A new experience for us in Portugal was the grilling of fish whole and uncleaned. In the UK we are used to only using cleaned fish - apart from very small fish such as whitebait which we eat whole.

Our first surprise was when we arrived in Baleal early afternoon and went out for lunch at the Prainha restaurant by the beach. We asked for an English menu - which I know from my work travels is not without risk as sometimes the translations are quite wrong! - two of us ordered "squid" with no description of how it was prepared and two of us ordered "swordfish". Those who had squid were served three (large to UK standards) squids grilled whole. However they did not realise that they were grilled whole with the innards! This meant careful knife and fork work! The other surprise was that we were served sole rather than swordfish but since it looked very good we did not send it back. The grilled fish - and we found out this was pretty much standard - were served with boiled potatoes and salad.

A new revelation was vinho verde. I had bought this at home as a cheap refreshing summer wine. I had not realised that "verde" referred to the age rather than colour of the wine. It is young wine and can be either white branco or red tinto. The wine we had was half-sparkling and went well with the fish.

A few nights later, we were sitting out with a glass of wine and our neighbours spoke to us. They were a family of five plus an elderly couple. The elderly woman invited us in for coffee. Conversation was difficult with us speaking a handful of Portuguese words and only the 15-year old girl speaking a little English. The old lady came out with an unlabelled bottle and it was clear that whatever it was, she had made it. She desribed it as morus (this may be wrong spelling) and it tasted like grappa. It was great in the coffee and tasted very smooth for something home-distilled. She then invited us all back for lunch the following day.

The lunch was straightforward and tasty. The dad had a bucket of sardines which had been tossed with sea salt and they were grilled whole. They were served with boiled potatoes and salad. The sardines were very fresh and despite our suspicions it was very easy to remove the cooked flesh from the whole sardines. We are not great fans of boiled potatoes but they went well with the fish, they had quite a yellow colour and floury consistency. The salad - like that in the restaurant - was a sort of crinkly firm lettuce, grated carrot, tomato and cucumber. We were offered olive oil and white wine vinegar on the side. I am sure it would be straightforward to grill mackerel this way - a thought for a future camping holiday though personally I would rather clean the mackerel first.

We tried cooking whole fish ourselves. I bought some sea bream dourado at a local supermarket and grilled it in a grill pan. It was actually cleaned at the fish counter - I was pleased about that! - but it worked out well cooked whole.