Foreign supermarket buys

[WeAreTheHeroes]

There have been some fab threads on what to buy from foreign supermarkets. We're in Portugal at the moment enjoying doing very little, but what do you recommend we try/buy in a supermarket over here?

Before covid we went to Spain. There was a local shop next to us but we couldn’t read any of the ingredients so we didn’t buy anything. To our delight we found an Iceland a 10 minute drive from out apartment. I’d never been so excited to shop there.

They have Iceland in Spain?! I'm more familiar with the likes of Mercadona where there's a whole aisle dedicated to tinned fish of all descriptions.

I speak Spanish so I can figure out quite a lot of stuff here and could have helped you out. I'm definitely buying a bottle of almond liqueur to take home.

I would buy some fresh pasteis de nata and some good Porto wine to take home.
And perhaps some olive soap if they have it?

Bought a load of cheap boxed red wine to make sangria with on a hen do in Portugal a few years ago which was actually really enjoyable, was probably about 3/4 euro?

I have never tried a pasteis de nata so can easily fix that.

It’s delicious! I always stuff my face whenever I’m in Portugal 🤤

@Pinkstegosaurus - we bought a bottle of red wine for under €3 the other day and it was very good.

Tomato tuna!!

Qué? Is that tuna in tomato sauce or something else?

@WeAreTheHeroes

The only thing I can think of is the fudgey toffee with a cow on the packaging. Cannot remember the name (we can get them here). I absolutely love them. It is best if a Polish person answers really as I have no idea what you can and can't get in the UK.

Pasteis de nata bought. Not eaten yet because I bought something I thought was a cheesy tart thing which turned out to be sweet...

Oh my HOW do you have pasties de nata in the house and you’ve not stuffed your face? They are the best thing in the world.

Also get the amazing frozen seafood when you’re next on a Portuguese supermarket, and tiny tins of fish pate.

Buy a bag for life while you're there. Dh collects them for doing our shopping, we have them from here, Canada, Spain, Portugal and Poland. Great fun.

@Deathraystare they are called “krówki”, which means “little cows.”

And the chocolate covered marshmallow sweets are called “Ptasie Mleczko”, which means “Bird’s Milk.”

And anything from the Polish shop by Wedel will be delicious. Particularly a huge chocolate covered wafer. Although I lived in Poland in the 1980s so do wonder if we were easily pleased at the time!

@H1978
Couldn't you work out what some of the food was, like cold meats or cheeses?

Where we go in Portugal (eastern Algarve) there's a supermarket called Corvo (Crow 🤨) which does a large selection of salami type sausages, also choriço, a morcilla type blood sausage, and rounds of fresh soft white goat's cheese that is lovely on toast or bread with jam.
The pastries, including pasteis de nata and a similar looking one which is a cheesecake, are excellent.
Herb flavoured coarse salt from Castro Marim is also a good buy.

Chocolate salami - in the fridge section, wrapped in silver foil and it's a kind of chocolate biscuit cake

pastel de nata are best eaten on the same day. the pastry goes stale if left.

Had a pastel de nata for breakfast. Have also been for an hour's walk and done a workout in the hotel gym so can probably have another one later! No staleness.

They are gorgeous, you can get decent ones in the UK too now, the co-op ones, from the unwrapped bakery section, are not half bad.

German Kinder Milchschnitte and Katjeskinder licorice cats. Yum.