarely happens–the moment you’ve found something that is so different, yet so familiar. So sublime…For dinner it ended up being that veritable Portugese sandwich of goodness, a reinterpreted croque-monsieur. FTLOP has a great write up of the francesinha, but I prefer to let the photos do the talking.
I would be wrong to call this the Double Down of Porto, but the parallels are obvious. At this moment I feel like a bit of a culinary Christopher Columbus and think a New World interpretation of the post-colonial version might be in order!!
There she is, standing proud. Provocative, but actually understated. The fried egg is nestled between the cheese and bread (notice the “cheese protrusion”). The sauce was tomato based with beer and and an oh-so-perfect picante hint.
The close up. Note the additional cheese, ham and steak. NB: this baby is not fried, allowing the bread to do more of what it is supposed to do (suck up the sauce), saving precious fat/calories.
A cutaway, pre-ingestion. The glistening cheese, the oozing egg, the chasm to greatness…
This is what happens when you eat the francesinha improperly–she tumbles over, exposing the constituent parts of wonder.
Mmmmmm
Another cutaway. At this point we are starved for the special sauce.
And then, like clockwork, our waiter asks us if we would like more sauce–don’t mind if I do!!
Macro profile shot!
Post-employment 