Catch of the day

Grilled fish dish includes a quick and easy sauce

The Portuguese like clean, fresh flavours and lively seasonings, particularly with fish — from salt cod, traditionally fished and dried along the Gaspé coast for the Mediterranean market, to just about every species from the Atlantic waters off the coast of Portugal.

Chef Helena Loureiro, who learned to cook in her native Fatima, Portugal, has been demonstrating her cuisine for many years in her Montreal restaurants.

Her new cookbook, Helena’s Portuguese Kitchen (Juniper Publishing/ Groupe Homme, $32.95), is a beautifully photographed English translation of her 2011 French book from Les Editions Transcontinental.

The recipes are uncomplicated but effective, like this grilled fish dish, which can be cooked in about the same time as it will take to make the quick and easy sauce.

Loureiro has a new challenge as she is closing her first restaurant, the Portus Calle, to move up — 29 floors above downtown Montreal — to run a big, revolving restaurant on top of a former hotel, now a student residence, at 777 Robert Bourassa St.

Appropriately, it will be called Portus 360.