Customer Reviews

Taste of Macau: Portuguese Cuisine on the China Coast

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

 

 

What an original idea for a cookbook! Being from a Portuguese background and having been raised on traditional Portuguese cuisine, I am always on the look out for new Portuguese cookbooks to help keep the memory of my cultural background alive and well...and I was surprised, but excited when I came accross this title on the website and had to buy it. I was not dissapointed. Colorfull, Informative and full of interesting (yet Im sure very tasty) recipies combining some traditional portuguese cuisine with an Asian twist. I cant wait to try them all. Obrigado Amazon.com!!!!

The book arrived ontime. This is a great book for those who appreciate Macau cooking or who are up for trying some new recipes, especially seafood recipes. It is difficult to locate Macau recipes so I am glad that this book is readily available in the US. Some of the recipes are familiar to me and some I do not recall ever having. Macau dishes are more on the portuguese side with a bit of influence from indian, thailand, chinese, or some other ethnicity. It contains the history of macau, interviews with various people and over 60 recipes. I haven't tried the recipes yet but I am sure I can adjust the ingredients to my preference if necessary.

For more thing on Macau, visit my website : My Olive Tree (www.pretogrosso.com)

Annabel Jackson's Taste of Macau (Portuguese Cuisine on the China Coast) is an exceptional good cookbook and history lesson for those interested in the heritage of Macanese foods. The book does very well to integrate both culinary and cultural history for the reader. And also it contains secret, interesting and closely guarded Macanese recipes!

This book also attempt to preserve and share, for the first time, a very import aspect of the Macanese world. The author has spent almost 10 years collecting and testing these heritages recipes, getting in touch with the Macanese diaspora, and asking them to reflect back and write about food in Macau.

There's even a poem on secret family recipes & 6 interviews with Macanese and their memory of childhood & foods.

Recipes:
a) Soups & Starters:
13 types of dishes including Almondegas (Minced Pork Patties), Pasteis de Bacalhau (Salted Cod Cakes), Rissois (Shrimp Rissoles) etc

b) Fish & Seafood:
12 types of dishes including Bacalhau a Penha (Salt Cod in Penha Hill style), Gambas a Macau (King Prawns with Chilli & Garlic), Lulas Rechedas (Stuffed Squid) etc

c) Meat:
19 types of dishes including Capela (Meat Loaf), Pato Tamarinho (Tamarind Duck), Vaca Estufada I (Rich Beef Stew), etc

d) Vegetables:
5 types of dishes including Amargoso Lorcha (BitterGourd in Coconut Milk) , Sambal de Bringella (Eggplant Sambal) etc

e) Rice & Noodles
4 type of dishes including Arroz Carregado (Pressed Rice), Lacassa (Noodles in Shrimp Broth)

f) Desserts
9 type of dishes including Bagi (Glutinous Rice Cake), Bolo Menino (Nut Cake), Pudim de Sagu (Sago Pudding) etc

This book is very hard to get, in fact I had to get it through an interlibrary loan because I didn't feel like spending a fortune on an Amazon reseller's copy. But it is an invaluable resource on Macanese cooking, since English-language books on this cuisine are so hard to find.
This is a basic cookbook, with basic recipes and instructions. It is not for a beginning cook, but for someone who knows kitchen basics and is anxious to try out some authentic Macanese recipes. Of course, there is nothing to stop even a beginning cook from trying out these recipes, maybe using some common sense and easily available online cooking tips as a guide. For example, I didn't know how to roll samosas, and the diagram in the book was not helpful enough for me. So I went online, and watched a youtube video on rolling samosas. And my Macanese samosas came out fantastic.
I also made the cod casserole with potatoes and tomatoes (it was really good), and the chicken curry (it was good, but had a little too much tamarind for my taste. I would recommend adding less). Overall I am happy with the results of the few recipes I've tried so far, and plan to try more.
This book is also fascinating because it contains color photos of the dishes, and some biographical background on Macanese families and lifestyle.
The instructions may not be very comprehensive, but I gave this book four stars because the dishes I tried tasted good and authentic.

I found the book to be a great disappointment. The photo illustrations of the various dishes were drab and poorly photographed and did not make the dishes look appetizing at all. One wonders how the photographs got past the author who had obviously done a lot of research on the cuisine of Macau and is very knowledgeable. Macau cuisine in its own right is unique and when cooked correctly, an absolute delight. As for the recipes, they were pretty much spot on. Being the son of parents who were raised in Macao and of Portuguese ancestry and having a mother who was an excellent Macanese cook I should know. For an excellent alternative to this book try "Macanese Cooking - a journey across generations" by Cecilia Jorge. Now there's a well written and well illustrated Macanese cookbook.

There are several flaws with this book. First, it is very poorly constructed and cheaply bound. Upon the first opening the pages will fall out. Second, the pictures are not very well executed and printed. Washed out colors, uninspiring pictures. Usually, good cookbooks will carry photographs that come close to food porn. Not in this book. Lastly, some recipes are plain-out wrong. I followed the recipe for the famous Macao dish galinha portuegesa. It was a disaster. I think the author did not do her homework on this book, a poor excuse for a cookbook. Buyer beware...

This is very much a specialty book (and thus will not have a appeal to a very wide audience outside serious foodies) and I am glad I bought it for that reason alone. There are not a lot of recipes I am likely to try, I must say, and many of the pictures are very poor indeed, but there are, in truth, not a lot of other books dealing with the obscure of Chinese-Portuguese food. It is, then, fairly unique in thus regard and I like having this in my collection as a reference.

This is THE book to buy if you like the fusion betweeen Portuguese cooking, including the influences on Portuguese cooking from around the world when Portugal had many colonies, and that of China. Some mouth watering recipes, and the recipes are set in an interesting and informative context.