Iberia · Volume 10, Bacalhau and the Long Way Home
Francesinha
Porto
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 45 minutes
- Researched
- 2 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Attributed consistently to Daniel David Silva, a Porto emigrant returned from France, working at the restaurant A Regaleira, dated to 1952 or the early 1950s. The original was built on an elongated loaf rather than sliced bread, used roast pork rather than beef, and finished with a beer, tomato and chilli sauce reportedly still kept secret at the restaurant to this day. Every source behind this account is a Portuguese food or culture publication rather than an archival one, and this chapter treats the story as well attested oral and restaurant history rather than settled documentary fact.
As tradition built it
Serves 2. About 45 minutes.
Ingredients
- 4 slices good quality white bread, or a Portuguese pão de forma
- as available sliced roast pork, presunto and linguiça or chouriço
- to cover sliced cheese, enough to fully cover
- 1 egg per sandwich, fried
- to taste for the sauce: beer, tomato passata, piri-piri, a little brandy or port
Method
- Build the sandwich: bread, layered roast pork, presunto and linguiça or chouriço, another slice of bread.
- Cover the whole sandwich completely in sliced cheese and grill or bake until the cheese has fully melted and browned.
- Meanwhile reduce the beer, tomato, piri-piri and a little brandy or port together into a thin, spicy sauce with real body.
- Pour the hot sauce generously over the sandwich, and top with a fried egg, yolk left soft.
- Serve with chips.
What a modern chef changes
The sauce given the reduction time a busy Porto kitchen rarely affords it, and the bread chosen properly
Kit note, not tied to a numbered rung.
Method
- Reduce the sauce far longer and slower than a fast lunch service allows, to a genuinely thickened, dark, well integrated glaze rather than a thin, separated liquid, the single biggest gap between a rushed diaspora version and the real thing.
- Use a dense, close crumbed loaf rather than a soft, open one, so the bread holds its structure under the sauce instead of collapsing into it.
- Fry the egg separately to a precise soft yolk using a controlled low heat, rather than cooking it directly on top of the hot sandwich, for a more reliably runny finish.