Faro Sweet Festival

Posted on August 22, 2007
Filed Under Food

Although not highly publicized, Faro’s sweet festival has a nice show of traditional Portuguese desserts. We couldn’t help having a crepe, some salami, a hot fartura and picking up a Dom Rodrigo for the road…I’m having nightmares of my next few workouts.

In case you’re not familiar with Portuguese salami (I realize the jokes that can be made here) it might not be what you would expect of traditional salami. The Portuguese version is made of chocolate and cookies and shaped like salami hence the name, and normally wrapped in foil.

Faro Sweet Festival

View more pictures from Faro’s Sweet Festival

A Dom Rodrigo is that mystery dessert you see in café’s and restaurants wrapped in tall colorful foil. I’m including a look inside the wrapper for those of you who have never dared to get one. The Dom Rodrigo has a history and the dessert inside is a gooey mix of fios de ovos (Sweet egg strings), Ovos Moles (sweet egg cream), Gila (String Pumpkin jam), Almonds and cinnamon. There are different variations of this, some with the Gila some without. All the ingredients are cooked before hand and combined afterwards into a loose ball of sweetness to make the Dom Rodrigo, its then wrapped and served fresh. This dessert is quite moist so the foil wrap helps it stay that way. So, the big question is, how does it taste? I’m not a big fan of a lot of eggy desserts, and the Dom Rodrigo’s I’ve tasted over the years tended to taste more like a gooey carrot cake than anything overly eggy, thanks to the cinnamon. It’s a different dessert than any other I’ve experienced and might be a fun try, but don’t forget to enjoy it with a café!

This might be a good time to mention that Portuguese and especially the Algarvios have a fascination with eggs…and eggy sweets, I’ll delve into that subject in later posts.