Madeira - Day 7 - Mercado dos Lavradores

I have been here a week now and the first day, Saturday, I came down to the market just as it was wrapping up. It is held on Friday and Saturday even though there are permanent shops in the building open all week. It is quieter (relatively) on the Friday, so I walked down and went first to the back of the building, where the fish market is.

The fish market door is well guarded.

The fish I had last week, cooked with banana was this, the espada or scabbard fish. Long and black

with big eyes and fierce teeth. They really are horrible looking. Nightmare material.

But once the black scales are scraped off and they are gutted and the head taken off, they are cut into unassuming white fish fillets.

Huge hunks of tuna are cut to order.

And all sorts

of other fish.

Its a smelly, noisy, fascinating place.

The rest of the market consists of two levels around a central courtyard, full of stalls.

All the fruit vendors offer you a taste and I got lured in by my curiosity - this, the vendor told me, is a dragon fruit and after tasting a spoonful I had to have one. Actually 2; one yellow and one red. From there it was a slippery slope until I had a bag of fruit that I don't even know the names of.

As with most markets it was all about colour and display.

And variety.

So many kinds of dried peppers,

nuts and dried fruit

and dried herbs and spices.

I bought some locally grown dates but manged to resist these huge ones wrapped around walnuts.

Along with the fruits and vegetables there

stalls selling flowers and plants.

This is my haul - at the top are 4 kinds of banana (silver, dwarf, plantain and I can't remember what he called the other one), the three on the bottom left I am not sure about but I remember tasting one and it was delicious, the long one in the middle is called "Delicious Fruit" (original!) or Adams rib (as it ripens the outside kernels and skin falls off and the inside looks like corn on the cob but tastes like a fruit) and the 2 on the bottom right are dragon fruit.

I ate the red dragon fruit when I got home. Cut it in half length ways, and ate it by scooping out the flesh and seeds with a spoon. It was very sweet, the flesh was almost juice and the seeds were small like a kiwi.