Event offers up a taste of Portugal

The Maui News - Audrey Rocha Reed wanted people to know that Portuguese food goes beyond bean soup and malassadas.

So the secretary of the Portuguese Association of Maui brought members together to hold the first "All You Can Eat Portuguese Food" event Sunday at Heritage Hall in Paia.

"Cuisine in Portugal is very varied," said Reed, who is full Portuguese. "I think, once a year, people should know that the Portuguese eat more of a European cuisine."

More than 100 people stopped by for a buffet of classic, home-cooked Portuguese dishes. They sipped bowls of caldo verde, a potato and kale soup with slices of sausage. They piled plates high with alcatra, beef slow cooked in wine and spices in a clay pot; vinha d'alhos, pork marinated in vinegar or sour wine; bacalhau, a dish of codfish and potatoes; and pudim de arroz, rice pudding.

The recipes came from a variety of people and sources, including a Maui Electric Co. cooking show from the 1970s, Reed said.

Large groups of Portuguese immigrants began coming to Hawaii around the late 1870s to work in the sugar plantations. The islands were a good fit for the Portuguese, who came from a coastal country and lived off the sea, Reed said.

Margar Kinores Sylva, who is half Puerto Rican and half Portuguese, said that Sunday was the first time she'd tasted many of the dishes. Sylva's mother was 9 years old when she and her family left Portugal for Maui in 1914.

"My mother was from Portugal but she never made some of these dishes," Sylva said. "If my mother was alive, she'd be very proud of me."