´Doing a tiborna´

sweet breakfast tiborna with orange and cinnamon

Simple food,fast, with lots of flavour, just as I like it.There is nothing better than making a tiborna.Tiborna is to the Algarve what bruschetta is to Italy.It is the name given to a type of open sandwich made with freshly baked bread, rubbed with garlic and soaked in unctuous extra virgin olive oil.It is great when good old customs return and this is a perfect example.Bread was traditionally the foundation of the Algarvian diet, and no table today is complete without it, alongside copious amounts of good wine and olive oil.Tibornas were traditionally made to celebrate the first sampling of each year´s olive oil production(around this time).Tibornas were usually made from bread toasted over hot coals.Today tibornas are eaten wherever and whenever, and feature on many restaurant menus.However, until recently they were traditionally only made in the autumn, to coincide with the first olive oil pressing.
And so the tiborna began life as a means of tasting olive oil,an activity carried out in a spirit of celebration.Soon other petiscos(snacks,tapas)were added until ´doing a tiborna´
came to signify a whole gourmet celebration.Nowadays by innovating the age old concept in the very same way that tapas evolved, it has very much become a type of bruschetta.Toasted bread with chopped tomatoes,oregano and olive oil is something very Portuguese,very simple and very close to its Italian counterpart.But lets see where more innovation could takes us.There are many different types of tibornas in the Algarve,from the most straightforward (with olive oil and garlic) to the more sophisticated (with orange juice,sugar and cinnamon.The preparation process for the sweet version was the same as for the savoury.The dish is as simple as this:Grill the bread,soak it in orange juice,quickly drizzle it with the new olive oil and top it with a generous sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon.The tibornas would then be lined up on a platter,stacked one on top of the other and eaten warm.The slight acidic taste from the orange juice countering the sweetness of the sugar.It adds a whole new dimension to breakfast.
Some other savoury suggestions for topping a tiborna
Tiborna de queijo com nozes e pêras camarelizadas 
(cheese,nuts and caramelized pears)
Tiborna de queijo de cabra com alecrim e mel 
(goats cheese,with rosemary and honey)
Tiborna de atum grelhado com ovos e abacate
( grilled tuna and an egg and avocado salad)