Text 23692, 99 rader
Skriven 2012-04-14 06:32:10 av Dave Drum (1:261/38)
Ärende: Chile 099
=================
MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.06

      Title: Macao: Original Fusion
 Categories: Oriental, Portuguese, Info
      Yield: 1 Info file

           Info

  Asia's oldest European enclave, Macao has its own
  deep-rooted, delicious, multicultural cuisine.

  I came to know Macao during the seven years I worked in
  Hong Kong as a journalist, my friends and I went for the
  food.... bottles of the fruity young Portuguese wine
  called vinho verde and soulful fare like thick potato,
  kale, and sausage soup; steamed clams in a garlicky tomato
  sauce with coriander; and fried crab with lots of pepper.

  For years, my friends and I assumed that the dishes we
  stuffed ourselves with were authentically Macanese. They
  weren't: They were mostly Portuguese, and sometimes
  Cantonese. I learned this (and had my first taste of the
  real thing) while covering a Macanese cooking contest at
  the Hotel Lisboa in 1995. Genuine Macanese cuisine, I
  found out, isn't known for its appearance. Dark sauces,
  pale vegetables, and rough chunks of meats are the rule.
  The ''earthy'' flavors of dishes like duck in blood can be
  overwhelming, but the cuisine as a whole is beguiling; it
  is hearty and rich, and brimming with history.

  Located 40 miles west of Hong Kong, Macao first beckoned
  Portuguese sailors plying the South China coast in the
  early 1500s. Portuguese traders soon followed, and many of
  them took as wives the daughters of Indonesian, Malaysian,
  Chinese, Indian, Filipino, and Thai settlers in the
  region. Thus a new ethnicity was born. The colony's food
  reflects the same cultural mix_but it is also the product
  of inspired improvisation: With European provisions hard
  to come by in the region hundreds of years ago, the
  Chinese cooks employed by Portuguese households would
  substitute local ingredients. There was also heavy
  borrowing from other Portuguese colonial outposts: sweet
  potatoes from Brazil, piri-piri from Mozambique, saffron
  from Goa, and so on. A typical Macanese meal, then, became
  a study in contrasts: olive oil and soy sauce, potatoes
  and rice, chouriso sausage and preserved duck, casseroles
  and stir-fries, silverware and chopsticks. But somehow it
  all managed to blend together.

  Macanese foods_specialties include curried crab, chamusas
  (minced meat turnovers), and lacassa, a simple shrimp and
  noodle soup flavored with balich<o, the famed Macanese
  shrimp paste for which the restaurant is named. If there
  is one ingredient that distinguishes Macanese cooking, it
  is this piquant, odoriferous condiment. Just a small
  amount of the purplish-brown paste gives a salty, sour
  edge to such dishes as lacassa, pork stew, even fried
  rice. The best balichao is made with tiny fresh shrimp
  from China, salt, bay leaves, chilies, lemon, peppercorns,
  and rice wine. Chefs and home cooks alike used to make
  their own-which involved a tedious preparation process,
  followed by a hundred days of ripening. Today, however,
  many people admit to buying jarred salted shrimp or one of
  the many mass-produced versions of Southeast Asian shrimp
  paste, and doctoring it at home.

  Specialties such as chile crab (crabmeat tossed with
  chilies, then panfried with garlic and onion, and finally
  simmered in coconut milk), pork in tamarind sauce with
  green onion and ginger, and coconut custard. But because
  of the limited demand for traditional food, most places
  serving Macanese food, also offer Portuguese, and Chinese
  dishes.

  Macanese dishes, which include chicken curry, beef stew,
  tripe stew with chickpeas, pine nut and almond cake, mango
  pudding, and the ever-popular minchi. True comfort food,
  minchi is the Macanese equivalent of sloppy joe: ground
  meat, often a combination of pork and beef, sautéed with
  chopped onion and garlic, flavored with soy sauce, and
  stretched with diced potato. Minchi is usually served with
  a scoop of boiled white rice. Locals insist it's a
  cure-all for too much strong drink.

  Margaret Sheridan, a Chicago-based food writer and former
  resident of Hong Kong.

  Saveur March 1999

  FROM: chile-heads@globalgarden.com

  Uncle Dirty Dave's Archives

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... Onions can make even heirs and widows weep. - Benjamin Franklin

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