Joaquim Braz de OliveiraForcado, Une cuisine Portugaise Authentique : A cozinha de Joaquim

On 9 August 1971, Joaquim Braz de Oliveira left Lavradio, a working-class suburb of Lisbon where he had grown up. He was nineteen years old. A communist activist, he fled, like many young Portuguese, from Salazar’s dictatorship and found refuge in Brussels. As a waiter in a restaurant, he learned the profession of cook on the job, then opened Forcado in 1982, a restaurant serving traditional Portuguese cuisine. His customers discovered the popular and authentic cuisine that he inherited from his father and mother. His dishes include caldo verde, rissóis de camarao, chocos fritos, caldeirada de peixe, bacalhau à brás and other classics from the tascas, the neighbourhood bistros of Lisbon. The critics made his reputation and presented Forcado as the “Best Portuguese table outside Portugal”. In 2004, he opened a pastelaria, a pastry workshop. He is keen to promote Portuguese pastries, another part of his country’s culinary heritage, such as the famous pasteis de nata. This book tells the story of Joaquim Braz de Oliveira.