Do you cook?

[Tiago]

The topics are kind a strange lately.... cooking skils ?!?!

Well,
i dont cook so many times, but i can do:
- fantastic codfish in oven (Portugal is the biggest consumer of codfish in the world!!)
- magnificent lasagna (verdi/fiorentina and bolognesi)
- 5 or 6 types of pasta
- and some other meat and fish dishes...
- i am learning to do some soups also.

But i dont do it a lot, most of the times i go eat in my father's or mother's or girlfriend's house.

[Sharingan]

The topics are kind a strange lately.... cooking skils ?!?!

Well, this IS the "Off Topic" forum, so anything goes

And yeah, if I ever visit Portugal, I really want to try some seafood dishes there. Portugal is quite famed for its seafood!

[Harrison]

Are the fish dishes in Portugal similar to those in Spain? I know of the main dishes in Spain but not really anything about local Portuguese dishes.

[Tiago]

Well, if you have to pick the most similar foods to Portuguese food...

first would be
Brazilian
then
Spain, Italy and France.

Portuguese food is excellent, not because i am Portuguese ok? I can easy say that for many things we are the worst in the world, but not for food.

Probably the best in the world. But you have to get a litle away from the major cities, go to the interior.... and them....OMG...

Seafood of course it must be in seaside. One of the best lobsters in the world is from
Sagres village in top south of Portugal in Algarve, in the most left part, the most far away point from UK... it's just superb !!!

One of the major reasons that we have great food is basic ingrediants like olive oil.
We avoid to cook with vegetal oils or butters or that kind of sh.. we have the best olive oil in europe, and that is the basic ingrediant.
Wines are also excelent, like Spain/France/Italy it's really good.

But Harrison, it's much better then Spain...

[Harrison]

I had the feeling you would say it was so much better than Spain.

BTW, something I want to ask that I would be interested to know. Do the Portuguese like spicy food? My girlfriend has had many Spanish students live with her over the years and they have all hated any kind of spicy food, even mildly spicy things. And they would never go near a curry or sausage meat, unless it was chorizo. So I was wondering if it was similar with the Portuguese as the two countries do share a similar love for sea food.

[Tiago]

Tradicionaly our food is not spicy, but there are a lot o f people that put some spicy condiments in food, but is just to give a bit of flavour not to be spicy.

But if you want spicy... we lurn learn some technics when we where at war in Africa in Mocambique...the locals had a special spicy condiment.
That do it with pepper (the red one), vinager, olive oil, and one white drink similar to vodka, but stronger.... they do it in a bottle and then they lay it down in the sun, for some hours.... the result is like Napal in your mouth... i only try it once... just a small drop, and i cry like a baby for 20 minutes... people from mocambique and Angola eat that think a lot... they say it is good for sexual performance.

[Teho]

If by cook you mean 'pour contents of bag in kettle and add water' then yes, I'm good at it.

Seriously, I can and usually do make decent basic meals as in boiling potatoes and vegetables, mix up a sauce and fry something to go with it. But hardly ever do anything fancy.

[Sharingan]

Seafood of course it must be in seaside. One of the best lobsters in the world is from
Sagres village in top south of Portugal in Algarve, in the most left part, the most far away point from UK... it's just superb !!!

Lobsters, eh? One of my favourite kinds of seafood. I always feel sorry for them when I see them being prepared, though. In some Chinese kitchens, they tend to throw lobsters into boiling water ... alive. That's just cruel.

In my own opinion, my list of 'favourite cuisine' in the world looks more like this (based on the foods I have tried so far):

1. Chinese (and I don't mean the rip-off Americanised chop suey crap, but authentic Cantonese cuisine)

2. Italian (more for the pasta than the pizza)

3. Thai (I'm a sucker for spicy food and curry)

4. Japanese (though, other than sushi, I don't see anything else especially special)


As for spicy, apparently, the Naga Jolokia (Ghost Chili) is the hottest pepper in existence. On the Scoville scale (a measure of hotness), Naga Jolokia is rated at 1.000.000 scovilles, while Habanero peppers are only 8.000, and pepper spray 2.000.000. Yum.

[toomanymikes]

Im quite a good cook and I will try anything that takes my fancy (were still talking about cooking). I tend to get ideas about food then go out and try it, sometimes it works and sometimes it dosent. For Halloween we had a few kids over dunking for apples (bobbing in england). I thought that they wouldnt really eat an apple but they would like some party food so I combined the two - I made an apple purre with cooking apples, cinnamon and honey and put it on some vanilla ice cream. When the kids managed to get an apple they got the sweet so everyone was happy!

[Tiago]

Sounds interesting, I may try this for a laugh. What's the drink they use? And any sort of vinegar will do?

Yes, it's just a litle bit. i dont remember well the proporsions they use.

I saw mention of Sagres in Tiago's post..... I like the Sagres beer they sell in Nando's (lovely peri-peri chicken from there) - is the beer named after there? Also, Super Bock beer is nice (again, found commonly in Nando's).

Sagres is first of all a village name, the name of the beer i don't know if was any connection but probably has.
Super Bock (beer) in my opinion is better then Sagres.