This week on the Local Food Report, Kurt Achin investigates a feast of royalty, religion, and community history.
A few days ago, there were signs all around Falmouth inviting the public to a "Portuguese Feast." I thought, ok, that sounds interesting. I figured maybe I'd get lunch. What I also got was an education about a centuries-old ritual rich with history, pageantry, and, most definitely, food.
“This is our pork steak,” Erica Silva tells me at the feast. “The cacoila is the marinated shredded pork, linguica sandwich, kale soup, jag… the favas are so delicious this year, shrimp Mozambique with rice, rissois.”
Rissois is like an empanada.
Silva, Like so many others here, she was raised in the USA, but still speaks Portuguese day-to-day in the household, as does Nancy Silveira, who tries to teach me to pronounce what we’re celebrating.
"Festa Azoriana do Espiritu Santo," Silveira says, explaining that it translates to “Azorian Feast of the Holy Ghost." It's been celebrated for at least five centuries, and Portuguese immigrants to the United States have had this East Falmouth version up and running since the 1980s.
We’re at Fresh Pond Holy Ghost Hall in East Falmouth, a kind of Portuguese community center where cooking got underway more than a week ago. Volunteer cooks like Maria Joao-Carreira set meat to marinate for days at a time.
“And we do that all with a purpose, because we definitely could have done it the same day,” Joao-Carreira says. “But the purpose of it is—it tastes better. It sits in the sauce. It's paprika, garlic, crushed pepper, olive oil, a little bit salt, and white wine.”
“Wine and garlic equals Portuguese,” Erica Silva adds. “We marinate everything in it.”
The main event of the weekend comes Sunday, with an ornate church ritual and feast that commemorates Queen Isabella, Portugal's 13th century monarch. Azorian descendants revere her. They describe her as a humanitarian who loved to feed the people, and who remained humble despite being a monarch.
“Royalty meant nothing to her,” Silveira says. “She was like, ‘Look, these kids can be kings and queens too.’ She would crown them and play with that. So, we do that in church.”
Silva says young girls look forward to their "coronation" feast for years as a rite of passage.
“It's beautiful,” she says. “It's so exciting.”
She adds that the girls are between the ages of 14 to 18.
“I mean, I'm talking like big gowns, all the things. Oh, you get so excited,” she says.
On Sunday morning, while younger folks are at St. Anthony's dressed to the nines, the kitchen is bustling. Portuguese grandmas like Fatima Silveira have been here since the crack of dawn, preparing the centerpiece of the feast: a meal called "sopas," or “soups."
“Yesterday morning the priest came at 7:15, blessed the spices, blessed the meat, blessed the wine, blessed the bread, and blessed everyone. It is beautiful,” Silveira says.
Out on the porch there are four enormous vats of broth containing cabbage, potatoes, pork, beef, and linguica. The meat has been simmering for more than five hours.
“That beef…you can't even pick it up,” Silveira says. It tastes good. Tender, tender. You just, with a fork -- you don't need a knife.”
Joey Aguiar is one of the few men visible in the kitchen. He can pitch in because he's not married yet. He says the women guide the way.
“All the Portuguese women know how to cook uma sopa,” Aguiar says. “This is like the traditional Portuguese food. When you find a woman that you're falling for, it's not stated outright, but she better be Portuguese,” he laughs.
Then, with pomp and ceremony, the queen and her court arrive at the hall, and service begins. Heaping family-style trays stacked high with meat, and cabbage and potatoes are placed on the tables. So are bowls of hot broth ladled over thick slices of bread. No table is without a huge bottle of Portuguese wine. During the next two hours, anyone who wants to eat can get their fill.
Isabella Dupin was just crowned at church as an avatar of the queen who shares her name. Now she must sit on her throne and wait to eat, according to tradition.
“Queen Isabella invited everybody into her castle to have them eat,” Dupin says. “That's kind of what I do. I just watch everybody eat for now and then I eat after.”
I ask if she at least had a granola bar before she came.
“Yes, I had I had a big breakfast to make sure I was good,” she answers.
Guidance for how to make Sopas:
