A cow milling about the road leading to the entrance of Sao Lourenco do Barrocal.
After driving more than 200km from L’and Vineyards, we made our way to Sao Lourenco do Barrocal, a luxury resort surrounded by olive and cork trees.
Our rustic dinner began with a watercress and orange salad, bread topped with tomatoes and goat’s cheese and drizzled with olive oil (made by the resort), and a short crust beef turnover.
Sweet and refreshing, the orange slices helped balance out the bitterness of the watercress. The beef turnover was so delicious that had there been more pieces, the dish could’ve been dinner itself. The goat’s cheese had a surprisingly mild flavour, while the olive oil had a delightful fruitiness to it.
The red wine (seen on the right) is also produced by the resort. The 2014 vintage has a pleasing dark cherry flavour to it, and offers an extremely short finish.
This fried pork was supposedly from acorn-fed pigs (sounds like the type of pigs that become Iberico ham), but we found the dish a bit too salty for our liking, even when eaten with the bread stew and baked vegetables (below).
We ended our meal with Boleima (below), which is essentially a cinnamon-flavoured apple cake.
This simple dessert really hit the spot for us. We also liked how it was nowhere as sweet as the strawberry meringue pie we had after lunch!
