Macanese African Chicken Galinha à Africana 非洲雞

More yummy stuff from Macau!  And we've found that a fun way to travel during this home bound time (I feel like I've been in my house for a year!) is thru the cooking of foods from other places.  This one is the famous Macanese African Chicken 非洲雞, also known as Galinha à Africana, a fragrant spice infused chicken dish that's baked in a deliciously spicy, slightly sweet, nutty sauce.

This dish, amusingly enough, has barely nary a thing to do with Africa.  The name, I believe, comes from the fact that from the 1400s until just recently Portugal has had colonies in countries all over the world and one of the main things they procured early on from these colonies was spices.  

Macanese Shrimp Vermicelli Soup 澳門蝦湯米粉

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but my 老公 has some roots in Macau.  His mother's family lived there for a couple of generations before moving to Hong Kong.  So he has an ongoing obsession with the place which is really all too easy to understand as Macau is an altogether fascinating place.  It's a city with a history nearing 500 years, one of the first trading posts in the Far East, and was and still is exquisitely poised inbetween East and West.

This unique characteristic shows through in both the people of Macau, the Macanese, and the Macanese cuisine.  They are both a mix of all the different cultural influences that touched upon the tiny trading port, from Chinese to Portuguese, to Malay and Japanese, Sinhalese and even Indian.  The cuisine of Macau is really the world's first 'fusion' food, using and mixing elements of all these cultures together to form a truly distinct cuisine.  So fascinating and truly unique, a thing hard to find in the current 'global' world.

As part of his recent Macau obbsession, my 老公 made this deceptively simple looking soup noodles and it was SO YUMMY!  This Macanese Shrimp and Vermicelli Soup Noodles  澳門蝦湯米粉, or Sopa de Lacassá, is a traditional Macanese dish usually prepared as a light lunch or perhaps an afternoon snack and is, as traditional and truly tasty food ought to be, a bit more complicated and time consuming than your average instant noodles, but TOTALLY worth it!! 

Macau Almond Cookie 澳門杏仁餅

Chinese Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節 is just around the corner and my little girl is beside herself with anticipation!  (It's her favorite holiday of the year plus she gets to stay up late!)  

The yearly celebration of the biggest moon of the year, the harvest moon, Mid Autumn Festival so much fun here in Hong Kong! There are moon cakes to make, shopping expeditions to make, lanterns to light and little children to dress up in festive Chinese attire , moon gazing outings to plan!  

After an early preparation of our traditional double yolk lotus seed paste mooncakes and our five nut mooncakes, I thought why not make an extra traditional treat to have on hand in case of the extra munchies?  I ended up making some of these delectably light and flavorsome Macau Almond Cookies  澳門杏仁餅, quite easy to make and delightfully easy on the eyes.

Macanese Style Portuguese Curry Chicken 葡國咖哩雞

I'm always so happy when I get a chance to write about Macau. It's a place that pulls me in some way, there's something so interesting about this little city that started out as one of the first European trading port cities in Asia and now, 500 years later, is a gracefully beautiful yet contradictory grand dame, full of sometimes shocking flirtations and many, many secrets doors into her long, intricate past. 

One very interesting part of this past of Macau is the ethnic group known as the Macanese otherwise known as the folks who are/were born with Portuguese and Macau ancestry.  ( Macau was for a long, long time a Portuguese colony. )  

The Macanese developed the eclectic original fusion food known as Macanese Food, a mix of Portuguese and Chinese cuisine that is very distinctly their own.  We were reminiscing eagerly about Macau today and about how much we missed the delicious food there and oh, we should make a short trip soon, blah, blah, blah.  

Long story short, what else to do to stave off our cravings but to make this yummilicious Macanese Style Portuguese Curry Chicken Portuguese Chicken 葡國雞, a dish unique to Macau and Macanese food!