Madeira: Recipes & Wanderings on the Atlantic Island of Eternal Spring

Madeira: Recipes & Wanderings on the Atlantic Island of Eternal Spring, the fifth in our cookbook series, Recipes & Wanderings, blending the vibrant traditions of regional cuisines from around the world with artistic perspectives from renowned photographers, food lovers, and writers.

With this exciting new volume we travel to the Atlantic island of Madeira off north-western Africa—a place of deep culinary richness, prehistoric laurel forests, and famed liquid treasures. Here, Nadine Ijewere’s radiant film photography captures the island and its contours, interwoven with interludes by writer Inês Matos Andrade, who takes the reader on an unhurried walk through Madeiran cuisine, its tricks, trades, and influences, while winding through the poetic communities that make up the island: from the iconic Fragateira serving the island for over 50 years, to Funchal’s farmers’ market, to the fishing boats heading out into the blue Atlantic.

Gathering 21 dishes, largely drawn from the kitchens of Reid’s Palace, Belmond’s historic clifftop hotel in Funchal, the book brings to life both classic recipes and the bold traditions behind them, interspersed with guest contributions by Claire Ptak of London’s Violet Bakery, food writer Rafael Tonon, and chef Nuno Mendes, to honour the island’s rich ecosystem of flavours. Introduced by Nuno, the culinary menu reaches far and wide—Bolo do Caco, Gaiado Seco, Bolo de Mel, and a Poncha to do the trick.

‘This book is not a guide so much as a slow walk through a handful of kitchens and stories, a way of tasting the island without rushing it’, writes Inês in her essay devoted to the effulgent energy of Madeira and its people. Part invitation and part visual ode, the book is also a celebration of the local suppliers and culinary locations that make the island such a celebrated culinary destination: from the bay of the fishing village Câmara de Lobos, where scales of chicharro and mackerel glisten in fishermen’s wicker baskets, to Eugénia Delgado’s home in Santa de Porto Moniz, where generations of culinary traditions are kept alive and well. Madeira is an invitation to taste and linger, to relish in the island’s unassuming yet profoundly inventive culinary world.