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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.

3 showing · 444 plates · 15 drinks

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Caramelized condensed milk mousse VEG

Baba de camelo · Lisbon

Camel drool. Condensed milk cooked to caramel and whipped into eggs until it holds a spoon upright. Two ingredients, one of them air. It sits in a glass bowl in the tasca fridge and outlives everyone.

240 min 6 fair
Make it

You need

  • 1 can (397g) sweetened condensed milk, or 400g ready-made doce de leite
  • 4 eggs, separated (pasteurized in-shell if you can get them)
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • toasted flaked almonds or crushed Maria biscuits, optional

Method

  1. Caramelize the milk the safe way: pour it into a heatproof dish, cover with foil, sit the dish in a roasting tin of hot water and bake at 400F/200C for 60-90 minutes, stirring twice, until it is the color of dark honey. Cool completely.
  2. The traditional way is boiling the unopened can 2.5-3 hours. If you do that, keep it submerged under at least 5cm of water the entire time and top up as it evaporates. A can that boils dry can burst. Cool it fully in the can before opening.
  3. Beat the yolks into the cooled caramel until completely smooth. Cold caramel only; warm caramel scrambles the yolks.
  4. Whip the whites with the salt and lemon juice to firm peaks.
  5. Fold the whites into the caramel in three additions, cutting through and turning rather than stirring. Keep the air in.
  6. Chill at least 4 hours, covered. Serve cold in glasses with almonds or crushed biscuit on top.
  7. Safety note: the eggs stay raw. Use pasteurized eggs, keep it refrigerated, eat it within two days, and skip it entirely for pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised eaters. Folding in 200ml whipped cream instead of the whites gives a denser, safer version, and it is not the real thing.

Where you'd actually eat it: The default tasca dessert, after the moelas and before the bica. A shot of bagaço with it, or a glass of moscatel de Setúbal.

From behind the bar: Cool the caramel to room temperature before the yolks go anywhere near it. Warm caramel scrambles them and no amount of whisking brings it back.

🍞

Milk-soaked fried bread with cinnamon sugar VEG

torrijas · Madrid

Stale bread soaked in cinnamon milk, egged, fried in olive oil, and dredged in sugar. Lent dessert that Madrid's tabernas sell by the tray with a glass of sweet wine.

50 min 6-8 pieces fair
Make it

You need

  • 1 day-old plain white baguette or country loaf, in 1 in / 2.5 cm slices
  • 2 1/2 cups / 600 ml whole milk
  • 1/3 cup / 70 g sugar, plus more for coating
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • Peel of 1 lemon, no pith
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • Mild olive oil for shallow frying
  • 1 tbsp ground cinnamon mixed with 1/3 cup sugar

Method

  1. Bring the milk, sugar, cinnamon stick, and lemon peel just to a simmer, then take off the heat and infuse 20 minutes. Strain and cool to warm.
  2. Lay the bread slices in a dish and pour the milk over. Soak 5-10 minutes, turning once. They should be saturated but still hold together — day-old bread only, fresh bread collapses.
  3. Lift each slice carefully, let it drain, then pass through beaten egg.
  4. Fry in 1/2 in / 1.5 cm of olive oil at 340-350F / 170-175C, about 2 minutes per side, until deep gold and firm at the edges.
  5. Drain on a rack, then roll while hot in cinnamon sugar.
  6. Cool to warm or room temperature before eating. Inside should be custardy, not wet.

Where you'd actually eat it: Sold from the counter in tabernas and pastelerías through Lent and Semana Santa, usually with a small glass of sweet wine. Some bars finish them in honey instead of sugar — still vegetarian, never vegan.

From behind the bar: Do not stack them hot or the crust softens and you have pudding. A rack, in one layer, ten minutes.

🍰

Almond and cornmeal crumble cake VEG

torta sbrisolona · Milan

Near-equal parts flour, cornmeal and sugar, bound with butter, yolk and almonds, baked into a shard you break with your hands. Mantuan. It exists to be dunked in grappa at the end of the night.

70 min 10 easy
Make it

You need

  • 1 cup / 130 g 00 flour
  • 1 cup / 150 g fine cornmeal
  • 3/4 cup / 150 g sugar
  • 5.5 oz / 160 g cold unsalted butter, cubed
  • 1 cup / 130 g almonds, half whole with skins, half coarsely chopped
  • 2 egg yolks
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • 1 tsp vanilla or a splash of grappa
  • Pinch of salt
  • Powdered sugar, to finish

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 350F / 175C and butter a 9 in / 23 cm springform or tart pan.
  2. Mix flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt, lemon zest and the almonds in a bowl.
  3. Rub in the cold butter with your fingertips until the mixture looks like coarse gravel — lumps are correct here, do not make a dough.
  4. Add the yolks and vanilla and toss with a fork just until the crumbs clump loosely. If it comes together into a ball, you overworked it.
  5. Tip the crumbs into the pan and level them without pressing. The texture depends on them staying loose and uneven.
  6. Bake 40 to 45 minutes until deep gold and firm at the edges. It will still feel soft in the middle; it sets as it cools.
  7. Cool completely in the pan, dust with powdered sugar, then break it apart by hand. Never cut it with a knife.

Where you'd actually eat it: The end of the meal at Lombard trattorie. It lands whole on the table, everyone breaks off a piece, and it goes into grappa or a glass of sweet wine.

From behind the bar: Keeps two weeks in a tin and gets better after three days. Cold butter, fingertips, no mixer.