How the Linguiça is Made 

Earlier in the day, there was some dispute as to how much Pabst Blue Ribbon to add to the cast iron pan of linguiça chunks Ariel Peugh is stirring. Given the cooling effects of the breeze outside the Ferndale Community Center, where five teams are grilling, boiling and simmering for the Linguiça Cook-off, some of Peugh's family worry the bubbling beer won't cook down to a proper molasses-like syrup in time for judging.

Peugh, who wears a red and green Portuguese flag apron, her hair in a tight French braid, has been crowned Queen of the Holy Ghost as part of the Eel River Valley Portuguese Hall Association's 100 Years of Festa weekend of events. Like the beer and sausage recipe, the parade she'll march in is a family tradition. The multi-day celebration of Portuguese (or "Port-a-ghee," as it's said just as often) culture and heritage, a strong vein of which runs through the dairy farms of Ferndale, includes the traditional sausage cook-off for the first time this year.

Over on the grass, a more leisurely crew is spread out in lawn chairs behind a gas grill laden with forearm-length homemade sausages. Asked who's behind the recipe, Dan Sutton answers, "Might as well be mine, I've tweaked it so many times." He folds his arms over his chest and gives a rough list of the ingredients he's been using for the last decade or so. "A lotta spices go into linguiça," including the paprika that gives it its signature heat and orange hue, marjoram and the bay leaf Sutton says is vital. That and nonfat dry milk, "or it just don't turn out right ... it binds everything together."

"Don't forget the wine," chimes in Ron Titus beside him.

Sutton nods. "Carlo Rossi Burgundy — there's only one kinda wine in this town." All this, he says, is added to pork ground coarsely, stuffed in pork casings (less snappy, more tender) and allowed to rest overnight before smoking in 25-pound batches. Cory Sutton slices the shining linguiça hot from the grill on a plywood board for sampling. Sutton's method yields a juicy, slightly chunky sausage with pearls of fat, pleasing saltiness and a balance of herbs and spicy paprika.

The next team over has a pan of sausage chunks cooking in beer and a row of uncut ones cooking over the smoky coals of a Santa Maria-style grill. Cory Nunes claims the recipe is from "someone's grandma's closet" and he's tight-lipped about the ingredients, admitting only to smoked paprika. Luke McCanless is minding the grill and Frank Leonardo is doling out samples, but it's a larger team effort making the sausage.

"We take pork, grind the shit out of it, the next day we add some ice water," McCanless says. When another man asks what the water is for, he barks, "Cause that's what we do," before continuing, "We stuff it, smoke it for like five hours." As for the sausage cooked in beer, he recommends Budweiser or Coors Light — cheap beer, — "to drink and to cook with."

Grinding "the shit out of it" makes for a finer grain upon which one member of the sampling public remarks, "It's got some grit to it. Like linguiça is supposed to have." The casing is snappier, too, and the toothpick-wielding crowd remains steady around the team No. 1's table.

"This is just an appetizer," says Jim Boyd, grinning like a happy baby and holding a foil tray of jalapeño poppers stuffed with linguiça and cheese. He and teammate Randy Griffith could be brothers in their matching outfits, Griffith equally impish as he tempts visitors to the Team No. 5 table with linguiça-stuffed mushrooms. Their miniature Santa Maria grill is cooking a pan of their homemade sausage hunks with beer and a couple loops of sausage directly on the grill.

"There's a group of us that makes 'em, about 12 of us," says Griffith, adding today's entry, mild and smoky with a snappy exterior, is the recipe they've settled on over the last few years. He evades specific questions about ingredients with an offer of another mushroom. (It's effective.) But he does divulge they use Choice pork from Costco and that it isn't cheap. The flavor and freshness are worth it, he says, as is the annual ritual of gathering for communal cooking he's enjoyed for some 20 years. "This time we only made about 900 pounds ... it was a light run," he says, laughing. Then the stockpile is divvied up and shared, which is part of the pleasure. "It's a party. It's a very fun event when we do it."

Tony Enos, clad in a Portugal soccer jersey and hat, is not cooking today, saying he's come to eat. But making linguiça, he says, isn't just a culinary tradition in his family, but a social one. He explains his family members used to take a day off once a year to get together and make sausage. These days he and his cousins not only carry on the tradition of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, but do so more often.

Like Peugh, Shelly and Tom Gomes are using Taylor linguiça, boiling it in Pabst Blue Ribbon for 30 minutes. "This is how he's always cooked it," says Shelly as Tom serves samples. "His grandpa came over from Terceira [Island]," she says, around 1906. Just then, a half dozen jovial relations stroll up to the table to chat and taste. There are hums of approval all around.

Rich Silacci, Jeannie Fulton and George Enos have already taken their seats under the judge's canopy and are sampling their first slices of sausage when Patrick Queen rushes onto the lawn to set up a rusty camp stove propped on cinder blocks. On his table is a pile of vacuum-sealed, speckled linguiça, a jar of olive oil and two bricks of salted butter in a cast iron pan.

Late as he is, Queen takes a moment to tug a tuft of gray hair up over the collar of his Big Lebowski T-shirt and say, "See this? I'm Portuguese." He borrows a lighter for the stove as Kevin Olivera, straight from the Portuguese Hall kitchen, where he's been cooking traditional alcatra soup all day, helps slice the sausage into coins.

Olivera says that generations back, his family used to make linguiça by soaking pork in a barrel with wine and pickle juice, then tossing in a potato. When the potato rose to the top, the meat was ready for grinding and stuffing.

Queen isn't sold on all the old ways, noting some of the heavy spicing was used to cover the flavor of nearly rotten meat. "People used to eat some pretty gnarly stuff," he says, turning the browning slices over in the pan of oil and butter, their edges starting to curl.

Someone in the small arc of onlookers quips, "He was born late." Then the toothpicks descend, clearing out the pan as people huff around still sizzling circles of linguiça. The butter may be gilding the lily, but the crisping cannot be denied and the rich finish is a nice counterpoint to the buzz of spice.

Shortly after all the entries, including Queen's, have been stuck with tiny Portuguese flag toothpicks and tasted by the judges, McCanless, Nunes and Frank Leonardo's team takes the People's Choice Award by a landslide. The Overall Winner, however, chosen for what the judges describe as "distinct, rustic Portuguese flavor" is Sutton's team.

There's toasting and cheering but no exodus from the smoky tailgate party. People are still catching up and some contestants are adding more links to their grills. There's still some daylight and plenty of linguiça.

Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the Journal's arts and features editor. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 320, or [email protected].