Cenouras à Algarvia

The Algarve doesn't get enough credit for its vegetable dishes. Everyone talks about the seafood, the cataplanas, the grilled fish. But spend time in the tascas of Faro or Tavira and you'll find these carrots on every table. A petisco so simple it barely needs a recipe, so good you'll wonder why carrots anywhere else taste like nothing.

This is what happens when you treat vegetables with the same respect you'd give fish or meat. Boil them properly. Dress them while warm. Use good azeite, real vinegar, garlic sliced thin, and that particular Algarve combination of colorau and heat that makes everything taste like sunshine.

Avó Leonor was from Alentejo, not the Algarve, but she made a version of this with whatever vegetables came from the garden. Carrots, green beans, cauliflower. The technique is the same: cook, dress warm, let time do its work. She called it "deixar casar" (letting them marry). The flavors need time to know each other.

Make these the night before a dinner party. By the next day, the carrots will have turned that deep terracotta orange, the garlic will have mellowed, and you'll have a petisco that costs almost nothing and tastes like you know what you're doing. Because now you do.