Farinheira
The only preparation in this book whose forcemeat contains no lean meat at all: a paste of flour, rendered pork fat and paprika, stuffed and smoked. Like the alheira, it was conceived to hang in the chimney and keep up appearances.
| Wheat flour | 350 g |
| Lard or rendered pork fat | 400 g |
| Smoked bacon, in small dice | 150 g |
| Dry white wine | 100 ml |
| Fine salt | 15 g |
| Sweet paprika (colorau) | 15 g |
| Hot paprika | 3 g |
| Fresh garlic, crushed | 8 g |
| Ground cumin | 2 g |
| Black pepper | 2 g |
| Beef casing (Ø 36–40 mm) | — |
- Preparing the fat: Melt the lard over gentle heat. Fry the diced bacon in part of the lard until lightly coloured.
- Preparing the paste: In a large vessel, mix the flour with the paprika, the salt, the garlic, the cumin and the pepper. Make a well.
- Incorporation: Pour in the hot lard, the diced bacon with its fat and the wine. Mix vigorously to obtain a thick, homogeneous paste without lumps.
- Resting: Leave to cool to lukewarm at room temperature.
- Stuffing: Stuff into the casings, forming sausages of 18 to 22 cm. Do not overfill.
- Smoking: Cold-smoke for 5 to 10 days over oak wood until brown in colour.
- Cooking: Prick and grill over embers, fry in a pan or bake in the oven. It is often served with rice and eggs.
The farinheira is the only preparation in this book whose forcemeat contains no lean meat: a paste of wheat flour, pork fat, and paprika, stuffed into a beef casing and smoked, which resembles charcuterie without its flesh. A tenacious tradition, shared with the alheira (see that entry), traces it back to the cristãos-novos of the Portuguese Inquisition, who are said to have hung a sausage of Christian appearance in the chimney to keep up appearances. Historians hold this filiation to be plausible but not established, and credit the primitive composition with containing no pork, the pork fat being a later addition. Today’s protected versions, the farinheira de Estremoz e Borba and the farinheira de Portalegre, are, by contrast, defined by the fat of the alentejano pig breed, and their official history is attached to the economy of matança rather than to the Inquisition.
Its name derives from the Portuguese farinha, flour, the structuring ingredient. Flour plays a role in farinheira comparable to rice's in morcilla de Burgos. It gives the casing its hold in cooking and retains the melted fat. The paprika and the garlic bring colour and aroma. Smoking in the lareira, the chimney of the rural houses of northern Portugal, gives it the appearance of a traditional charcuterie.
Today, farinheira is produced with pork fat, which definitively removes it from its original composition. It is used in the kitchen as a cooking ingredient and in charcuterie: cut into rounds and fried, it accompanies the salt-cod dishes and vegetable soups of Trás-os-Montes. Its texture, crisp outside and melting inside after frying, resembles no other sausage in this book.
The book
All 144 recipes and their histories, gathered in a single volume.