Come on a tour of Sydney's little Portugal - home to a series of Portuguese butchers and delis, great charcoal chicken, decadent custard tarts and good coffee, Portuguese-style, which means very short, and black (ask for a bica).

Sydney’s Little Portugal, mainly clustered around New Canterbury Road in the inner-western suburb of Petersham. Petersham is home to a series of Portuguese butchers and delis, great charcoal chicken, decadent custard tarts and good coffee, Portuguese-style, which means very short, and black (ask for a bica). It’s also the chief food shopping destination for Portuguese-born chef and caterer Fatima Barroso.

Portuguese food is simple fare, relying on seafood, cured meats like ham and sausage (chourico), plenty of vegetables and specialties like dried salt cod, known as bacalhau.

Manuel Alves and his son Joe cure hams and make their own chourico – the smoked sausage made with pork, garlic and paprika .The best way of serving the chourico is in an asador, a small terracotta brazier. The asador is filled with aguardiente (a Portuguese clear spirit drink a little like grappa), which is then lit to flambé the sausage.

As well as a smokehouse, the butcher shop also stocks the famous dried salt cod called bacalhau. Fatima soaks the bacalhau overnight, changing the water a couple of times to remove some of the salt. When it’s plumped up, she drains the water and starts to shred the fish for a traditional very simple dish called Bacalhau a bras.

Agostinho Ferreira is one of the only bakers to make his tarts by hand. The secret to crispy layers of pastry is the rolling and folding process, a very good slather of margarine and cooking at very high temperatures.

The rich custard is made from milk, sugar, many egg yolks, cornflour, lemon zest and vanilla. Agostinho says that the good news is that most of that fat burns in the high temperatures. The secret, in fact, is an extremely hot oven (500 degrees) for just two minutes!