Vinha D'alhos for Beef

Excerpt from the Provincetown Seafood Cookbook by Howard Mitcham. 1975

Their most famous marinade is the vinha d’alhos, pronounced “vinyer thyles”; it literally means “wine of garlic.” It’s the beautiful spicy garlicky marinade which makes Portuguese food seem like witchcraft or black magic. The stew Macbeth’s witches brewed would have been a gourmet’s pot au feu if the ingredients had been subjected to this Portuguese marination process. One could almost concede that an old dish rag could be made palatable by “galvanizing,” which is what the Yankees call the spicy soak, and it’s as good a name as any.

In the days before refrigeration vinha d’alhos was used to keep fish and meats from spoiling; you could keep a fish fresh in it for several days, likewise pork chops or beefsteaks. And the spices and garlic make the foods taste so good that the system has persisted in spite of the whole refrigerator. What a beautiful term is “wine of garlic”! To me garlic is the happiest member of the whole vegetable family. I love its flavor and its fragrance. It has many ancient mythical and mystical significances; it’s a cure-all for illness and disease, a preserver of good health, a tonic and a thickener of blood, and the Egyptians four thousand years ago knew of its aphrodisiacal qualities.

The simplest vinha d’alhos is two cups of water to one cup of vinegar (pure vinegar would be too sharp) plus salt, crushed black peppercorns, a few crumbled bay leaves, a good many cloves of garlic, a chopped onion and a wide variety of spices and herbs of your own choice, but especially a half teaspoon of crushed cumin seeds. Many cooks would use a ten-cent package of commercial crab and shrimp boil spices, plus the cominos (ground cumin seeds), make a beautiful vinha d’alhos.

A more elegant marinade would use a good bottle of white wine instead of water, one cup of vinegar, a package of mixed spices, cominos, a dozen cloves of garlic crushed, a chopped onion, thyme, basil or any other herbs except oregano, which is too strong for this business. Soak your fish fillets or steaks in this mixture for thirty minutes, which is long enough to make them zoom. You can’t marinate fresh mackerel or it will become soft and mushy, but you can marinate cooked mackerel. Marinate pork chops in vinha d’alhos for two or three days and when you cook and serve them you can call it “transcendental pork chops” because they’ll be on a higher plane than ordinary pork chops.

End Excerpt

Inspired by both Mitcham and Ana Petuleia Ortins (Portuguese Homestyle Cooking, 2001, see the link to the left for her website), This is my fourth variation on that theme but with beef in mind. I have used burgundy before but feel free to try any red wine you enjoy with beef. Also, if you feel the marinade may be too vinegary, just add less vinegar and more wine. Almost forgot, Tarragon vinegar would also be a good substitute for the red wine vinegar.

Click on the recipe for a larger image

Enjoy, Robert