From a superfood from Angola to traditions born in Timor-Leste's resistance to the Indonesian occupation, a five-day exhibition in Macau to showcase gastronomy from Portuguese-language countries kicks off on Friday.Macau, China, Oct. 15, 2024 (Lusa) - From a superfood from Angola to traditions born in Timor-Leste's resistance to the Indonesian occupation, a five-day exhibition in Macau to showcase gastronomy from Portuguese-language countries kicks off on Friday.
"A superfood of the future," was how Angolan chef Nário Tala described the 'catato' at a presentation for the media of the menu for the Lusophone Gastronomy Show, which is to take place at Macau's Fishermen's Dock until 22 October.
The surprise is reserved for the arrival of the dish at Vic's Restaurant, with the catato - a type of caterpillar used in Angolan cuisine - sautéed with aubergine, olive oil, onion and garlic.
"It's a very protein-packed food, it has vitamin C, iron, zinc, and you can find it easily," Tala explained to Lusa. "It's not fattening, it's anti-carcinogenic and it can be made in various ways."
Popular 'superfoods' - characterised by a high concentration of nutrients such as vitamins, omega-3 and proteins - include flax, hemp and chia seeds, maca, spirulina, açaí and goji berries.
Catato "is a common food, it's part of the culture, especially in the northern part of Angola," said Tala, while acknowleding that there was still "resistance2 to eating this palm caterpillar.
"Like everything in life, you have to have a principle," the chef argued. "In Angola there are good teams doing studies on what our food is."
In February 2023, Angolan chef Hel Araújo launched the project Ovina Yetu (‘our product/my thing’ in the Umbundu language), to exhaustively collect information on more than 1,000 native products, including the catato.
After demonstrating "what benefits it has for the human body," Tala said, he believes that it will find an audience among people who look for "sustainability and health prevention" in the food they eat.
The chef emphasised that this caterpillar "doesn't need to be cultivated" and that its consumption may even encourage people to plant more palm trees.
"We end up consuming what the palm tree offers us, but without destroying it," he explained.
The importance of sustainability was also emphasised by Maria das Dores, a chef who for the first time left the island of Príncipe, in Sao Tome and Principe, in order to present an "abobó" in Macau, with beans, cassava flour and grilled fish.
"We use what is ours," she told Lusa. "So what's ours is good and it's also cheaper."
For Delfina Maria Baptista Guterres, from Timor-Leste, using popular local ingredients such as maize and sweet potatoes is also a way of preserving Timorese traditions.
"Corn powder, for example, once fried, lasts for months and that was the food we used to take with us when we lived in the bush, sometimes for years, during the occupation, when the enemy came to attack," she recalled.
The Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor (Fretilin) carried out an armed resistance in the Timorese jungles for decades, after the Indonesian invasion of 7 December 1975.
"But these new people don't do much of that any more; they want more instant things," Guterres lamented.
The Lusophone Gastronomic Show also includes Martinho Moniz, a Portuguese chef based in Macau, and Ana Manhão from Macao.
Manhão said that she identifies more than as a chef, but as a defender of the "culinary traditions" of the Macanese, a Euro-Asian community made up mainly of descendants of Portuguese settlers, with roots in the territory.
The five chefs will also be giving cookery workshops as part of the 16th Cultural Week of China and the Portuguese-speaking Countries.
VQ/ARO // ARO.
Lusa
