BITCHLOVE

The Kitchen

Bar food

Everything here is a real recipe with real temperatures. Nothing needs a restaurant kitchen — a pan, an oven, and something to drink while you wait.

6 showing · 444 plates · 15 drinks

vegan 73 vegetarian 36
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Lisbon, Portugal — they call it petiscos

Lisbon drinks in small glasses. You order an imperial, a 20cl draft that stays cold because it is small, and food arrives before you have decided anything. That is the couvert: bread, olives, sometimes cheese, and it is not free. Eat one olive and you pay for the tray; send it back untouched and nobody sulks. Petiscos come after, one plate at a time, pushed to the middle of the table. Tascas do lunch at one. Cervejarias run petiscos from six until the beer stops.

everything dips 63 fried 120 loaded 164 skewers 43 sliders 32 wings 14 sweet 8
🦀

Dressed crab in its own shell

Sapateira recheada · Lisbon

Brown crab boiled, picked, then mashed back into its own shell with the brown meat, mustard, beer and a shot of whatever brandy is open. Spread on toast. Looks like a crime scene. Tastes like the reason you came out.

120 min 4 as a counter dish ▲ work
Make it

You need

  • 1 live brown crab, 1.2 to 1.5 kg, or one cooked crab from a good fishmonger
  • 200 g coarse salt for the cooking water
  • 2 tbsp Dijon or Portuguese mustard
  • 2 tbsp lager
  • 1 tbsp brandy or aguardente
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp red wine vinegar
  • 1 small onion, minced very fine
  • 1 hard-boiled egg, chopped
  • 2 tbsp fine dry breadcrumbs
  • Chopped parsley, salt, black pepper
  • Toast or dry crackers to serve

Method

  1. If your crab is live, kill it before cooking. Chill it at least 30 minutes in the freezer to sedate it, lay it on its back, and drive a heavy skewer firmly into the two nerve centers, one under the tail flap and one at the mouth. Do not boil a crab alive. If this is not for you, buy it cooked.
  2. Boil in heavily salted water, 60 g per liter, for 15 minutes per kilo. A 1.4 kg crab takes about 21 minutes. Cool it completely before you pick, or you will burn your hands and shred the meat.
  3. Open it. Lift the body out of the shell, discard the feathery gills and the stomach sac behind the mouth. Everything else in that shell, the brown paste and the roe, is the dish. Scrape all of it into a bowl.
  4. Crack the claws and legs with the back of a knife and pick out every scrap of white meat. This takes 20 minutes and there is no shortcut. Run your fingers through it twice for shell fragments, because one splinter ends the plate.
  5. Mash the brown meat with mustard, beer, brandy, olive oil, vinegar and the minced onion until it is a coarse paste. Season hard. Brown crab takes more salt, pepper and acid than feels reasonable.
  6. Fold in the white meat, chopped egg and breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs are there to hold it, not to bulk it out. Keep it loose.
  7. Scrub the empty top shell, pack the mix back into it, scatter parsley, chill 30 minutes and put it on the table with toast and a spoon.

Where you'd actually eat it: The cervejaria window on Rua do Alecrim, ordered by people who already ate dinner somewhere else and are not going home yet. Cold white or a bottle of Sagres split three ways.

From behind the bar: The brown meat is the entire dish. Bin it and you have made crab salad, which is not what anyone ordered.

🐟

Raw shredded salt cod with chickpeas

Punheta de bacalhau · Lisbon

Salt cod torn by hand into threads, never cooked, tossed with chickpeas, raw onion, olive oil and parsley. The name is obscene and everyone in the room knows it. Nobody has ever suggested changing it.

20 min 4 with drinks easy
Make it

You need

  • 300 g thick-cut salt cod loin, good quality
  • 250 g cooked chickpeas, drained
  • 1 small white onion, sliced paper thin
  • 4 tbsp good olive oil, plus more
  • 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • Chopped flat parsley
  • Black pepper
  • Black olives
  • Bread

Method

  1. Buy proper thick loin bacalhau, not thin tail pieces. This is eaten raw, so the fish is the whole dish and cheap cod will taste like a salt lick.
  2. Rinse the surface salt off, then soak in cold water in the fridge for 24 to 36 hours, changing the water three or four times. Thick loin needs the full time. A long commercial salt cure is what makes raw bacalhau safe to eat; if that worries you, buy cod that was frozen at -4F/-20C for at least seven days before curing, which is what the parasite rules are written around.
  3. Taste a thread at 24 hours. It should read seasoned, not salty. If it still bites, keep soaking.
  4. Drain and squeeze dry in a towel. Pull the fish apart with your fingers along the grain into thin threads. Do not chop it with a knife. The texture is the point of the dish.
  5. Toss the threads with the chickpeas, sliced onion, olive oil, vinegar and plenty of black pepper. No salt. It has been salted for six months already. Chickpeas are standard in the Lisbon version, though someone will tell you that once egg goes in it is a meia-desfeita. Let them.
  6. Let it sit 20 minutes at room temperature so the onion softens and the oil takes on the fish. Add parsley and olives, more oil on top, and serve with bread.

Where you'd actually eat it: Tascas in Alcântara and Santos, the ones with football on and a fridge holding nothing but wine. House white, cold enough to hurt your teeth, or a beer if you are still upright.

From behind the bar: Tear it, never cut it, and taste as you desalt. The 20 minutes is assembly; the day and a half of soaking is on you. Every piece of bacalhau is different.

🐙

Octopus salad

Salada de polvo · Lisbon

Cold octopus cut small and dressed hard with olive oil, vinegar, raw onion and coriander. It sits in the fridge all afternoon getting better. In a cervejaria it turns up in a small dish with the couvert, and you pay for it.

90 min 4-6 picking fair
Make it

You need

  • 1 octopus, about 1.2kg, cleaned (frozen is fine and tenderizes it)
  • 1 onion, halved, for the pot
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 red onion, diced fine
  • 1 green bell pepper, diced fine
  • 4 tbsp chopped coriander or flat parsley
  • 120ml good olive oil
  • 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • salt, black pepper

Method

  1. Freeze the octopus for at least 48 hours and thaw it before cooking, or buy it frozen. This breaks down the muscle and is the single biggest factor in tenderness.
  2. Bring a large pot of unsalted water to a boil with the halved onion and bay. Dip the octopus in and out three times so the tentacles curl, then lower it in.
  3. Simmer gently, never at a rolling boil, for 45-60 minutes. It is done when a skewer slides into the thickest part of a tentacle with no resistance. Let it cool in the cooking water for 30 minutes.
  4. Drain and cut into 1.5cm pieces, keeping some suckers on for texture.
  5. While still slightly warm, dress with olive oil, vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper. Warm octopus absorbs dressing, cold octopus wears it.
  6. Fold in the red onion, pepper and coriander. Chill at least 2 hours and keep it refrigerated until it goes on the table. Taste again before serving; it will need more vinegar and salt than you expect.

Where you'd actually eat it: Set down at cervejarias while you read the menu, in a small dish alongside the bread and olives. Cold white wine or a Sagres.

From behind the bar: Never salt the cooking water. Salt tightens the octopus early and you will spend an extra half hour trying to undo it.

🐖

Pig ear salad with coriander

Orelha de porco de coentrada · Lisbon

Boiled pig ear, sliced thin and left in garlic, coriander, olive oil and vinegar until it takes. Gelatinous, sharp and slightly crunchy from the cartilage. One of the last genuinely cheap things in the city.

150 min 4-6 picking ▲ fair
Make it

You need

  • 2 pig ears, cleaned and shaved
  • 1 onion, halved
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 1 tbsp black peppercorns
  • coarse salt
  • 6 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 large bunch coriander, chopped
  • 100ml olive oil
  • 4 tbsp white wine vinegar
  • 1 dried piri-piri chile, crumbled
  • black pepper

Method

  1. Scrub the ears well and check for stubble; singe any remaining hairs over a flame and scrape them off.
  2. Cover with cold water in a deep pot with the onion, bay, peppercorns and a heavy hand of salt. Bring to a boil, skim, then simmer 90-120 minutes until a knife goes through the thick part easily.
  3. Cool the ears in the liquid for 30 minutes, then lift out and chill fully in the fridge. Cold ear slices far better than warm.
  4. Slice into 3-4mm strips across the grain, cartilage and all.
  5. Dress with the garlic, coriander, olive oil, vinegar, piri-piri and black pepper. Toss and taste; it should be sharp.
  6. Marinate in the fridge at least 4 hours, ideally overnight, stirring twice. Take it out 20 minutes before serving, with bread and toothpicks.

Where you'd actually eat it: Old tascas in Mouraria, Beato and Marvila, in a small dish next to the tremoços. House red, or a beer if the vinegar is aggressive.

From behind the bar: Chill the ears completely before slicing. Warm ear tears into shreds instead of clean strips, and the texture is the entire dish.

🫘

Brined lupini beans VEGAN

Tremoços · Lisbon

A bowl of pale yellow beans in cold salty water, set down with your beer whether you asked or not. You bite the skin, squeeze the bean into your mouth, drop the skin in the empty bowl. Nutty, saline, endless.

15 min 4-6 drinking easy
Make it

You need

  • 500g jarred or vacuum-packed cooked lupini beans
  • 1 litre water
  • 30g fine sea salt
  • 1 lemon, optional
  • (from dried: 500g dried lupini beans, plus a week)

Method

  1. From cooked beans: drain and rinse them thoroughly under cold running water, rubbing to wash off the packing brine.
  2. Dissolve the salt in the water, submerge the beans, and refrigerate at least 24 hours. Change the brine once. They should taste clean and salty with no bitterness at the back of the throat.
  3. Serve very cold in their brine, in a bowl, with a second empty bowl for the skins. A squeeze of lemon is a Lisbon habit, not a rule.
  4. From dried, if you insist: soak the beans 24 hours in cold water, then boil 30 minutes.
  5. Then soak in fresh cold water in the fridge for 5-7 days, changing the water twice a day, every day. This is not optional and cannot be shortened.
  6. From day five, taste one bean each day. Any bitterness at all means the alkaloids are still there and it needs more days. When it tastes neutral like a chickpea, brine as above.

Where you'd actually eat it: Arrives with the first imperial at any tasca or kiosk, alongside the olives. Nobody orders them. The bowl of skins tells the waiter how long you have been there.

From behind the bar: Under-soaked lupini carry quinolizidine alkaloids and will make you genuinely sick. Bitter means not ready. Buy them cooked and skip the argument.

🫑

Roasted pepper salad VEGAN

Salada de pimentos assados · Lisbon

Peppers burned black, peeled, torn into strips and left in garlic, olive oil and vinegar. It comes with the grilled fish, it comes with the sardines, it comes with everything. Make it a day ahead and it is better.

60 min 4-6 picking easy
Make it

You need

  • 4 large red and yellow bell peppers
  • 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 100ml good olive oil
  • 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • 1 tsp coarse salt
  • black pepper
  • chopped flat parsley, optional
  • bread

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 425F/220C. Set the whole peppers on a sheet pan and roast 30-40 minutes, turning twice, until the skins are blistered and blackened in patches. Charcoal or a gas flame is better if you have one.
  2. Put the hot peppers in a bowl and cover it tightly for 15 minutes. The trapped steam lifts the skins.
  3. Peel off the skins with your fingers, pull out the stems and seeds, and tear the flesh into wide strips. Do not rinse them under water; you will wash the flavor down the drain.
  4. Save every drop of juice from the bowl and pan; it goes into the dressing.
  5. Combine the strips with the garlic, olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and reserved juices.
  6. Marinate 2 hours at cool room temperature, or overnight in the fridge, and serve at room temperature with bread. Keep it refrigerated if it is going to sit longer than that.

Where you'd actually eat it: On the table next to the sardines every June, and standing in a big glass bowl on every tasca counter. Bread for the bottom of the dish, house red.

From behind the bar: Peel with your fingers, never under running water, and keep the juice in the bowl. Pooled juice plus oil and vinegar is the dressing.