http://www.leitesculinaria.com/columns/port_cookbooks.html
Portuguese encounters of two different kinds (Leite's Culinaria)
By David Leite
Quick, name a good Portuguese cookbook. It's not easy, is it? There are lots of debates as to why shelves containing French or Italian cookbooks buckle under their own weight while those containing Portuguese texts barely bow. Well, here are two new additions that give both the bookshelf and Portuguese cooking a bit more heft.
Although the first has the ponderous and breathless title ofCuisines of Portuguese Encounters: Recipes from Portugal, Madeira/Azores, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Sa~o Tome' and Principe, Angola, Mozambique, Goa, Brazil, Malacca, East Timor, and Macao (Hippocrene, 2001), there's nothing daunting about the book.
To the uninitiated, the countries listed are Portugal's former colonies, some of which became independent as recently as 30 years ago. This impressive and far-flung collection of former possessions point up Portugal's world dominance that peaked in the sixteenth century when Portuguese seaman, many led by Henry the Navigator, conquered new lands to build one of history's largest empires.
Author Cherie Hamilton, cook, cultural anthropologist, and world traveler, began her research of the foods of the Portuguese-speaking world nearly 40 years ago when she and her husband (who was on a Fulbright scholarship) went to Brazil for a year. There she began studying Bahian cooking. Encouraged by Jorge Amado, one of Brazil's premiere novelists, she began gathering recipes for a Bahian cookbook.
Several trips to Portugal, Mozambique and Angola later, her Bahian cookbook idea expanded to include exotic recipes from these new locales too. Later, more trips and sabbatical leaves were filled with visits to other former Portuguese colonies, often times at the behest of the local governments who got wind of Hamilton's culinary research.
The result is a book that works on several levels. For the cook, there are 225 authentic recipes, everything from Pastel com o Diabo Dentro (Pastry with the Devil Inside) from Cape Verde and Picadinho (Brazilian Hash) to Malassadas (Fried Doughnuts) from the Azores, the nine islands 1,000 miles off Portugal's mainland. For the culinary historian, there are detailed notes of the cultural and social importance of each dish, the relationship between food from the different countries, as well as the migration of food from one part of the world to another.
The second book -- more modest in geographic scope, but no less important -- is Ana Patuleia Ortins' Portuguese Homestyle Cooking (Interlink Books, 2001). Ortins, a first-generation chef from Peabody, Massachusetts, learned Portuguese cooking at the stove of her father, Rufino, who was from the Alto Alentejo region of Portugal. Unlike Hamilton, Ortins focuses on the foods only from Portugal and the Azores.
And not a moment too soon when you consider ingredients such as chouric,o are popping up in decidedly unPortuguese dishes, and prime-time cooking shows are featuring dubious recipes for Caldo Verde and Bacalhau a` Go^mes de Sa'. But Ortins doesn't think it's time to call out the food police just yet, although a little culinary awareness couldn't hurt. "Portuguese cooking is becoming popular these days," she said recently in a phone interview, "and I've seen some supposedly Portuguese dishes that have little resemblance to our cooking. My goal is to present Portuguese food as authentically as I can."
The payoff has been particularly satisfying for her. She adds: "In the short time the book has been out, I've received many phone calls and e-mails from people who've said, 'Finally, a book that has food just like my mother used to make.'"
Along with an impressive array of recipes such as Sopa de Funcho (Fennel Soup), Risso'is de Camara~o (Shrimp Turnovers) and Salada de Gra~o de Bico com Bacalhau (Chickpea Salad with Salt Cod, pictured above), the book is peppered with remembrances of growing up in a Portuguese-American community. For example in a section on the Festa do Espi'rito Santo (the Feast of the Holy Ghost), one of the most sacred events in the Portuguese Christian calendar, Ortins recounts the thrill of walking in the yearly procession in billows of white tulle. Yet the same essay also seamlessly weaves in the food, traditions, and lore of the celebration.
Together both books help to widen the narrow shelf of good Portuguese cookbooks and go a long way to show the substantial contributions the Portuguese have made to modern cuisine. Both are worth a cook. For more information or to buy these or other Portuguese cookbooks, e-mail Nach Waxman at Kitchen Arts and Letters or call him at (212) 876-5550.
------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to Edgar.Ca <edgar at edgar.ca> for sharing this link with us. FN
