Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5174 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-07
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Synopsis
Tessa Kiros believes that food is the essence of any country's people - a quilt that is patchworked together with their language, culture and songs. When she takes her family to live and travel in Portugal, she is captivated by the country and charmed by the old-fashioned way of doing things. Portugal has everything she loves - the markets, the sea, the beautiful old poussadas - but she would have gone for the pasteis de nata alone. In "Piri Piri Starfish", Tessa embroiders the recipes, traditions and Portuguese way of living together with her own unique colours and threads. Some of the present day wonder of this small country can be attibuted to its great history during the Age of Discovery: when the world beyond nearby lands and seas was little more than a mysterious dream to most Europeans, this land of bay leaves, baccala and piri piri stretched out her roots over the globe.

Customer Reviews

Not as good as the rest of Tessa's books
I write as a cook who enjoys actually reading cookery books, not just cooking from them.
In comparision with Tessa's other books this one has turned out to be less enjoyable. The publishers should take note: The simple fact that the ingredients are not arranged vertically makes it more difficult to grasp the recipe as a whole, it's not as amusing when just flicking through the book for inspiration!
I don't know why but it does give the impression that Tessa hurried through Portugal just to write this book, there's no soul to it if one could say that.
That said, the book as a whole is beautifully published, the photographs amazing and I have tried Pasteis de Nata, very good!

A wonderful culinary voyage
As someone who is Portuguese it's hard not to be taken away to the cake shops and restaurants of Portugal whilst flicking through the pages of this book. This book feels, tastes and smells like Portugal. The recipes are all authentic and each new page brings with it a new set of directions for making mouthwatering traditional Portuguese cuisine. From seafood to the addictive pasteis de nata, Tessa Kiros has created a book filled with beautiful photographs and enticing and easy to make recipes. This book introduces you to the warm and friendly nature that is Portugal and the culture of its people. Live to eat! Don't eat to live.

A wonderful book about Portugal's food
Portugal's cuisine is not as famous as that of its neighbour, Spain, nor that of Italy or France. It is a simple, humble way of dealing with local ingredients : seafood, the omnipresent bacalhau (salt cod), sardines, chouriço sausage are the main players here. It is honest but tasty, heartwarming and sunny.
Tessa Kiros manages to capture the essence of the food, with a lot of affection for the land and its people, who shine through in the snippets of her travelogue.
This book may not be as eye-catching as her previous two, its colour theme being much more subdued (grey-blue), but it brings back memories of my own travels to that thankfully still mostly undiscovered country.