I am sitting at Heathrow terminal 4 waiting for my flight to Bangalore. If all is well after I return I just have 2 days at work then we have a holiday in Portugal. I have been once on a business trip to India and twice to sales conferences in Portugal. However for the sales conferences it was a case of fly in, 3 days of meetings in a hotel, fly out again without seeing anything of the country.
My history lessons at school tended to focus on British exploration with just snippets of what our other European neighbours did. I knew that the Portuguese opened up the Indian Ocean for Europeans but until recently was not aware of the Portuguese influence on Asian cooking.
Two things that surprised me were that the Portuguese are connected with both Japanese tempura and Indian vindaloo. I have forgotten my original references but basically:
a) Apparently Portuguese visitors to Japan taught deep fat frying to the locals in the mid 16th century. The word tempura may be related to a Portuguese word to heat in oil. When I was in Andalusia earlier this year the batter fried fish reminded me a bit of tempura.
b) the word vindaloo comes from the Portuguese vinha d'ahla (literally wine of garlic). Apparently this was originally pork cooked in wine and garlic but was transformed into its current spicy format by the Goans. I have never seen pork vindaloo on offer in a British curry house but that might be for religious reasons.
The history of food is complex and fascinating.
2007-08-04 @ 13:26