Flavors
of Asia
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In an area the size of Medina, Minnesota, nearly half-a-million people call two islands and a peninsula in the South China Sea home. Many of them trace their ancestry back to the 16th century when Portuguese traders established the first European settlement in the Far East, and they are the backbone of today's Macau. They are the Macanese Portuguese/Chinese descendants of those early travelers and they have created a very special cuisine. In "Taste of Macau: Portuguese Cuisine on the China Coast" author Annabel Jackson explores this fascinating fusion of European and Asian cooking, and the people who call Macau home. Just 40 miles from Hong Kong, this Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China is now known for its casinos and tourism nearly eight million visitors a year - and, for its unique cooking. "The foundations of Macanese cooking are indisputably Portuguese," writes Jackson. "while many of the ingredients are those readily available locally which are shared with the Cantonese kitchen, from root vegetables, ginger and garlic to soy sauce and lap cheong." The cooking also shows influences of Indian and Malaysian spices and of African dishes. Galinha à Cafreal (African Chicken) is a good example and one of Macau's most popular dishes. Here a whole chicken is seasoned with a paste of butter, garlic, salt, bay leaves and chili. It is broiled with more butter and garlic mixed with coconut milk, and cooked until it is black on the top but tender underneath. Jackson believes Tacho (Winter Casserole) is the most Cantonese-style dish in her cookbook requiring a number of ingredients usually found only in Asian meat markets Cantonese roast duck, Chinese bacon and sausage, pig skin, pigs's trotter, pork bone, etc. It is a legendary Macanese dish that is always served at family gatherings in the winter. The book contains 62 recipes with many color photos and ingredient explanations. But the thing that sets the "Taste of Macau" apart from other cookbooks is Jackson's desire to help the reader know more about her homeland through her own food memories and those of several Macau residents or former residents. She quotes António M. Jorge da Silva, a Macanese architect now living in California, "Most Macaeneses will agree that their cuisine is basically Portuguese enriched with the spices and wonderful flavours of the East. The legacy the Macaenses will leave to their descendants after four hundred years in Macau is not music, architecture, literature, or poetry; it is a cuisine with more diversity and complexity than any left by Western countries who claimed empires on Asian soil." "Taste of Macau" is also a tribute to the International Slow Food Movement founded in Italy in 1989 to counter the "degrading effects of industrial and fast food culture that are standardizing taste," and promotes the "beneficial effects of the deliberate consumption of nutritious locally grown and indigenous foods." Indeed many of the recipes in "Taste of Macau" are
fairly complex with unusual ingredients and require slow cooking.
But the patient cook will have some interesting results and explore
a cuisine seldom seen outside of Macau. Published in February
by Hippocrene Books, Inc, "Taste of Macau" has a soft
cover price of $18.95. It is available at www.ecookbooks.com
for $13.26 or at www.amazon.com at $13.27, and in your local
bookstores. |
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