Many families in Portugal celebrate Christmas around a table filled with cakes, biscuits, dried fruit, and good wine. Among the treats, they will likely have bolo rei (“king’s cake”), a crown-shaped cake decorated with crystallized fruit; sonhos, orbs of crispy-yet-airy fried dough; and rabanadas, a Portuguese version of french toast covered with sugar and cinnamon. In some regions, another treat will appear: a curved, eel-shaped mound of egg yolks, sugar syrup, and almonds that will stare out at diners with candied-fruit eyes and a big smile. This is lampreia de…
