Two-thousand years ago, Evora was an outpost at the western edge of the Roman empire.

Portugal's cuisine is a dual product of its going about the world and colonizing distant backwaters and also being colonized and conquered itself.

While spices of every ilk represent the cultural leftovers of Portugal's empire, cheese represents the leftovers of the Roman Empire's expansion into Iberia. Like me, the Romans were also keen on the idea of travel food. Their marching armies needed food that could keep well over a variety of terrain and temperatures. Cheese became the fuel source of the Roman Army, and they brought all their cheesemaking technology along with them. As they conquered and colonized, they brought their techniques to each new city and town. And thus a network of protein and calcium providers expanded out from Rome and became cheddar and blue cheese and triple-creme.

Although cheese was probably first popularized in the Middle East, it was the Romans who spread it across Europe, and thus created a bloom of new cheese types across a subcontinent.

The Romans built a sturdy wall around Evora, and so the entire center of town is enclosed even today.

Although the French and British argue about where the best cheeses come from, it was the Romans – and therefore Italy - who fueled Europe with so many of the staple varieties.