Silver Bream & Don Rodrigo

It's a little underwhelming to admit that today's adventure was lunch.  I had a nice long walk in the morning, I painted some yupo paper in the hope that subduing a glaring white surface would lead to better painting, and then went to O Pescador in Benagil for lunch.  And they gave me the best table.  

It was a table so good that I wanted to stay there forever.  So instead of a quick lunch and then a painting session overlooking Benagil beach,  I read Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (which is hard to put down, and that's not just because yesterday I went to that chapel of the bones of the dead).  And had grilled silver bream, potatoes, salad and rose wine for a long, sunny lunch. 

The darker fish is the silver bream. The gold bream has that distinctive gold band on its face.  My fish advisor at the restaurant thought the silver bream was more flavorful and I didn't compare them side by side so what can I tell you?  It was delicious.

It was recommended that I try a dessert that's special to the Algarve, Don Rodrigo.  It's made of thready egg yolk, sugar, almonds, cinnamon and some mysterious process (apparently with heat so the egg yolk is cooked) that results in a lovely dessert.  I am not here to eat what I'd eat at home and I wouldn't be having a dessert that's basically an egg yolk back home, right?   Who says I can't try new things?!

 

Here's that primed yupo paper. I hope to have some paintings on it to share ... soon.