Customer Reviews

Cuisines of Portuguese Encounters

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I just found a great new cookbook. In the 16th century the Portuguese developed one of history's greatest empires. The Portuguese empire, in turn, created a diverse cuisine that was influenced by the local crops and recipes of many different nations, with a strong emphasis on seafood. Cuisines of Portuguese Encounters by Cherie Hamilton is filled with fantastic, easy-to-follow recipes that capture these amazing and unusual combinations of flavors. One evening I made fish curry from Goa (p 174), a stew of whitefish and grated coconut seasoned with cumin, coriander, ginger, onions, and green chiles. As a salad I made a delicious creamy mmixture of avocado and dates (p 59), pureed and served in the avocado shells, from the windward island of Sao Vincente. This venture was such a success with my family that I next made a fish ragout from Southern Angola (p 172), that is a marvelous blend of fish and okra. The side dish for this meal was rice with split peas cooked in coconut milk (p 144), a creamy preparation from Zambesia in central Mozambique. Urged on by the praises of my family, this past weekend I made Caranguejo em Cosquinha (stuffed crab), a dish tht has traveled from Goa to Brazil (p 206). It consists of a saute of crabmeat, green and white onions, curry, and black olives in a pastry shell. Along with this, we had a fantastic Arroz de Tomate (tomato rice), a popular way to prepare rice in Portugal (p 146), which is rice prepared with tomatoes, garlic, and onions. Each of these recipes was easy and fun to prepare, with wonderfully unusual combinations of flavors. Highly recommended!!

I did not find the recipes hard to follow at all - there are many alternative ingredients that do not take away the spirit of the dishes in question, and they are provided in the book.
Historically, I found it more than usually accurate as far as ethnic cookbooks go, and this is more of a multi-ethnic effort united mostly by history and to a lesser degree by religion and language.
Having no prejudices whatsoever before approaching it, I honestly believe this book deserves kudos for introducing the multi-ethnic cuisine of the lusophone world to us - and as a somewhat lost vegeterian in my city of adoption I'm particularly thankful to the many vegeterian dishes from Goa, Malacca, Macao, mainland Portugal and just a bit everywhere else I was able to find, prepare and serve in the family home with more lauding than my previous vegan attempts.
So thanks for the book, and whatever species you are - carnivourous, omnivourous, seafoodivourous or vegeterian, *do* try this book!

I think this cookery book is an excellent idea in itself. The recipes are also good, at least those I have tried. There is a great variety, starters, main dishes, snacks, sweets, almost anything. There is also great variety of ingredients. In such a good book I am surprised that something as popular as balti dishes is missing. Balti recipes, from the Portuguese "balde", meaning bucket, resulted from the 'Portuguese encounter' with India and are very popular in Great Britain (I don't know in the USA).

I had never seen such a happy combination of food and history. I have tried quite a few recipes in the book. They are all delicious. The cooking instructions are quite straightforward, and work. But that's not all. With these recipes you travel around the world, with the Portuguese in their 16th century travels. That's great. Another thing I enjoy in the book is that you get to know how the different ingredients came together in past centuries to make these delicious dishes, cakes, you name it, of today. This is a five star job!

This is an excellent cookery book with a lot of variety, not much can be missing. In all the places where I have been in Portugal all the cake shops have these delicious egg and cream tartlets with sugar and cinnamon on top they call pasteis de nata. Now you can buy them in the UK, where they are known by the abbreviated name PANATAS. Some supermarket chains stock them but not near where I live. When I saw a recipe for pasteis de natas, I mean PANATAS, in this book I bought it straight away. I can now have PANATAS any time. The recipe works quite well.

I bought this book out of curiosity and I am glad I bought it. It's the sheer variety of food, cuisine styles, ingredients. They come from all continents and latitudes. Most ingredients are easily available from large supermarkets or specialist shops. There is a list of mail-order sources, but they are in the United States. The glossary helps in more than one way. I couldn't find morcela but the glossary suggested black pudding as a replacement. The book has an average of one recipe each page, in a total of more than 330, in a combination of flavours from around the world. Something else I like is the section on Suggested Menus. It is excellent if you want to throw a themed party like a Brazilian Party Buffet or a Christmas Eve Supper as they do in Portugal.

Contrary to the other review written, I found the recipes easy to make and the ingredients easy to find. I also felt the insight to Portuguese history an added bonus - perfect amount for a cookbook. Obviously not meant to be done textbook style! I highly recommend this cookbook!

Having bought a copy of this book in spite of one of the reviews, I feel one should challege the notion that 'very silly recipes are the norm'. It might be fair to say that the section on Portuguese colonial history is a little thin but the explanations accompanying the recipes of how the dishes have moved from one location to another and have been altered in the process, together with details of variations, go some way to compensating for this. Then again, if I were looking for information on Portuguese history, I would not begin with a cookery book. The suggestion that recipe ingredients 'do not ring true' is rather baffling. I can find similar recipes in, for instance, other Portuguese, Brazilian and Goan cookery books. Likewise, the ingredients in African recipes are often common to nearby countries which do not have the same Portuguese influence. Also, while bibliographies are not a foolproof guide to the quality of books, it would be unusual to see a bibliography as good as this in a bad book.
All things considered, this book has a fascinating range of recipes - many relatively easy to prepare - from a wide variety of countries and its ingenuity is the simple linkage of Portuguese influence. It's not perfect but is highly unusual and I am thoroughly pleased to add it to my collection of several hundred other cookery books. My advice is: when you read a review from someone who is dismissive without providing substantive reasons for being so and fails to distinguish between a bad book and one they simply don't like, ignore it. Or, to put in another way, if you're interested in something different in the cookery line, why not buy this book?

If you like to sample dishes from different parts of the world, this book is a great find. Not only does Cherie Hamilton include recipes from all the coutries where Portuguese is the official language (8 countries on 4 continents) as well as from countries where Portuguese is a widely-spoken unofficial language, she also gives history for each of the dishes. This brings the recipes into context, and introduces the reader/chef to a world that many may not be too familiar with. I haven't tried all of the recipes yet, but so far, everything has been absolutely delicious! Bom apetite!!

The substitution of margarine for butter, egg-beaters for eggs, and turkey for beef, as allowed in these recipes, made me apprehensive. Then I looked up a couple of dishes I knew, and she's got them wrong. Eggs and Basmati rice in Minche? And what is "white" soy sauce?
Regular whole wheat flour does not substitute well in chapatis; and I've never heard of sugar in chapati dough, nor so much oil (5 table spoons to 1 1/2 cups flour), plus an additional brushing with 1/4 cup butter. Chapati dough is not supposed to (and will not) rise, as there is no leavening agent.
If familiar recipes are not authentic, one cannot trust the unfamiliar ones. A saving grace for the book would have been to tap into the wealth of interesting history or anecdotes to accompany the recipes, but this is either not done at all, or skimpy at best.