Yow, Yow! Cookbook Author, TV host Maria Lawton Reveals an Exciting Taste of Portugal

Maria Lawton is a cookbook author and has hosted the series “Maria’s Portuguese Table” on PBS since 2019.

Lawton was born in the village of Rosario de Lagoa on Sao Miguel, an island in the Azores — an archipelago off the mainland of Portugal. When she was 6, Lawton and her family moved to the United States and settled in New Bedford Massachusetts, which had a thriving Portuguese community.

Lawton is passionate about sharing her Portuguese heritage, particularly the country’s culture and culinary traditions. Her cookbook, “Azorean Cooking: From my family table to yours” was published in 2014.

“There are fantastic bakeries and butchers and restaurants that prepare dishes in the traditional manner, but as an adult I craved the dishes my mother and grandmother made when I was younger,” Lawton writes on her website.

Lawton’s quest to document that cooking led her to return to Sao Miguel, where she rediscovered her family’s traditional recipes. Her show is a way to preserve that tradition.

In this episode of ART inc., Lawton takes us on a tour of Portugalia Market in Fall River, Massachusetts, to shop, and to taste some of her favorite ingredients.

Here is a conversation with Lawton. The full interview can be found here.

Maria Lawton is eager to show the ingredients that she uses in her recipes. Her cookbook includes traditional Portuguese dishes such as Arroz Doce (sweet rice pudding), Massa Sovada (sweet bread) and Sopa de Couve (kale soup).

From the Azores, recipes include Cozido, a traditional stew or boiled meal; Caçoila (marinated pork), and Camarão Moçambique (shrimp Mozambique).

Lawton walks into the cod room at the Portugalia Market. Cod is the national dish of Portugal, but it is not fished in Portuguese waters, she says.

“Our fishermen would go to Norway, go up to Canada, and fish in those waters,” she says. “They would bring it back and it was called Our Faithful Friend, because you could always depend on having cod.”

There is a saying in Portugal that expresses excitement and joy, and Lawton feels that way about her cooking: Yow, yow.

As Lawton continues to shop, she stops at the cheese aisle.

Cheese “is a staple, I think, in every Portuguese breakfast,” she says.

“We have the cured cheeses, and the creamier, the younger it is. It gets sharper as it gets older.”

Red-hot chopped peppers are next on Lawson’s list. They are fermented.

“My dad would make this, and you could hear the popping going on,” Lawton says. "(That’s because) it’s fermenting, it’s making all those wonderful noises.”

And the more seeds in it, the hotter the pepper.

“That gives you so much flavor when you’re cooking your meats, and your chicken, or any of that,” Lawson says.

Olive oil is also used to flavor Portuguese dishes.

“Olives have been grown in Portugal for centuries,” Lawson says. “And we produce the most wonderful olive oil.

“It needs to be in a dark bottle. It’s something where, like wine, you need to taste test all of these things.”

To accompany these meals, Lawson said the perfect drink is wine.

“Lots of wine,” she says. " So you have Douro region (known for its Port wine), you have Alentejo, you even have Lisbon.

“I still feel that Portuguese wines are undervalued,” Lawton adds. “So I think people need to find out about Portuguese wines. And the best way to do it is when you have wine tastings.

“So I highly recommend coming for wine tastings.”

Lawton says she enjoys preserving Portuguese culinary dishes.

“I feel really grateful to be able to do that because it needs to be preserved,” she says.
“When you grow up in this nationality, you know, you don’t think twice.

You don’t think twice about the food. I mean, but no matter what, and I don’t care, even with any nationality, you need to preserve your food, your culture, your art, your music, your all of the above.”

Here is the recipe that was sampled in the episode of ART inc.

A classic Portuguese dish, Bacalhau à Bràs mixes salted cod, potatoes, and eggs into a creamy dish with olive and parsley.

Ingredients: A pound of dried cod, two potatoes should be chopped, a large onion, three eggs beaten and five cloves of garlic. Olive oil, salt, white pepper and parsley are added for taste.

Instructions: Prepare the codfish the day before by soaking it in water overnight or for a full 24 hours, depending on the thickness of the fish as well as the cook’s preference for a salty flavor. Rinse the salt off and then place the salted cod in a bowl large enough to hold it for at least 12 hours. It is important to change the water two or three times daily and to refrigerate while desalting. Once desalted, boil the codfish until it flakes.

Place stove on low heat and oil a deep frying pan. After warming up the oil, add onions and stir, and slowly saute. Meanwhile, beat the eggs and mix in parsley and white pepper. Stir the codfish while adding the chopped potatoes and garlic. Then add the egg mixture into the pan. When done, garnish with olives and parsley.

Yow, yow!