Li’l Frenchie – Porto Town’s Francesinha

In the northwest of Portugal, on the Atlantic coast, is the country’s 2nd largest city, Porto. Porto is one of the oldest cities in Europe, and well known for its architecture, its beautiful climate, for being the eponym of Port wine (aka Vinho do Porto). It’s also known for being home to one of the wildest sandwiches on our List, the Francesinha.

The Francesinha is a descendant of the French croque monsieur, in a sense–the origin story says that in the 1960s, Daniel Silva moved back to Porto from France and invented a Portuguese rendition of that indulgent French favorite for the Restaurante A Regaleira.

Silva’s version wasn’t any less extravagant than the original. Instead of just ham and cheese on the inside, the Francesinha generally contains ham, some roast meat like steak or pork loin, a cured, smoked sausage like Linguiça, and a fresh sausage such as chipolata. It will often have a sunny-side up egg on top, like the croque madame. Edam cheese is liberally used both inside and atop the sandwich, which, like its predecessor, is broiled to melt the cheese. Instead of a simple béchamel though, the Francesinha is topped with a rich tomato-beer sauce and festooned with fries.

All discussions of the Francesinha seem to circle back around to the tomato/beer sauce in which it’s drenched. Each place serving it has their own carefully guarded secret recipe, so there must be some variability; yet it also seems to be the least fungible, most important part of the sandwich. Sauces are often an overrated addition to a sandwich, but in this case, the sauce’s importance could not be underestimated. I needed to get it right, but had no way of trying the real thing.

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The Sauce is the Boss
_{– Sweet Baby Ray’s}

– Sweet Baby Ray’s

Worcestershire? More like Bestestershire
_{– Some ad guy, probably.}

– Some ad guy, probably.

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There are a number of recipes available online though. The commonalities between the the Francesinha sauce recipes I looked through consisted of the following basic parts:

• An initial flavor component of onion, garlic, and bay leaf, sauteed in fat. This was the first step in every recipe I found. Some of them used carrot as well.
• Beer and either a spirit (whiskey, cognac, brandy) or a fortified wine.
• Tomato. Mostly tomato paste, though some would use whole canned or fresh tomatoes instead.
• Meat. Or I should probably say meatiness. Some recipes put meat in and take it out later to use it in the sandwich. Some of them just put in leftover bones from a roast. Almost every one of them adds some stock as well.
• Hot sauce. I approve of this ingredient.

Based on those commonalities, it sounds like the ideal Francesinha sauce should be rich, umami-heavy, with a kick from the booze and the hot sauce. Additionally, I’ve read that a Francesinha sauce should also be a good dipping sauce for the fries it’s served with, or even on its own. With those facts in mind, I put together the following recipe, using what I had on hand.

My sauce was more opaque and thicker than many I’d seen. I may have overdone it. Would I eat a sandwich and fries that were swimming in the stuff though? That would be the real test.

I made a sandwich, again using the things that I had on hand, but similar to the ingredients that might make their way into a Francesinha. Plain old sandwich bread, toasted. Some prosciutto in place of the ham. Deli turkey slices in place of the meat. Spicy Italian salami in place of the Linguiça. Irish bangers in place of the chipolatas. Shredded Fontina cheese in place of Edam. Crinkle-cut fries.

I broiled the sandwich until the cheese was melted and slightly browned.

Then I doused the whole mess in some of my test sauce.

The sauce was spectacular. It enhanced everything, from the meats to the fries. The Fontina was too strong, overpowering everything but the sauce, and I thought a more substantial bread would be called for. I’d really half-assed it on the meat selection, to be sure. But the sauce… I may not have nailed it first try, but it was certainly good enough for me, without any frame of reference to work from. It tasted great on the fries, and even on a plate of pasta I tried the next day.

With the sauce question answered, it was time to nail down the rest of the ingredients.

For the bread, I went with a loaf of white bread from d’Amato’s.

For the ham, I’m keeping it simple with some Krakus Polish ham

For the non-cured meat component, I’ll use a thin-sliced sirloin steak that I’ll pan fry

Tracking down the Linguiça wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. I’d gotten it from Publican Quality Meats previously, when I was working on the Choripán last summer. But PQM didn’t have any ready this time around. They sent me around the corner to Olympia Meats, who also didn’t have any but where I did pick up an interesting package of duck bacon.

I called around to a few places and finally was able to find smoked Linguiça at Paulina Meats on the north side.

I also picked up some Edam cheese while I was there

As for the Chipolata, I asked about it everywhere I went. Nobody really carried anything called a Chipolata, but I’d get comments like “It’s a kind of Italian breakfast sausage,” or “It’s just a type of cocktail sausage.” I looked up some recipes online that suggested a fresh sausage, mildly spiced, ground fine into an emulsion with plenty of fat. It seemed like my initial substitution of Irish bangers wasn’t too far off the mark. So I went to Winston’s and got some cocktail-sized bangers.

This sandwich doesn’t really call for bacon, especially duck bacon. But it does call for a great heaping pile of various meats, and I’d happened across the duck bacon while gathering ingredients for this sandwich, so I decided to fry some up and use it.

I then fried the bangers in the duck fat from the bacon.

I wanted to try and keep the sandwich from piling too high, so I sliced the Linguiça on the bias into thick planks, rather than just halving or quartering them.

I started building the sandwiches by toasting my bread, then placing 2 slices in a baking pan with a slice of cheese on each.

Then I added ham

steak

the duck bacon

Linguiça

and the bangers, each sliced in half so they’d sit flatter.

Then I finished with another slice of cheese, toasted bread, and a sunnyside up egg.

I used 4 slices of cheese on the corners of each sandwich, leaving the egg yolk uncovered but fully protecting the bread from being burned by the broilers, as well as overlapping down the sides of the sandwiches and onto the fries I added around them.

Then a quick broil, to melt the cheese.

Since most of the ingredients were already somewhat warmed up, the cheese melted quickly.

I transferred each sandwich to its own plate along with a share of the fries.

Then I added the sauce

These photos may not do the intimidation factor of the sandwich justice. This is a big damn sandwich. Between me, my wife and my 15 year old son, we could barely finish one of them. My neighbor came over and finished 1/4 of the other.

Then my 18 year old son came home and wiped out what was left.

If there were Francesinha shops in Chicago, I could definitely see this catching on as a late-night, post-bars type snack. That is, if people didn’t fill themselves up on cooler tamales first. It’s that kind of thing–I wanted to keep eating, but the sensible side of me told me “This is too much food!” Luckily for us all, our sensible sides can’t hold their liquor, and we’ll tackle too much food as a matter of course after a night of tying one on.

On a sober Saturday afternoon, though, it was simply too much food. And it would be too much work to try and make one of these yourself once you’re drunk enough to finish one. It’s not quite the Chip Butty dilemma but similar. You can enjoy this sandwich sober, you probably just won’t be able to eat the whole thing. My sauce recipe could probably use a little refinement, but I like it well enough that I’d dip my fries in it any day (crinkle-cut or no). And any excuse to buy too much Linguiça is a welcome one. (Any ideas what to do with a couple leftover pounds? I’m thinking some kind of bean soup).

Regardless, if I ever find myself drunk and hungry at a restaurant in Porto, Portugal, I guess I know what I’m ordering.