Tessa Kiros believes that food is the essence of any country's people - a quilt that is patchworked together with their language, culture and songs. When she takes her family to live and travel in Portugal, she is captivated by the country and charmed by the old-fashioned way of doing things. Portugal has everything she loves - the markets, the sea, the beautiful old poussadas - but she would have gone for the pasteis de nata alone. In "Piri Piri Starfish", Tessa embroiders the recipes, traditions and Portuguese way of living together with her own unique colours and threads. Some of the present day wonder of this small country can be attibuted to its great history during the Age of Discovery: when the world beyond nearby lands and seas was little more than a mysterious dream to most Europeans, this land of bay leaves, baccala and piri piri stretched out her roots over the globe.