We're here with the May edition of My Portugal, our newsletter series dedicated to exploring Portuguese culture through interviews with friends of Portugalia Marketplace. We're thrilled to introduce our next guest:

David Leite is the publisher of the website Leite's Culinaria, which has won two James Beard awards. He is the author of Notes on a Banana: A Memoir of Food, Love, and Manic Depression, as well as The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe's Western Coast, which won the 2010 IACP First Book/Julia Child Award. His writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Pastry Art & Design, Food Arts, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post and the Charlotte Observer. His awards include a 2008 James Beard award for Newspaper Feature Writing Without Recipes, a 2006 Bert Green Award for Food Journalism, and the Association of Food Journalists awards in 2006 and 2007.

The New Portuguese Table

David Leite takes you on a culinary journey into the soul of Portugal. The New Portuguese Table is the definitive handbook of the exciting cuisine of Portugal.

Portugalia Marketplace: Growing up within a multi-generational Portuguese-American household here in Fall River, MA, was there a specific childhood experience or moment that ignited your passion for Portuguese cuisine and the broader culinary arts?

 

David Leite: Actually, it wasn't when I was growing up but rather when I had moved away that I began poking around in the kitchen.

 

It happened after my grandmother, Vovo Costa, passed away in the early ‘90s. When she died, so did some of her recipes. My mother had her versions of my grandmother's dishes, but they weren't the same, and no one had a written record of them. 

 

For example, my grandmother used to make this incredible pink chicken soup with rice and potatoes (sopa da galinha). Every summer, my extended family would get together, and all of us loved it. I remember my cousin Mark from Michigan eating a record 13 bowls of it! The sad part was that I couldn't find that recipe anywhere, and I couldn't recreate it. The same thing with her Portuguese stuffing.

 

That's when I embarked upon a journey to preserve our family’s recipes. It was meant to be a personal project, but it turned into my first food article, which appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. From there, not only was my passion for Portuguese food ignited, but a career was created.

PM: As a food writer, you’ve helped elevate the visibility of Portuguese cuisine in the USA. Could you share the story of how you ventured into journalism, and were there any particular challenges you faced when pitching stories about Portuguese cuisine to audiences who might have been unfamiliar with it?

 

DL: As I mentioned above, I got into food journalism to preserve my family’s memories and recipes. And boy, did I face a lot of resistance when I began pitching article ideas about Portuguese cuisine!  

 

Back then, it wasn't uncommon for food editors to conflate Portuguese and Spanish cuisine. They’d ask me for tapas recipes or what my favorite kind of chorizo was. It was then that I realized I had to first educate editors about Portuguese cuisine and why it’s so special before I'd even get a chance to write articles that entertained and educated readers. So my pitch letters turned into love letters, trying to seduce editors with all Portugal had to offer.

 

My biggest challenge was choosing recipes that would make it through the editorial process. So, for example, I couldn’t include many salt cod recipes at first, and forget anything to do with stewed octopus, tripe, etc.

 

I guess you could say I was a pioneer of sorts. I was traveling to Portugal and bringing back all these new flavors and foods to a population that had never heard of them–kind of like what our explorer ancestors did for the world!

 

PM: Can you tell our readers about Leite’s Culinaria and what inspired its creation?

 

DL: Sure. Leite’s Culinaria is a hub for home cooks. I have more than 4,000 recipes, articles, travel guides; a podcast; and so much more. It’s a “global” brand, if you will, because it's used by people in almost every country in the world.

 

I created the site back in February 1999–which was the Pleistocene Age of the Internet. I thought this thing called the "World Wide Web" might actually have a future. The site was meant to be nothing more than a place for me to post the articles I was writing for magazines and newspapers for other editors to read. A kind of online portfolio. 

 

Because the first articles I posted were about Portuguese cuisine, people began writing me asking for help. Many of these early readers were like me- first- or second-generation Portuguese Americans who wanted to recreate the recipes of their grandmothers or mothers. So, I began researching and sending them recipes as well as posting them on the site. Nothing was planned, and there was no business plan on my part. And I think that's why Leite's Culinaria became so successful: it has always been shaped and informed by the needs of my readers.

 

PM: Your Cookbook, The New Portuguese Table, offers a fresh perspective on Portuguese cuisine. It’s a favorite among our customers. Could you shed some light on the inspiration behind the book and what sets it apart from other works of Portuguese cooking?

 

DL: I was approached by an editor from Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House, about writing the cookbook. I’d been wanting to write a cookbook of Azorean cuisine, but there were no takers. As a result of all the rejection, I was leery when the editor and I met for lunch. What if this is just another dead end? Then I thought, “Why the hell not?” At the very least, I’d get a free meal out of it.

 

But she had an interesting take on a Portuguese cookbook. She wanted something different, new. There weren’t many cookbooks at the time, but all of them featured the same beloved recipes–bacalhau a Gômes de Sá, bacalhau com natas, etc.  It's as if they were frozen in time. She believed something was percolating in Portugal, and she wondered if I agreed. And I did. Heartily. I welcomed the challenge of discovering new, contemporary dishes in Portugal and bringing them to an American audience.

 

The book was a conundrum for some Portuguese immigrants, especially older generations. When they flipped through the pages, they were befuddled. So much of it wasn’t familiar to them—which was true! That was the whole point. 

 

For example: milk mayonnaise. That's actually a misnomer because mayonnaise isn't made with milk, but rather eggs, vinegar, mustard, and oil. But I had it at a wonderful restaurant in the Alentejo, and I simply had to bring it back to America. I found out later that the cookbook actually introduced that recipe to America, something of which I’m very proud.

 

What's interesting is after all these years, some of the unfamiliar dishes in the book have become the new classics for a whole generation of younger cooks.

PM: Are there any new projects you’d like to let our readers know about?

 

DL: Indeed there is! I'll be creating online cooking classes and courses focussed on Portuguese cuisine, both classic and contemporary. 

 

Plus I'm leading a small, luxe culinary tour of Portugal–from Lisbon to Porto–in spring of 2025. The details of all of these new ventures are still being hammered out, but if Portugalia readers want to remain in the know, they can sign up for my free newsletter. I'll be announcing everything there.