Pork is the meat used in this recipe and a lot of other Portuguese cuisine. The pig is very important in Portuguese culture, and pork is the culinary center point of most of the feasts on the Portuguese mainland, her islands and many of the places where the Portuguese have settled. The slaughter of the pig is an important ritual in the local community. Also, in a fashion very reminiscent of the Native Americans and their relationship to the buffalo, the Portuguese make use of virtually every part of the animal.

They have mastered its preparation and dishes abound with pork as the main ingredient including many that appear here on Chop Onions, Boil Water. Among those I have included is this recipe for Porco com Ameijoas a Alentejana or "AH-lehn-jah-nah" as we call it on the South Coast of New England.

Along with Portuguese style steak, Alentejana is probably one of most popular dishes to be had in the local Azorean-Portuguese restaurants where I live. It is named for the region in Portugal where it was first created; there, it consists mainly of pork, spices and the hard-shelled clams known locally as "little necks". Here in the USA, I notice they add potatoes to it which doesn't harm it at all. I was first introduced to this dish as a teenager in the early 1980s. It is certainly one of my favorite Portuguese dishes and I have enjoyed it at many of the local restaurants. I've found that there is a little variation in the basic recipe and people seem to favor one establishment over another based on their personal preferences regarding the flavor and amount of sauce or the tenderness of the pork.

The real secret to good Alentejana is in the marinade and in the preparation of the pork and potatoes. If one pays attention to detail, it's not a difficult dish to master and prepared correctly it'll garner you nothing but smiles, oohs, ahs and respect in my neck of the woods. The local restaurants have even begun introducing a chicken version for people with restrictive diets which is equally delicious.

I'm pretty lax when it comes to reviewing cookbooks on Chop Onions, Boil Water. I don't know why, it is surely easier than creating, tinkering, preparing, photographing and writing about new recipes. Even when I do get around to reviewing cookbooks I tend to be a little tardy. So tardy in fact, I think one of the most "recent" books I've reviewed here was out of print when I reviewed it. That doesn't change my opinion of it though, it was/is a great cookbook and I love and still use it (I could tell you what the title is and put a link here, but that gets me less click-throughs on my humble Google Adsense account and Chop Onions, Boil Water is, as of yet, a mostly non-paying endeavor. You'll find it easily enough if you look for it).

All that said, it should surprise no one that the cookbook I am about to review is six years old. I've been meaning to pick up The Tex-Mex Cookbook for some time since I first came across it. I've checked it out online, picked it up in the bookstore and gave it all the preliminary research I do with anything I buy, I've just been late in pulling the trigger on the purchase, well, until this past Sunday when I decided it was time to buy!

Before I offer you my review, let's see what the publisher has to say about The Tex-Mex Cookbook:

"Join Texas food writer Robb Walsh on a grand tour complete with larger-than-life characters, colorful yarns, rare archival photographs, and a savory assortment of crispy, crunchy Tex-Mex foods.

From the Mexican pioneers of the sixteenth century, who first brought horses and cattle to Texas, to the Spanish mission era when cumin and garlic were introduced, to the 1890s when the Chile Queens of San Antonio sold their peppery stews to gringos like O. Henry and Ambrose Bierce, and through the chili gravy, combination plates, crispy tacos, and frozen margaritas of the twentieth century, all the way to the nuevo fried oyster nachos and vegetarian chorizo of today, here is the history of Tex-Mex in more than 100 recipes and 150 photos.

Rolled, folded, and stacked enchiladas, old-fashioned puffy tacos, sizzling fajitas, truck-stop chili, frozen margaritas, Frito(TM) Pie, and much, much more, are all here in easy-to-follow recipes for home cooks.
 
The Tex-Mex Cookbook will delight chile heads, food history buffs, Mexican food fans, and anybody who has ever woken up in the middle of the night craving cheese enchiladas."

So...just how does a recipe from Mozambique end up in the Portuguese section of Chop Onions, Boil Water? You probably don't care, but I'm going to tell you anyway because if I didn't, all the space below the period at the end of this sentence would be white and I just can't have that.

This recipe begins way back in 1498 when the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama visited Mozambique. Apparently he liked what he saw, communicated it, and subsequent "explorers" visited the country and established settlements for trading and waging war against, and enslaving the uppity locals in a brutal feudalism that eventually evolved into a less-brutal-but-no-more-attractive colonial government. This of course led to conflicts for independence and fast forward to 1975 when the good people of Mozambique finally won their self-governance. So there's your Portugal-Mozambique connection.

Now lets make the Portugal-Mozambique-Recipe connection: Way back yonder when the Europeans were running around "discovering" people and cultures that already knew they were there, they started bringing back things they begged, bought or stole from the inhabitants of "THE NEW WORLD". Useful things like corn, potatoes, gold, captives, etc., and for the purposes of this story: chilies. Some of those chili seeds that were brought to Europe from the New World by European explorers, then made their way to Africa with Portuguese traders. There the peppers were spread by man and nature and flourished all over the continent and the local cuisine.

If you've ever watched the movie "Defending Your Life" by Albert Brook's you'll surely remember the restaurant scene? The movie is Brook's look at the afterlife and consequently (among many things) the restaurants and food to be found there. In that scene Brook's character, now deceased, dines in an afterlife restaurant, and the food, its calories and other health implications are meaningless and the waiter just indulges the patron's desires much to Brook's bewilderment. You can see the scene here on YouTube.

When I prepare shrimp scampi, that scene often comes to mind because overindulging in shrimp scampi with no health implications would surely be a little bit of heaven to me. I love shrimp scampi. Unfortunately, with my family's medical history, shrimp scampi is a cholesterol and saturated-fat-packed shotgun pointed right at my heart! So while this recipe is a huge personal favorite, I don't prepare it all that often. Yeah, way to bring down the enthusiasm for something that is so good!