Carne de Porco à Alentejana

A few weeks ago, we made Carne de Porco à Alentejana, a two-part recipe consisting of both pork and fresh clams. A Portuguese surf n' turn, if you will. Neither Brian nor I had ever worked with clams before, much less anything live, so it was a cool experience for us.

It was a fairly straightforward recipe, though we did realize at some point during the marinating process that a few steps were missing or ill-explained, so we had to do a little bit of research on the fly to fill in the blanks, and even then, we had to do a little bit of guesswork. I actually had to remake my marinade because I added tomato paste when I wasn't supposed to. (Good thing I had some leftover for when I really had to add it in.)

We left the pork in the fridge to marinate overnight and proceeded with the rest of the recipe the following afternoon.

Brian was lucky that he was able to get his clams fresh from the market; my only option was Superstore. Hahaha.

I put off buying clams for a day because I didn't know how to (aka was scared to) handle them overnight. When I came back for them, almost all were gone, so I bought the remaining 14 clams and hoped for the best. Thankfully, they all opened up on the pan.

Overall, our takes on the Carne de Porco à Alentejana turned out okay. The clams tasted amazing with the sauce, though the meat lacked a little bit of the oomph it needed to take it from okay to "delicious". However, it was popular enough that I didn't have any leftovers. Just the right amount for a family of four with a side of batatas. ;)