Re homemade Vinha d'Alhos:
My mother would sprinkle garlic powder, ground cumin and cracked
coriander seeds on center-cut pork chops, then soak them overnight in
the refrigerator in a brine of equal parts vinegar (or wine-vinegar)
and water; she'd pan-fry them for dinner (I especially loved the
crunchy fried coriander seeds!), usually served with boiled potatoes
and a green vegetable.
Because of my family's denial of its Portuguese heritage, she always
claimed not to recall the source of the recipe, but I can assure you
that none of my childhood friends' families (all non-Portuguese) ever
served nor had even heard of anything even remotely like this dish.
It was only a few years after my widowed father's death that, in the
course of starting my research into my lost Azorean heritage, I
discovered that Vinha d'Alhos was basically what my mother made.
Ironically, by then I'd been a vegetarian for nearly a decade(!).
The only other (I later learned) typically Azorean dish I remember my
mother ever fixing was a broth-like Watercress Soup, which she'd fix
maybe once a year for my father, and she refused to let me have any
(even when I asked, and even just a spoonful). I don't know whether
she didn't want me to develop a taste for it because it was
Portuguese, although the marinated pork chops tend to contradict that
theory; maybe it was just because it was so much work to wash all the
@#$%&*! grit from fresh watercress ;-)))
On my first visit to Flores in 2002, I spent a considerable amount of
time hanging out at the Posto de Turismo in Santa Cruz -- due in equal
measures to the fluent English of the friendly head of the office and
to the unseasonably blustery weather. The director confirmed that my
mother's pork chop recipe was clearly a variation on Florentino Vinha
d'Alhos, explaining that up until the comparatively recent era of
refrigeration, when a hog was slaughtered it was necessary to preserve
the meat through pickling. He said that the meat would be cut into
chunks that were half-cooked, then soaked in barrels of a wine/garlic/
cumin marinade, where they would last until ready to serve Vinha
d'Alhos -- when one retrieved and patted dry the desired amount of
meat from the brine, then finished cooking it.
The tourism post director also told me that my family's Watercress
Soup recipe was very typical of Flores, and that since the Watercress
("Agrião") grew wild along the riffles feeding the waterfalls above
Fajãzinha and Fajã Grande, my grandfather was most likely from one of
those villages -- and two years later (in the baptismal registos in
the Regional Archives in Horta) I discovered that he was correct, it
was Fajãzinha! What I didn't find out until 2005, however, was that
my grandmother was also from that same area, specifically Ponta da
Fajã Grande.
During the years between my visit to Flores and her death, I managed
to extract* from my father's nonagenarian sister -- the last surviving
sibling, and a difficult and devious personality (who initially denied
our Portugueseness vehemently when I confronted her with it, then
thereafter largely resisted telling me anything about it) -- the
information that her mother (my Grandma) used to make marinated pork
using spare ribs (rather than pork chops); I inferred that this might
have had to do with efficiency and/or economy, their having been a
large household to cook for (compared to my being an only child). I
also got my aunt to describe how the family made Watercress Soup,
which was precisely the way my mother did, strongly suggesting that
the source of her recipe too was my my mother's mother-in-law.
* Given my aunt's truculence (and sometimes dishonesty) about the P-
word, I'd always couch my questions in terms of merely "family"
recipes, not Portuguese ones.
Hope this helps. Katharine.
P.S. See also (although I can't vouch for all the details):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carne_de_Vinha_d%27_Alhos
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