[00:00] They say that on average, about nine languages&nbsp; die every year. Now I don’t know how many&nbsp;&nbsp; cuisines die per year, but there are plenty out&nbsp; there’s that’re pretty endangered. I mean like…&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:16] just… imagine that one day the very last bacon egg&nbsp; and cheese was topped over a New York bagel – or&nbsp;&nbsp; the very last fish and chips came out of the deep&nbsp; fat fryer. The world would lose something, right?
[00:31] Now the city of Macau it’s one of my favorite&nbsp; places to eat in the world. There’s very good&nbsp;&nbsp; Cantonese food, there’s also some cool Portuguese&nbsp; food, but interestingly there’s also Macau local&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:45] food. Because unlike the Brits across the estuary&nbsp; in Hong Kong, historically the residents of Macau&nbsp;&nbsp; were often mixed Eurasians and very much developed&nbsp; their own local cuisine – their own variant of egg&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:58] tarts most famously, but also stuff like duck&nbsp; rice or their own unique style of fermented&nbsp;&nbsp; shrimp paste. And so if you’re someone like me&nbsp; or Steph or really anyone who kind of staddles in&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:11] between these worlds of Chinese food culture and&nbsp; Western food culture, I think it’s really natural&nbsp;&nbsp; to be intrigued by what came before us in Macau. But even though the Macanese were renowned for&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:25] being good cooks, there never were really that&nbsp; many of them. And as the world decolonized this&nbsp;&nbsp; culture’s it’s begun to fade away, over the&nbsp; generations dissolving into either Chinese or&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:38] Western societies. There’s still restaurants that&nbsp; serve this stuff in Macao, but you could probably&nbsp;&nbsp; count the really good ones on one hand. It’s&nbsp; not dead, but it is endangered. But Macanese&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:52] food I think has a lot to teach us yet, with&nbsp; culinary lessons there buried like treasures. For example… this dish here is Porco Balichao&nbsp; Tamarindo, and it’s not just a tasty stew&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:06] but it also made me really rethink how food around&nbsp; the world actually spreads. Because if you look at&nbsp;&nbsp; a lot of food media, they often say that Macanese&nbsp; food is Cantonese-Portuguese fusion. I mean,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:20] I’m guilty too. But then… if that’s the case,&nbsp; how are we to make sense of this thing. It’s a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:32] very classic Macanese dish… there’s stuff there&nbsp; that might feel explainably Chinese-Western,&nbsp;&nbsp; marinating fatty meat, frying shrimp paste in&nbsp; lard, that sort of thing… but then the braise&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:45] finishes with the titular tamarind juice.&nbsp; But Cantonese food doesn’t use tamarind,&nbsp;&nbsp; and I don’t think that Portuguese really&nbsp; does either. So what exactly is going on.
[03:00] Now, we might be able to get a small clue from the&nbsp; ingredient list. From what I’ve read, the general&nbsp;&nbsp; sort of ‘southeast Asian’ shrimp paste, like the&nbsp; sort that you might see in Thailand or Malaysia,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:14] it’s not a direct sub for Macau’s traditional&nbsp; Balichao. There’s some old recipes out there,&nbsp;&nbsp; but unfortunately it’s brutally difficult&nbsp; to find these days, so in the Macanese&nbsp;&nbsp; diaspora people tend to recommend this&nbsp; product. It’s a Filipino shrimp paste,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:33] concocted from a genus called acetes, and you&nbsp; can see it’s a lot less fermented. So Macanese&nbsp;&nbsp; diaspora they’ll then mix that with some of the&nbsp; what’s missing from their traditional recipes and&nbsp;&nbsp; it all seems to work well enough. Now this&nbsp; product it’s called bagoong alamang, so for&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:51] the sake of completeness let’s check YouTube,&nbsp; see how the stuff’s eaten in the Philippines.
[04:11] So… this is a little weird. The combination&nbsp; of Bagoong Alamang and Pork it seems to be&nbsp;&nbsp; equally a classic and exist over there&nbsp; in two forms – sauce form, braise form.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:26] So like… fatty pork, check. Aromatics? Check.&nbsp; Shrimp paste… check… and then they’ll hit with&nbsp;&nbsp; white vinegar for a sour component. It kinda&nbsp; hurts my brain, because I’m pretty sure I’ve&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:43] read the Treaty of Tordesilla right… but there&nbsp; might just be a possible indirection connection,&nbsp;&nbsp; and that’s the Chinese of Southeast Asia. Because historically the Macanese people,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:57] they weren’t usually the product of unions&nbsp; between Portuguese and Cantonese. The Qing&nbsp;&nbsp; dynasty they forbade that, so Portuguese&nbsp; they’d marry down south in Malacca and&nbsp;&nbsp; then bring their wives up to Macau –&nbsp; and often, those wives were Peranakan,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:13] themselves a mix of Chinese and Malay. And of&nbsp; course, there was also a ton of contact amongst&nbsp;&nbsp; the entire Portuguese trading empire… ships going&nbsp; back and forth to from Macau to Malacca, Goa,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:25] and points beyond. So in a lot of ways, Macanese&nbsp; food is equally if not more part of this network. So for this specific dish I don’t know why,&nbsp; but once you know what you’re looking for in&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:41] pockets across Southeast Asia Baader Meinhoff&nbsp; really begins to set in – Philippines, Myanmar,&nbsp;&nbsp; and most critically for us Malaysia… where there’s&nbsp; a Kristang, Malacca Portuguese, dish called Kari&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:55] Porku Tambrinhyu. And these influences they will&nbsp; be important for us to try to recreate this today,&nbsp;&nbsp; because while there are resources out there&nbsp; for Macanese food… most of the recipes are or&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:09] are closely based off of historical recipes. Now if you’ve never worked from historical&nbsp;&nbsp; recipes before, what you have to understand is&nbsp; that you cannot charge into historical recipes&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:22] blind. You have to have to interpret them,&nbsp; because they’ll usually leave out a bunch of&nbsp;&nbsp; little steps that the writer would’ve found to be&nbsp; self-obvious. These days recipes are functionally&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:36] like little classes to teach people how to cook&nbsp; – in the past, on average people kinda already&nbsp;&nbsp; knew how to cook so recipes instead were a&nbsp; lot more like… chef’s notes. For example,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:50] I think for a lot of you watching if I told you&nbsp; that my Mac N Cheese is a bechamel Mac N Cheese,&nbsp;&nbsp; two parts American, one part cheddar, a touch of&nbsp; parm, then baked with some seasoned breadcrumbs,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:02] time or another culture, it definitely trip you&nbsp; up. So then now take a look at this Tamarind&nbsp;&nbsp; Pork recipe, courtesy the excellent Macanese&nbsp; library – a great source, more on them later…&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:19] it instructs us to add ¼ cup of tamarind that’s&nbsp; been soaked beforehand. If you followed those&nbsp;&nbsp; specific words on that specific page literally,&nbsp; you’re gunna have a bad time – it’s assumed that&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:34] you already know that you should soak solely the&nbsp; pulp of the tamarind, you should know the correct&nbsp;&nbsp; concentration of pulp to water, and of course&nbsp; that you should discard the strings and seeds.&nbsp;
[07:58] Then, the second thing with historical&nbsp; recipes that’s crucial to understand&nbsp;&nbsp; is that ingredients in the past were different&nbsp; from ingredients today. Almost universally so,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:11] but most fundamentally, meat. After all, all&nbsp; meat was farm meat, it got more exercise,&nbsp;&nbsp; so cuts were both tougher and they were more&nbsp; flavorful. Like, I can’t seem to find it,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:23] but I distinctly remember this one thread&nbsp; on r/askculinary where someone got fancy all&nbsp;&nbsp; natural happy-enough farm chicken for the first&nbsp; time in their life, and the flavor freaked them&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:36] out so much they thought the chicken had gone&nbsp; bad. We’re just working off of different animals.&nbsp;&nbsp; So in these recipes, a lot of them they’ll call&nbsp; for pork leg – presumably because they want a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:49] mix of fat and lean, but you use leg with&nbsp; modern pork, especially outside of China,&nbsp;&nbsp; the end result is going to be dry. What&nbsp; we’ll need to use is shoulder. If you can&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:05] get a shoulder like this with the fat and skin&nbsp; included that’s great, but today we’ll be using&nbsp;&nbsp; the internationally available Boston Butt for&nbsp; the lean and pork belly for the fat component.
[09:17] This combination is going to give us a result&nbsp; closer to the historical dish than if we followed&nbsp;&nbsp; the recipe blind, but – it’s also important to&nbsp; activate your own personal kitchen common sense.&nbsp;
[09:38] I know that if I braised a bunch of pork that’s&nbsp; this fatty I’m gunna wind up with a massive&nbsp;&nbsp; layer of grease that’s floating on top. But when&nbsp; we ate this thing in Macau there wasn’t a big&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:51] layer of grease, I don’t know what the restaurant&nbsp; does, but at least for my tastes I’m gunna have&nbsp;&nbsp; to do something. Now I could just call for lean,&nbsp; but I did want that lard and richness so I decided&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:06] to take a little inspiration from that Filipino&nbsp; video from before. There, they first render out&nbsp;&nbsp; the grease before they cook everything together,&nbsp; which to be clear I’ve never seen from a Macanese&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:19] recipe, but I think it’s a smart idea to help&nbsp; control the final fat content of the stew. So then, I’ll take 250 grams of pork belly and cut&nbsp; it into thick strips, together with any obvious&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:33] fatty bits from my half kilo of Boston Butt.&nbsp; Sprinkle over an eighth teaspoon salt, mix, then&nbsp;&nbsp; coat with a tablespoon of oil, and add to a cool&nbsp; pot together with a quarter cup of water… and over&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:46] a medium flame slowly begin to render out that&nbsp; lard. And as that’s rendering, we’ll then mix the&nbsp;&nbsp; rest of the lean with an 1/8 tsp salt, an 1/8 tsp&nbsp; white pepper powder, a half tablespoon of light&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:59] soy sauce, a half teaspoon of dark soy sauce,&nbsp; another half tablespoon brandy, and coat it all&nbsp;&nbsp; with a bit of oil… and marinate that as the lard’s&nbsp; rendering out, which’ll take about a half an hour.&nbsp;
[11:12] And… after that time, this’s what we’re looking&nbsp; at here. We won’t want to take it all the way to&nbsp;&nbsp; crisp, a bit of fat’s still good but now we’ve got&nbsp; a lot of lard here to work with. So we’ll use some&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:25] So then, to finally make our Porco Balichao&nbsp; Tamarindo… to three tablespoons worth of our&nbsp;&nbsp; rendered lard, we’ll start by frying the&nbsp; marinated pork on high. Once it’s roughly&nbsp;&nbsp; browned, remove it and add that together&nbsp; with the browned rendered belly. Then,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:41] we’ll go in with one onion very finely minced, let&nbsp; that sweat over medium-high for about two minutes&nbsp;&nbsp; and once you can hear frying sounds again, toss&nbsp; in five cloves of equally finely finely minced&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:54] garlic. Fry for another minute, then we’ll&nbsp; scooch those to the side… adding another&nbsp;&nbsp; tablespoon lard if you need, and then go in&nbsp; with three tablespoons of our shrimp paste. Now again, the old recipes for&nbsp; Balichao are basically that sort&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:09] of fermented shrimp plus these. For some&nbsp; Balichao applications, for example this&nbsp;&nbsp; do the same move as the diaspora and let that&nbsp; all sit together for a month. But because this&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:24] is a stew, and it doesn’t go that heavy on the&nbsp; flavor we are going to have more flexibility. I&nbsp;&nbsp; chose to go straight Filipino Bagoong Alamang and&nbsp; incorporate these elements to the braise itself&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:39] but you can also make your own judgement call.&nbsp; Also, final aside, in my personally opinion,&nbsp;&nbsp; I do think for this dish you could also use the&nbsp; more internationally available Cantonese shrimp&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:51] paste as well. It’s a little different but&nbsp; still good, I’ve done it before… but if going&nbsp;&nbsp; that route just use one tablespoon here as the&nbsp; Cantonese sort is saltier and more concentrated.&nbsp;
[13:05] So, then together with that I went with&nbsp; four dried bay leaves, two whole cloves,&nbsp;&nbsp; a half teaspoon of red chili powder… then fry&nbsp; that together for about a minute and mix. Then,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:17] we’ll go in with two tablespoons of brandy…&nbsp; let that all evaporate away until pasty,&nbsp;&nbsp; then add back in the pork. Add enough water&nbsp; to just almost submerge, and bring to a boil.&nbsp;
[13:32] Then, we’ll go in with a half teaspoon chicken&nbsp; bouillon powder, an optional teaspoon of lemon&nbsp;&nbsp; zest, 40 grams of jaggery or dark brown sugar,&nbsp; and two teaspoons of dark soy sauce. The reason&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:44] for the dark soy sauce is because I imagine that&nbsp; the historical recipes – being a part of this&nbsp;&nbsp; trading network – would probably have been using&nbsp; palm jaggery, which’ got a much deeper color than&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:57] this kind of Chinese cane jaggery, so the dark&nbsp; soy can split the difference. But either way,&nbsp;&nbsp; we’ll then just let that braise for two hours. and&nbsp; as that’s braising then, we can soak our&nbsp; tamarind. This here is just a bit of pure&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:13] tamarind pulp – about one tablespoon worth –&nbsp; that we soaked in with a quarter cup of hot,&nbsp;&nbsp; boiled water. Just let that soak as the pork&nbsp; is simmering, then strain it into a bowl. So then after that time, for the stew this’s&nbsp; what we’re looking at. Now I want this to be&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:32] a bit thick like the restaurant, so I’ll swap&nbsp; the flame to medium high and let that rapidly&nbsp;&nbsp; reduce. Once you’re looking at something&nbsp; that’s starting to appear like a sort of&nbsp;&nbsp; ‘curry-like’ consistency – add in that&nbsp; sour tamarind liquid, and I like doing&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:47] half of it first and adding the remainder&nbsp; to taste as tamarind can be powerful stuff.&nbsp;&nbsp; You’ll be looking for the dish to have&nbsp; a minor sweet sour sort of element,&nbsp;&nbsp; but not so sour that it puckers your lips. Then,&nbsp; add in your seasoning, up here on the screen, and&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:04] optionally finish with a bit more of that rendered&nbsp; lard together with a couple of fresh chilis. But… it’s not just the dish itself but also way&nbsp; that it was served that’s really quite cool.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now in my life, personally, in Guangdong at expat&nbsp; potlucks and the like there was often this dynamic&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:24] where a lot of us would make these American dishes&nbsp; or these fusion-y dishes for eachother and it’d&nbsp;&nbsp; often be people’s Cantonese Sos or spouses&nbsp; that end up actually frying the vegetables&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:39] to complete the meal. I dunno maybe the&nbsp; Macanese had something similar going on,&nbsp;&nbsp; because often for vegetables they’d serve things&nbsp; alongside a Cantonese-style stir fried veg.&nbsp;
[15:52] But really interesting is the starch that&nbsp; was served alongside this specific dish,&nbsp;&nbsp; something called pressed rice. Now I’ve never&nbsp; personally seen anything like this before – it’s&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:05] basically rice cooked with scallion lard and&nbsp; then… I mean, ‘pressed’ and cut into wedges. To make it, first fry the minced white part of one&nbsp; scallion in with two tablespoons of lard that we&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:19] rendered off before for one or two minutes, then&nbsp; add in 300 grams of thoroughly rinsed rice. Mix,&nbsp;&nbsp; then toss in enough water to get about 2cm above&nbsp; the rice and cover. With the flame on medium,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:34] allow that to cook for twenty minutes,&nbsp; then swap the flame to low and cook for&nbsp;&nbsp; another ten. Then heat off to allow&nbsp; it to steam for a final ten minutes,&nbsp;&nbsp; and after that time mix in the green bits of&nbsp; the scallion we used before. Then just toss&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:49] it on a plate, and first press the&nbsp; rice down flat as much as feasible,&nbsp;&nbsp; and then go around and make a little dome. Then&nbsp; just repeat those moves about three or four times,&nbsp;&nbsp; or until the rice is obviously bonded together,&nbsp; and then slice those wedges. Serve along with the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:06] pork and the vegetable, being sure to use&nbsp; that rice to sop up all of the tamarind sauce. So now… there’s always something a little&nbsp; nerve wracking covering Macanese cuisine&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:20] because as you can tell we’re obviously not&nbsp; Macanese. Now that usually doesn’t stop us,&nbsp;&nbsp; but with this kind of endangered dish&nbsp; there’s this nagging sense of like… “what&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:35] if I was wrong, what if my judgement calls&nbsp; were totally off?” There’s an uncertainty&nbsp;&nbsp; margin baked into the cake, so definitely&nbsp; don’t take my recipe today here as gospel.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:49] Definitely do check out the aforementioned&nbsp; Macanese library, where in addition to more&nbsp;&nbsp; information on the Macanese people you can&nbsp; find hundreds and hundreds of unadulterated&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:02] historical Macanese recipes. My personal favorite&nbsp; collection is from someone called Guilly… her&nbsp;&nbsp; cooking instincts really bleed onto the page,&nbsp; she localized a lot, and… I dunno. Back during&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:19] COVID lockdowns when it wasn’t super comfortable&nbsp; being a foreigner here I… I found a lot of comfort&nbsp;&nbsp; going through those recipes…. Anyway, they’re&nbsp; really cool so I do hope you can check them out.
[18:35] But again, I’m obviously very not Macanese so&nbsp; if you want to learn about the general context&nbsp;&nbsp; of this food I cannot recommend this book highly&nbsp; enough – The Making of Macau’s Fusion Cuisine by&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:50] Annabel Jackson. It’s really valuable sociological&nbsp; work, we’ve learned a ton… and! If you’ll notice,&nbsp;&nbsp; this copy is in Chinese, and if you zoom… zoom&nbsp; and enhance on the translators you can find…&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:09] our very own Stephanie Li, who was the lead&nbsp; translator for all the food related chapters. And if you happen to be watching this video&nbsp; in the first week that it’s coming out, and&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:24] you happen to be living in Hong Kong on July&nbsp; 16th, 6:30pm, Annabel but also Steph they’ll&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:36] be giving a talk at the Hong Kong book fair.&nbsp; So you can join me in the audience if you want,&nbsp;&nbsp; more info in the notes below… written recipes&nbsp; of course down in the linked Substack post,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:50] and of course, subscribe for&nbsp; more Chinese cooking videos.