Posted on: Wednesday, December 25, 2002

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Thanks to Grandma, we all like to cook

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

This Christmas, I'm cooking a roast and making my trademark mashed potatoes at Malalani, my brother's home. We'll share presents that will likely include kitchen stuff, because we all like to cook.

But I won't be getting one thing that I want for Christmas — one thing I'll always want. I won't be eating dinner at my grandparents' table. It's what all of us who were counted as 'ohana, blood or not, by my maternal grandparents, Ida Sylva and John Duarte of '?ao Valley, Maui, would really like.

We remember the Christmas Eve midnight suppers of carne vinha d' ahls — Portuguese pickled pork — served with fluffy scrambled eggs, Portuguese bread and salty green olives when we made our bleary-eyed way home from midnight Mass.

Vinha d'ahls is pork butt or some other pork roast marinated overnight or longer in vinegar and white wine (although Grandma, not much of a drinker, never used wine) with garlic salt and tiny hot peppers. Every year, there'd be a little fuss between Grandpa and Grandma as to how hot the marinade should be. Grandma had a timid tongue but Grandpa would sneak in a couple of extra peppers.

In many families, this holiday dish took the form of a whole pork roast. What we called vinha d' ahls is a dish more properly termed tremoses, in which little nuggets of marinated pork — and pork skin — are fried, yielding a range of flavors and textures from spicy and crunchy to rich and salty.

We traditionally ate turkey at Christmas. Every year Grandma would spend the morning with the bird, murmuring to it as she stuffed the cavity with chunks of bread, onions and lots of parsley from her own garden (the flat-leaf type she insisted we call Portuguese parsley). "Now you stay there, Little Bird," she's say, grasping a slippery wing firmly. "We're gonna eat you up."

Grandma would lapse into baby talk at any excuse. This made learning to cook enjoyable; her voice was a sweet murmur as she showed you how to measure rice water with your knuckle, or how to tell if the cake was done.

Today, join me in remembering those who fed and cared for us, who taught us whatever we know of unconditional love. And, of course, about good things to eat. Happy Christmas.