Rico and I were watching tv this evening and caught a very cool cooking show on BBC Lifestyle. In the opening credits, I recognized Praia de Tofo, one of Mozambique's most famous beaches. The show is called "Cooked" and, from what we could tell from the two episodes we saw, is about a group of South African gourmet chefs that take a road trip through Southern Africa, seeing the sights and stopping along the way to create dishes using local ingredients.
The episodes we saw were based in Tofo and Vilankulos/Bazaruto. I loved the fact that "Cooked" highlighted the delicious food of Mozambique, as well as the more well-known beaches and sea sports. The guys bought squid (lulas) in the market and made several different dishes - baked squid tentacles in a tomato reduction sauce, fresh squid salad, squid risotto with ink, and gave a great tip about blanching the lulas for 20 prior to cooking to ensure tenderness. They took a dhow trip to Bazaruto and cooked fish in a sand pit inside a fishing dhow, which was a very practical solution to eating fish while on the open sea I'd never seen before. In all, a great program with nice, simple recipes and an introduction to some of Mozambique's beautiful scenery.
However, I have to say the production was a bit lazy. Not only were most of the place names wrong (Margarita Island, Águia Negra hotel both misspelled) - and a lot of the Portuguese translations mangled (understandable) - there were mistakes in the English text (when giving status updates, I caught "Tempereture: Perfect" throughout the Tofo episode). These little things irritate me to no end. You'd think the guys would go through the trouble to run a spell check and verify the names of the places they visited. Still, I applaud the effort to show a different side of Africa - its flavors.
8 comments:
Presentinho simbólico para uma menina especial, lá no meu canto poeirento :)
xi-coração
~Kanuthya - Obrigada, amiga. O canto pode estar poeirento, mas continua muito bom!
Ola Ali, Moro no Brasil e tenho uma proposta para ir morar em Maputo. Gostaria que vc me enviasse o custo aproximado de um carro comum 1.6 aí e também dicas se tem Mcdonalds lugares bons para morar, etc
As informações disponiveis me deu animo para ir morar aí..
Meu mai eh marionaka@yahoo.com
Obrigado Mario
Hi chica, nice to be back reading your blog and hearing about your news and mOzi food yum.
Check out the link to the El Pato stuff I was telling you about. http://www.mexgrocer.com/brand-el-pato.html
AND, tell me, one thing that worries me, WHERE is the golden arches resto in Mpt?!
xx
~Anonymous - Oi Mario, tuod bem? Vou te mandar um email com algumas informações sobre Maputo, mas já te adianto - não tem McDonalds aqui, mas você vai encontrar os melhores mariscos que já experimentou na vida, comida indiana, portuguesa, sul-africana...enfim, muito melhor de que hamburger!
~JC - Good to have you back as a reader, JP. Missedje iuuuuu! I was tempted to make a bad joke about the golden arches that would likely appeal to a 12-year-old boy, but I'm practicing restraint. Hehehe. Come back soon! beijos.
south african television producers are notoriously lazy when it comes to looking up place-names in africa to see if they're spelled correctly.
during the whole brouhaha about the zimbabwean arms [remember those], after it was leaked to the mozambican press about having being unloaded in pointe-noire in the republic of congo, it was all over south african television with pointe-noire being called punta negra, which is more or less incorrect to everyone except portuguese speakers and maritime professionals.
~Kwerekwere - I've noticed the same thing about the lack of proofreading of place names in South African print articles (online and in magazines) as well. I can only think that this will change as media becomes more globalized and people who know the places being featured increasingly give feedback.
I do remember the Zim arms situation, but didn't see the Punta Negra slip-up. That's pretty significant...
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