Gastronomy 

Serra da Estrela’s gastronomy is, like in every region, something unique, singular. Here we can show you some typical dishes that you can taste every time you go to the higher point of Portugal Continental, or if you like it, you can cook it in your own home.

Beira’s Soup

This regional dish is made mainly with every product produced by the inhabitants from this area. Being this a land of few resources, surrounded by mountains, where everything took its time to arrive, the people from this region ate what they produced in theirs own lands.
So, nothing better than a substantial bean and cabbages soup with the following ingredients: potato, red bean, carrot, onion, kale, olive oil and salt.

Fish

Trout a la mode de Manteigas

The trout a la mode de Manteigas appeared when the shepherds from this region caught in the water of the Zêzere River, beautiful trouts, and immediately prepared them while they were guarding the flock.
To prepare this dish, you will need the following ingredients: trout, milk, butter, parsley, flour, salt and pepper.

Roasted lamb or kid goat

Ingredients
Lamb or kid goat, garlic, paprika, salt, parsley, laurel, onion, hot pepper (facultative), potatoes.

Preparation
After cleaning the lamb, you should open it and give it small cuts so that it remains in one piece. You should tempered it with salt, crushed garlic, laurel in small pieces, olive oil, wine and a bit of hot pepper; leave it marinating from one day to another. In a clay roasting pan you should put the onion rings till you have the bottom all covered, then put in the spiced lamb and the potatoes. Throw in the marinate and put it in the oven to roast.

Serra da Estrela Cheese

This cheese is the calling card of this region. The geographical area of this cheese production goes over the municipalities of Celorico da Beira, Fornos de Algodres, Gouveia, Manteigas, Oliveira do Hospital, Seia and also some parishes from Covilhã, Guarda e Trancoso.
Columela a roman army officer, born 2000 years ago in the Iberic Peninsula, describes the making of this cheese in what we can say that it was the first known agricultural treat and as it is also written in ‘Manual do Criador’ 1^st Year, nº. 13 March 1986. In the Middle Age, it was Gil Vicente that honoured it. But the greatest investigations works about the Serra da Estrela Cheese only began in the ending of the 19^th century with Ferreira Lapa, Wenceslau da Silva, among others.
It’s a cheese produced mainly from goat milk from the Bordaleira breed, curdled with cardoon flower (Cinara Cardunculus), it is a characteristic plant from this region and it is used to coagulate the pasta that will originates the Serra’s Cheese. The pasta is putted in the cheese press (cincho), press manually until it runs out all the serum and maturated during 30 days in cure chambers with moist and temperature control. It has the shape of a short cylinder, convex in the sides and in the top, so it has no defined corners. Its unique characteristics of aroma and flavour, as well as its yellow colour, semi-soft buttered pasta, softer or hard according to its age, fulfil the most exigent of the tastes.