Receta Chicken livers peri-peri

In 1497 explorer Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed north to the Indian Ocean where his fleet made port in Mozambique. Thus began over 500 years of social, economic and culinary interaction between the people of Portugal and those of southern Africa. This shared history has resulted in the development of an Afro-lusitanian cooking style which originated in Angola and Mozambique but has now spread into South Africa.

What South Africans tend to call ‘Portuguese’ food is in fact a creole Afro-Lusitanian cuisine born in Africa. It is similar but separate from classic European style Portuguese food. Key dishes within this food genre include Caril de Galinha (a coconut milk chicken curry) and the super spicy olive oil, garlic and chili hot sauce known as piri-piri. In South Africa piri-piri is sometimes spelt and pronounced peri-peri because English speakers tend to struggle with the hard ‘I’ sound used in the Portuguese language but not with the delicious flavours of the sauce! The term used on the streets of Maputo, Mozambique to describe piri-piri chicken may not be very politically correct but it reveals the African origins of the dish to perfection. Translated politely frango à cafreal means indigenous chicken. Literally translated, cafreal is a pejorative term for black Africans. Either way the foodstuffs' African origins are crudely, but deliciously obvious.