Unless you're of Lusitanian extraction, Portuguese cuisine for most Torontonians means Churrasco: grilled, smoky take-out chicken, slathered in tangy piri-piri hot sauce. David Leite's New Portuguese Table offers a recipe for frango com piri-piri, and the note about cooking it, that precedes the proper instructions, seems about right, from what I've seen around Ossington and Dundas:

We Portuguese can be somewhat cavalier when it comes to fire. This recipe requires that the food be basted with piri-piri sauce while grilling. Flare-ups are inevitable. To avoid charring your food beyond recognition, turn it often, and move it to a cooler corner of the grill or adjust the heat as needed. I also open and close the grill's cover to control the cooking.

The New Portuguese Table is much more than a grilled chicken recipe - the book is an exhaustive study of a cuisine that few outside of the country or ethnic enclaves know much about - but Leite's amusing supposition that his reader might well char his frango beyond recognition is demonstrative of the author's gift as a recipe communicator and his good natured and cheerful celebration of his culinary roots. The reader is immediately amused by the thought of the burnt chicken and enticed and emboldened to try it out, recognising the opening and closing BBQ technique as comfortably familiar.

Leite, a Portuguese-American, is known mostly for his website Leite's Culinaria, which wins James Beard Awards for its sophisticated but user-friendly collections of recipes and food writing. For an aspiring cookbook author, a recipe from one's book featured on leitesculinaria.com is a recognition of excellence and a sought-after acceptance into the digital fooderatti. Fans of the site (like your humble correspondent) know Leite's passion for Portuguese cooking, and have been anticipating the book for years as he worked away at it.

Why, I ask Leite, who is on the phone from New York, is the object of his passion, Portuguese cuisine, not well known? "There are two reasons: 1) Portugal for hundreds of years Portugal kept to itself and turned its back to Europe, especially Spain who it fought wars with and 2) Portuguese immigrants to America did not open restaurants. Bars maybe, but never restaurants." The reason for the lack of Portuguese restaurants, Leite went on to explain was that it was considered an insult to your mother or wife to have to go out and pay for a meal. "It just wasn't done, so non-Portuguese had little opportunity to try new dishes."

Judging from Leite's survey, which covers all seasons and possible types of dishes from soups to desserts, the cooking of Portugal is familiar and grounded in Western European culinary tradition. But there are a few interesting stand-outs. Leite points to the combination of pork and clams in cataplana and other dishes (to ward of The Inquisition, I wonder later) and he describes the Portuguese palate as being "cilantro happy". Other idiosyncratic ingredients include purslane and the particular kale required for proper caldo verde (the green soup): "You can't find it in America, so I recommend using collard greens. The taste and texture are closer to what you get there."

After the explosion of interest in Spanish cuisine in the last decade, it's refreshing to discover the cooking from the west end of the Iberian Peninsula. Leite's book features stunning pictures from the Portuguese photographer Nuno Correia and promises to open this neglected cuisine to North American cooks and diners. The food which is simple, rustic but faintly exotic and novel is irresistible. It's just familiar enough not to be daunting, but new enough to arouse curiosity - a combination foodies and chefs love. Start looking for Portuguese dishes at dinner parties and on fine dining restaurants this fall.

Find out more about David Leite and read recipes from his book at leitesculinaria.com. Look for The New Portuguese Table at fine book stores like The Cookbook Store, or order a copy at Amazon.ca.

Malcolm Jolley is the editor of Good Food Revelation.