Renaissance.

This is one of the best books about our sea, its creatures and local cuisine that has ever been written in Portugal: it is a blend of biology book, history book and cookbook, a collection of essays and anecdotes covering 150 illustrated pages; published in German and English, the book is a culinary survey of the seas and the kitchens of the Algarve kingdom. The two authors Andrea Siebert and Nico Böer (posthumously) deserve recognition and respect, because they have turned the knowledge they gathered from fishermen, fishmongers and cooks into the very useful format of a book. Now it needs to be translated into other languages, first of all of course into Portuguese.

This is a book that is both easy and nice to read – another of its useful features – and it has already celebrated its tenth anniversary and was awarded the Gourmand World Cookbook Award by Edouard Cointreau after its first edition in 2003. Vegetarians and carnivores could be brought together by this instructive read about the life of the sea, because it was written from both ecological and economic points of view, out of respect for the biotope of the sea and those who live alongside it and still work in a traditional way.

Every gourmet and friend of the Algarve should reserve a special place in their kitchen for this book, so that the accumulated knowledge becomes immortalised. I myself have undertaken to use it on Friday every week: not only because of the recipes, but also for the short stories about land and people, flora and fauna, traditions and technology. And anyone wishing to know more about salt from the Algarve, should visit the website: www.marisol.biz

About the author

Uwe Heitkamp, 53 years old, started working after university in daily newspapers and from 1984 on in public tv broadcasting companies such as WDR (Collogne), NDR (Hamburg), SDR (Stuttgart/Baden-Baden) in the ARD (first programme), wrote several books and directed the cinema movie about the anti nuclear movement in Germany in 1986 (Wackersdorf). After emigration in 1990 he founded 1995 the trilingual weekly printed newspaper “Algarve123”  and later the online edition www.algarve123.com. Heitkamp lives for 25 year in Monchique, Portugal. He loves mountain hiking and swimming in streams and lakes, writes and tells stories of success from people and their sustainable relationship between ecology and economy. His actual film “Revolutionary Roads” tells the 60 minute story of a long walk crossing Portugal. 10 rural people paint a picture of their lives in the hills of the serra and the hinterland. The film captures profound impressions of natural beauty and human life. Along which path is the future of Portugal to be found? (subscribe to ECO123 und watch the documentary in the Mediatec)

This review was written on an eight year old laptop and does not emit CO 2 , because is operated by solar power.