Semea

Across northern Portugal, locals take day-old bread, soak it in milk, dip it in eggs, and fry it in oil, then serve the dish with a spiced syrup that sometimes includes Porto’s signature wine, or sprinkling it with cinnamon sugar. Rabanadas, as the dessert is known, is a ubiquitous, beloved and traditional dish in the region, especially around Christmas time.  

But Porto chef Vasco Coelho Santos wanted to break with tradition. Inspired by a dessert he encountered in Spain, he stripped the components of rabanadas down to their elements and combined them in a novel way. He does this by soaking bread in a mix of milk, cream, and eggs. He then freezes the bread before cutting it into cubes. To serve, he tosses the still-frozen cubes in sugar and caramelizes them in butter. The bread is allowed to rest briefly before he sears it with a torch.

The result takes the form of an ominous-looking dark cube with a thin, crispy, glasslike exterior and a soft, light and milky—almost whipped cream-like—center. The chef pairs the cubes with a scoop of rich, slightly tart ice cream made from queijo da Serra, a raw sheep’s milk cheese from inland Portugal.