PORTUGAL HAS BEEN a big influence in my personal and professional life. I'm from a Portuguese family, grew up in Connecticut eating Portuguese food and run a Portuguese-inflected restaurant in New York City. I've been to the country at least a half-dozen times—as a baby in the 1970s, as a teenager in the '90s and as an adult. But my visit last July was by far the most profound.

The trip was the last of three focusing on discovery and weight gain—in other words, it was for cookbook research. My co-writer, Genevieve Ko, and I drove around Portugal for 10 days, eating at small, out-of-the-way establishments, the kinds of places only locals would know about (or sometimes even be able to find).

One of our first stops was Porto, home of Port wine. We walked the cobblestone streets and ate at a restaurant called A Grade. It felt like a tavern, with a small bar, wood benches and a television in the corner blaring the news. But a waiter dropped a small plate of bacalhau on our table—and as soon I put one of the crispy, golden-brown codfish fritters in my mouth, I knew this place was serious.

One of the specials was a dish of the tiniest deep-fried sardines, which you eat whole. The fish are rare, and each one was like a crunchy bite of ocean. The octopus was roasted in the oven with potatoes and melted in your mouth like butter. The potatoes were blistering hot; their smoky, intense flavor took me back to when I was a kid and my mother would roast fish and potatoes on Sunday afternoons.

We headed to the Alentejo region, just south of Lisbon, and took a tour of the Esporão winery, followed by lunch prepared by the vineyard chef. Gazpacho was served with fresh mint, marinated figs and crispy bread floating in it. We had bacalhau with crispy ham. But the coolest dish was a pork-neck confit that the chef had cooked overnight, then charred on a wood-burning grill. The lunch was elegant, and the flavors were so powerful and authentic to the region. I was reminded that you don't need to buy prime pieces of meat to make a delicious meal.